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Monaco - April 2007

Meandering around Monaco

The Guinness

I had my emergency can of Guinness in my bag but hoped to find some proper draught stuff somewhere. I couldn’t see many bars or pubs anywhere but did have an address for McCarthy’s Bar that purported on the Internet to be the only Irish Bar in the country. We found it after a short search and risking life and limb crossing the roads on which rich Monégasque in their expensive Porsches raced around the circuit.

Ummmmmmmmmm - that tastes good.

When we got back to McCarthy’s Bar at shortly after 6pm it was already quite full of ex-pat businessmen quenching their thirst after a hard days work. Here was a new experience for me – we were served by Brendan, a real Irish person. In every other country up until now where I had found Guinness the bar person had been native to that country. It wasn’t much easier explaining to Brendan what I was up to than it had been the others. He too looked a little confused to begin with and then cottoned onto why I was asking him to pick a straw out of a box and it wasn’t to take part in a communal coke sniffing session.

Brenden, just getting the hang of what I was asking him to do

Getting There and around

Monaco prides itself on its appearance and the authorities don’t take well to anyone turning up in scruffy attire or topless so we donned our best tee shirts and headed off to explore this tiny country. Having successfully navigated there on the toll roads I didn’t want to risk getting caught in any complicated urban traffic system so parked in first car park we found. Even that was astoundingly smart with painted floors.

It's not the greenest country in the world, that's for sure.

Monaco, the world’s second smallest country after the Vatican City, is built on a series of hills. Pedestrians get from one level to another by using the free elevators dotted around. We queued for these alongside suited gentlemen in sunglasses off to make their next financial transaction now slightly aggrieved at bumping into a party of riff raff tourists in their best tee shirts. The elevators sometimes led you to a series of underground marble lined pedestrian tunnels. It reminded me in some ways of the Moscow underground but at the same time the countries could not have been more different.

Waiting for the elevators in the marble lined hallways.

Team Makeup

This was Guinness Capital bagging with a difference. Needless to say that as soon as the family got wind of the fact that Monaco was the next destination it took them a mere nanosecond to make their minds up that they were coming along too. A family holiday in Monaco I thought – that sounds a little pricey! I tried to put them off with stories of earthquakes, guerrilla warfare, toxic waste dumps but somehow they saw through them all and insisted they tag along. They too wanted to have a carbon footprint the size of mine. Penny, who had joined us on the Lichtenstein trip, decided she would take if the offer occupying the third bedroom in the gîte. Penny’s ability to understand French a little better than us was to prove a definite advantage.

The family in a prickly situation

Brave Penny joins us on a second Guinness trip

Accommodation

Sense told us that Monaco would not be a cheap place to stay and not the sort of place to have a Youth Hostel, so we started to explore the guide books as to what was nearby. Cannes is just along the coast, so is Marseille. They still sounded a little upmarket for the Richards family. Nice, a short hop from Monaco sounded more like it added to which we could fly there from Birmingham – ideal. Clickedy click and the flights were booked. A couple more nights searching the web and we found a gîte in the hills high above Nice a mere 12 km from the town.

Nice view from the gite but not easy to get to - I invested in a TomTom after this holiday

We’d sort of pictured the fact that twelve kilometres would take some ten minutes of so to drive from Nice, maybe twenty at the most. How wrong we could be. A strong crow with an oxygen cylinder maybe could have done it in twenty minutes but a loaded Ford Fiesta took much longer up the countless hairpin bends. The map we were sent with the gîte details was literally the size of a Monaco postage stamp, the latter being pretty enormous by postage stamp standards. With an inadequate map and instructions in French we struggled but eventually happened upon our road/dirt-track up to the gîte.

Nice Old Town - taken just a few minutes before I got a call saying I had a new job

Sightseeing highlights & food

The fact that Monaco hosts a Formula 1 Grand Prix added a bit of interest for the kids. Bronze statues of famous drivers and their cars, some of which you could sit in, were dotted around on grassy oases in traffic islands. We walked though the tunnel that forms part of the Formula 1 circuit, taking a little longer than the second or two it takes the racing cars to go through. It was fascinating to see how they transformed these streets into a motor circuit. They were just beginning to ready themselves for the Grand Prix due some six weeks later. The grandstands were being built and some of the barriers readied. It looked like one giant Meccano set being put together.

Formula 1 cars have certainly changed over the years

The kids weren’t allowed into the Casino being under-18 and I wasn’t terribly driven to explore it either but the architecture of the Casino and nearby Opera House building and the terraced gardens were appealing so we sat on a bench and had our picnic lunch next to a statue of the composer Berlio. There didn’t seem to be any signs saying that picnicking was discouraged but you just got the feeling that nobody around here ever indulged in such practices.

Now that's what I call a casino

We crossed back over the harbour and climbed the steep paths up to the Monaco-Ville and the Royal Palace, home of the Gramaldi family and now the Prince Rainier of Monaco. As well as the Palace the hill was home of Monaco’s old town – told you every city around here has one. Atmospheric yes but full of tourist shops selling exactly the same things – mock Formula 1 outfits for toddlers, Prince Rainier mugs and alike.

Monaco old town

Quirky moments

Once down at sea level the first thing to catch the eye of any first timer in Monaco is the yachts. They refer to them as yachts but rather they are large pleasure boats without a sail in sight. Some had smaller speed boats slung underneath like an embryo. Others had helicopter landing decks. Armies of cabin staff were out painting and polishing the vessels ready for the next voyage or more likely ready to host the next party. On one hand you got the feeling of being a tourist voyeur but on the other you got the feeling that this is what the owners liked, being gawped at by those less well off than them. I pondered how long it would take me to be extradited from the country if I started handing out leaflets raising awareness of poverty in Africa.

Maybe I could afford the little boat.

Poland – February 2007

Waddling around Warsaw

The Guinness

It took a while to find Jimmy Bradley’s Bar as it was hidden away on the ground floor of a shopping development with no exterior signage. We weren’t the only ones who found it challenging – my colleagues also had some comments.

Good news too – they served Guinness, all be it poured into a Beamish glass, and very tasty it was too. No need for the extra cold version of Guinness today though. The bar was in a bit of upheaval when we arrived, seemingly being reconstructed after being used as a film location. We watched as a team of men rebuilt a half-wooden barrel and then removed a snooker table from the premises. I just hope the scene worked out – it’s not an easy task moving a full sized snooker table around.

Enjoying a Guinness at Jimmy Bradley's Irish bar in Warwaw.

I was doing a bit of work for an environmental consultancy at the time and had been working with some colleagues in Warsaw who kindly joined me for a drink. We therefore had a pleasant evening with Magda, Radomir and Mateusz learning more about Warsaw and Poland in general.

Colleague Magda picking out my next destination

Getting There and around

It was another very early start from Coventry, up at 4pm to get to Luton airport in time to get parked up and checked in for the 7.55 flight to Warsaw. Wizz Air, despite its very alarming name (not quite as worrying as Albania’s Albatross Air) turned out to be adequate. It had the standard free-for-all non-allocated seating arrangements that meant I ended up in the front row and Kevin in the back row next to a Polish gentleman suffering from volcanic sneezing fits. Kevin was to remember him a week later as he suffered with flu.

We caught the express non-stop train to Krakow that would take only two and a half hours. The time passed pretty quickly most probably, as Kevin pointed out, because I proceeded to fall asleep when the ground was flat and snowy and did not wake up again till it was green and undulating near Krakow.

Trams - a handy way to get around, and warm too.

Leaving Krakow for the airport we confidently strode to the bus station having already sorted out where we thought the bus departed from. We squeezed on a very crowded bus when it pulled in. Over the next twenty minutes it slowly dawned on us that the bus was probably going in the wrong direction – especially when we were the only ones left on the bus! It turned around at a terminus near a college and headed back to town. Back at the bus station we stayed on board and pretended we knew what we were doing. Fortunately we had left plenty of time so when we did eventually get to the airport we weren’t last in the check in line. The ironic thing was that a new train line has been built out to the airport from the central train station that only takes some 15 minutes, as opposed to the one and a half hours on out contrived bus journey

Team Makeup

Kevin was my intrepid travelling companion and valued photographer once again, the family preferring to wait to see what next country capital came ‘out of the hat’ here in Warsaw before committing themselves to a holiday

Accommodation

The hotel I’d booked using an Internet reservation agency was fortunately expecting us. Having a travelling companion certainly makes such accommodation very affordable. Here we were staying in a modern three star hotel, breakfast included, for £17/night each – cheaper than a Youth Hostel in the UK these days.

Tributes to war-time resistance in Warsaw are never far away.

Food

We thought we’d eat later once it had got dark, but needed something to tide us over, not having eaten since 4am that morning. A woman at the nearby shop prised open the glass shutter with a surprised look on her face, not expecting anyone in there right senses would order pizza and chips to take-away when the temperature was minus 13 outside. It was just what we needed. I was expecting some strange looks as we sat on a statue plinth with snow all around us but there was nobody else around to give us strange looks. I wish there had been – they could have helped lever us off the stone plinth once we’d finished eating.

In Krakow we actually found an authentic Polish restaurant for our last meal of plumb pork and Krakow potatoes – very tasty indeed. A local musical trio serenaded the diners which would probably have seemed very cheesy had it not been for the Guinness aperitifs.

I'm not convinced that borch should be that colour

Mention sightseeing in Warsaw to anyone and they immediately talk about the Old Town. In fact they ‘only’ talk about the Old Town, other than to mention in passing that there is little of any other significance to see. Our decision on where to go next was therefore pretty straightforward – the Old Town. To add to the irony of this situation, the Old Town isn’t that old, it is newly built after the war using the original plans.

Warsaw Old Town

The large square with a view of the brick walled Palace makes a pleasant change of scenery as does all the narrow cobbled streets of the area. It didn’t really matter that much of it was rebuilt; it was just a pleasant area to be in.

Quirky moments

The Palace of Culture, a present from the Soviets and mirroring the six or so similar Palaces we’d seen last year in Moscow. Apparently, the government of Poland was given a choice of either this ugly concrete monstrosity or an underground system and chose the former – something that has never been forgiven by the people of Warsaw. They say that the best view of Warsaw is to be obtained from the top of the tower – where you don’t have to look at the tower itself.

Palace of Culture - a good view of Warsaw - from the top!

We were just cold but these girls must have had a headache too.

In Karkow we went to a pub called the Irish M Bassy in a hope of catching the Wales rugby match. It turned out however that the match was being shown on BBC2 which was not available via satellite. I was shedding tears into my Guinness when another group of Welshman behind us had a bright idea. They got the owner to flick through the channels and amazingly found S4C, the Welsh version of Channel 4. So we sat back and watched the march in Welsh, in Poland!

Lasting Memories

Let’s face it, visiting Warsaw in the depths of winter was always going to be a risk. The Warsaw temperatures had been tracking an acceptable five degrees below the UK temperatures for the last couple of months. The day before this trip commenced however the Warsaw temperature chart mirrored a temporary stock market crash, falling some 15 degrees to minus 13oC. As our Wizz Air flight approached Warsaw I mistook the white views out of the aeroplane window for cloud when in actual fact it was snow, as far as the eye could see.

Brrrrr - it can get a bit chilly in Warsaw in February.

Out of the City

Krakow was a great contrast to Warsaw. The castle sits on a prominent rock to the west of the city centre. This was the old capital of Poland and therefore home of the royal family in around the 16th century. We climbed up, heard a bit of the mass being sung in the cathedral. Virtually everybody famous in Polish history is buried here including most of the 45 Polish monarchs. On the way out of the Cathedral we spotted the collection of prehistoric bones that include a whale’s rib, mammoth’s shinbone and skull of a hairy rhinoceros. Legend would have it that these were actually the bones of the dragon that Krak killed. I suppose it makes a change from a big painted thermometer signifying the state of the roof replacement find.

Krakow cathedral

The square is overlooked by the giant twin towered St Mary’s church. On the hour, every hour, a trumpeter blows out a tune but stops half way through a bar in memory of the moment in the 1300s when a trumpeter watchman was blowing out a tune to warn of approaching Tatar invaders when he took a direct hit in the throat. The present church building obviously post-dates that occasion otherwise the Tatar archers would have had to be very good shots.

Central Krakow - spot the trumpeter

Also marked on our map was Shindler’s factory. He was guy with the serious speech impediment depicted in the Spielberg film Shindler’s Lisp. Seriously though he was a Krakow factory owner who gave local Jews jobs and stopped many being sent to their deaths. We didn’t quite know what to expect when we got there after wandering though the suburbs for a while and under a railway. When we got there and we were hovering outside an old factory-like building, a security guard came out and ushered us in. It turned out that the place was being converted into a museum but it was not yet open. He showed us around, plonked us in front of a brief slide show, showed us a desk and chair he claimed were Shindler’s actual desk and chair though I had my doubts. I thought we’d get fleeced on the way out but quite the opposite, our impromptu guard turned away not expecting any payment, but I forced some zloty on him.

Shindler's Factory - soon to be a museum, or so we were told.

 

On the way to the pub for a Guinness we found a few sights of interest including baroque Holy Cross Church where Chopin’s heart is entombed in one of the pillars. Chopin used to play at the church in his youth and it was his wish that his heart be returned there after he died in France. Given that the French eat virtually anything, I can understand his motivation.

Croatia - November 2006

Zigzagging around Zagreb

The Guinness

Tolkien's House was atmospheric and did indeed serve draught Guinness though rather strangely not served from behind the bar itself but what looked like the mantelpiece.

A Guinness poster advertising Halloween night celebrations hung from the ceiling. Zoran, the owner, poured a good pint and with a little help from the younger barman I explained what I was doing and he did the necessary and picked out my next destination ‘out of the hat’. It was Warsaw, Poland.

Zoran pouring me my Guinness

Getting There and around

When I’d researched the cheap airline routes the nearest I thought I could get to Zagreb was Ljubljana with Easy Jet. I’d missed the fact that the comparatively new airline, Wiz Air, flew direct from Luton to Zagreb – but did I really want to fly with an airline that called itself Wiz Air?

At the station I bought a ticket to Zagreb and received more good news. The express train that was meant to leave twenty minutes earlier was late and now not expected to leave for another twenty minutes. I dashed to the nearby McDonalds to buy supper (sorry about that – twenty minutes wasn’t enough time to get the Slovenian dictionary out and decipher the difference between shellfish and tenderloin). As I strolled up onto the platform I heard a train pulling away, outdone by a train drive who had put his foot down and made up some of this lateness. The slow train was waiting on the adjacent platform so not to worry. This was a modern train with modern people – opening up their laptops and watching films and playing music.

I've noticed how European train stations have often have an old loco outside.  I like it.

As I changed trains at the Slovenian-Croatian boarder, snow flurries began to fall with crispness in the air. I had a compartment all to myself as first the police and then the guard came around to check my passport and then my ticket. This was supposedly a scenic journey but no views tonight.

In the morning I bought a Zagreb Card at the hostel for £8. This allowed me free travel on public transport and some other privileges such as a mug of coffee from the hostel warden



Team Makeup

Just like the previous trip, I failed to drum up any support for this trip.

Zagreb old town

Accommodation

I had booked three nights at the Ravnice Youth Hostel, (£9/night) a tram-ride out of the centre. The guidebook said get off at the tenth stop near the chocolate factory but either it was written by a non-attentive author or the tram route had a few extra stops. I hoped back on the next tram and stayed on till I could smell the melted cocoa.

I was assigned a bunk in a four bunk room. When I opened the door it looked like every bunk was already occupied but it turned out there was only one other occupant – he was just very untidy. I never met him actually, I was always asleep when he came in and up and away before he was awake.

No, this isn't the hostel!

Sightseeing highlights

I took a bus to the Mirogoj Cemetery. It turned out to be a great place to visit, for me anyway, maybe not for the elderly ladies grieving the loss of their loved ones. Instead of bringing flowers, relatives of the dead bring lanterns – 50p each at the supermarket I later found out. The graves of the famous had hundreds of lanterns surrounding them in all colours emitting a pleasant warmth on a cold autumnal day. I liked the buildings at the front with their green copper turrets, ivy-clad walls and arcades with cast iron lanterns.

Candles galore at Mirogoj Cemetery

My Zagreb Card also included free travel on the cable car up to the1000 meter peak of Mount Medvednica. The cable cars ran once an hour so I had a coffee in the café and looked at the display on the wall which included a section of the cable looking reassuringly thick. Each car took four people and skirted the tree tops on the twenty minute trip to the summit. My elderly Croatian co-travellers didn’t want a chestnut when offered but seemed fascinated by me – goodness knows what they were saying to each other. They asked if I was German and when I told them I was from Wales all they could say back was ‘Boyo’.

Snowy conditions on top of Mount Medvednica

Back in town I took the vernacular railway and zigzagged around the narrow labyrinth of streets seeing St Marks Church with its multi-coloured terracotta tiled roof with the coats of arms of Zagreb and Croatia designed in. I then arrived at the sixteen-century shrine of the Virgin Mary in a narrow covered ally way where a service was just beginning.

The colourful St Marks Church roof

Food

On my second day in Zagreb, I thought that finding a restaurant wouldn’t be that easy, not having seen that many around in my wanderings, but I happened upon one that looked suitably Croatian. I ordered a glass of Croatian wine and sought advice on some typical Croatian dishes. The soup of the day was ‘bacon rind’ and my main dish was beef stuffed with sausage accompanied by two types of dumplings covered in a heavy tomato sauce with yogurt trickled over it for the health conscience. I hadn’t eaten properly for two days and didn’t have to for another two after that meal.

Mirogoj Cemetery

Quirky moments

At the Mirogoj Cemetery there were some strange names to be seen. I was amused by Dr Dean Despot. I ask you, fancy going to see a Doctor called Dean.

I didn't think to bring a gun but just in case here was a sign saying I couldn't take it in this building.

I overslept the following morning, not waking till 9.30 but even then I was the first awake in our dorm of four. I rode the tram into town again and bought a pastry for breakfast and was kept very amused when eating it on a bench outside by a pigeon that had got a crust from a bread roll lodged around his neck. It was the animal equivalent of a human getting a Kentucky Fried Chicken basket stuck on their head.

Serbia - September 2006

Bumbling around Belgrade

The Guinness

I took the chance of not taking the customary ‘emergency can’ of Guinness with me. This was partly because I already made a phone call to the Three Carrots, the only Irish bar in Belgrade, who assured me they sold the black stuff. Also the Bush-Bin Laden tiff was presenting me with some additional logistical challenges. Security clampdowns following recently uncovered terrorist plots meant that carry-on luggage could contain any liquids.

The Three Carrots - I never did find out why it was called that.

After a bit of a search the following day I found the Three Carrots and Mikhail, the young barman, poured me a wonderful pint of Guinness. He impressed me from the outset with his general knowledge, especially geography, even knowing where the Faroe Islands were!

Mikhail letting my Guinness settle.

A Welsh flag adorned that wall next to the Cork flag, both left by past visitors. He soon grasped what I was up to and after pouring me another pint set to his task of picking my next destination which turned out to be Zagreb, Croatia. As somebody commented on later – ‘what a load of Balkans’.

Cheers! - enjoying my second Guinness at the Three Carrotts

Getting There and around

I flew Lufthansa from Birmingham via Munich. On the way out my Birmingham flight was delayed meaning I missed my connection so ended up flying back to Frankfurt and then onto Belgrade. I got talking to a girl who was on the same contrived Birmingham-Belgrade route as me. It turns out was an Oxford graduate who now had a business designing and selling Christian fridge magnets. No I’m not joking, she even had a website.

Late summer tulips in Belgrade

Arriving in Belgrade airport at midnight put paid to my plan of getting the cheap bus into town and meant I had to resort to being ripped off by the taxi drivers. I took the normal precautions of trying to establish that his meter was working before I got in but hadn’t bargained for the ingenuity of this one. True he had a meter but it looked like it had been assembled using instructions from a 1980s edition of Practical Electronics magazine. It may have been a 30 Euro rip off but he was an interesting character. He knew Cardiff as being the venue where Serbia had beaten Wales recently at football – which he referred to on more than one occasion. He had a sister living in London and had once driven over to visit her in the late-1980s. Determined to make the most of his holiday, he used to drive hundreds of miles each weekend to explore different cities. One weekend he decided to visit Belfast but nobody had told him about the ‘Troubles’ and he couldn’t believe what he ended up driving though up the Falls Road, being searched many times. The ironic thing was however that he then ended up doing four years military service in Serbia in the 1990s at the height of their conflicts. He had the look of a rugged worn out soldier, old before his time but tough underneath. I didn’t argue about the fare.

The classic buildings of Belgrade

Team Makeup

My Belgrade marketing campaign hadn’t been a great success and failed to attract any travelling companions.

Accommodation

I stayed the first night an old hotel. My room had the standard antiquated plumbing with an industrial style valve to flush the toilet. The floor had been carpeted by the thriftiest carpet-fitter in town who had used an off-cut measuring 4 inches wide and half a mile long. Breakfast was a tasty omelette. When I returned to Belgrade after going to Montenegro I moved on to another hotel, the Hotel Astorija which was better. 

View from my hotel Europa window in Podgorica

Sightseeing highlights

It seems that whatever period of history one looks at Belgrade is on the border between any hostilities and therefore always gets it in the neck. It’s been occupied more times than a toilet at King’s Cross Station. The Huns and the Goths have had their turns - and there was me thinking that the later were just teenage girls dressed in black with lots of make-up.

View from my Hotel Astorija window towards Belgrade station 

Belgrade - I liked it; admittedly there were a fair number of communist style concrete buildings but there was plenty of classic European architecture around too

My bearings weren’t proving that easy to find. This was somewhere where Lonely Planet and the Rough Guide had not yet ventured so I was using the Bradt Guide to Belgrade, well written but not strong in the cartography department. . Things weren’t helped by the fact that the street signs were once again only in Cyrillic and my guide book only had Roman script. I spent three hours getting a general flavour of the place, seeing the impressive statues and buildings. The ‘bloke on the horse’ in Trg Slobode (Freedom Square), which became my orientation point during my visit, turned out to be, Prince Michael Obrenovic III who liberated Serbia for the Turks in the 1800s. I say orientation point, but there were times during my visit when I swear they moved to statue to other locations just to confuse visitors like me.

Prince Michael Obrenovic III - I'm sure he kept moving around

After seeing the city centre, visiting statues and sculptures I headed up to the hill and Kalemegan fortress that towers over the city and offers great views down over the Rivers Danube and Sava. In the 18th century the castle marked what was thought to be the edge of western civilisation.

View from the castle over the Danube

The light was fading when I returned to the city centre and as I rounded a corner and there dead in front of me were the bombed buildings resulting from the NATO campaign of the late 1990s. It was an incredible stark reminder of the county’s troubled past. It bought home to me the history of the place more than any statue or monument could ever do.

The bombed buildings in Belgrade centre

Quirky moments

The currency in Montenegro is the Euro; somewhat strange considering that they are not even in the EU. I’d been saving up small change from my recent business trips to Brussels etc, so that when I needed to make purchases here in Montenegro, I could hand over a few coins rather than run the risk of handing over a large denomination note and not get the correct change. This plan came to a crashing halt however when the trustworthy looking lady in the bus station ticket booth asked me to open my hand and show her my change. I thought she was just going to take a few coins but she then swept it all off away, counted it twice and gave me a ticket and a ten Euros note in return! That set her up in change for the day and left me feeling guilty for not trusting people.

A novel way of making a ladder longer!

In Montenegro I visited the old capital of Cetinje. On my return by coach from there I sat by the window I was able to fully appreciated the excellent views down into the valleys and out towards the coast. We only stopped once, to put out a fire. The coach coming in the other direction had found the incline a little too much for it and its engine complained by bursting into flames. As calmly as you can imagine, our driver stopped the bus, got the fire extinguisher from the luggage compartment and discharged it into the engine of the other coach, got back on board and drove us away as if it was an everyday occurrence – perhaps it was.

Looks like someone had had some wood delivered

Lasting Memories

As I waited for the bus back to the airport I contemplated my time in Serbia and Montenegro. It had been frenetic, perhaps a little too frenetic. The people I’d met had all been very friendly and welcoming.

Out of the City

Montenegro and Serbia had announced their split just as it was picked out as my next destination in Lichtenstein and since then the split had taken place. I wanted to honour this new found country by paying it a visit.

Suspension bridge in Podgorica

The thing that attracted me to the Belgrade-Podgorica option was not only its value for money, just £14 for seven hours travel, but also the fact that the guide books describe it as ‘a truly spectacular rail journey through deep ravines and high bridges’. It turned out to be a journey I’ll not remember so much for the sights, which I found somewhat disappointing. Although a fantastic piece of railway engineering, all I could often see was a rock face, tunnel walls or trees. Instead the people in my new compartment were fantastic. They were evidently strangers at the start of the journey but soon were talking incessantly to each other, making me feel most welcome and sharing all their food. They seemed quite offended if I dared to refuse one of their offers. ‘What, you don’t like our Serbian cheese crackers”? They were also very tactile people – I hadn’t had my knee touched so much for a long time.

Liechtenstein - June 2006

Vacuuming up Vaduz

The Guinness

In the capital Vaduz we checked out the Old Castle bar, having been told at the youth hostel we were staying, it may serve Guinness, but it was a Murphy’s outlet – easy mistake. With no pub serving Guinness in sight I was pleased to find some cans on sale in the small co-op supermarket. We therefore had afternoon tea on a bench outside and a picture of me drinking a can of Guinness was snapped looking rather pensive, concerned that there may be a public drinking ban in Vaduz.

Having a can of Guinness in central Vaduz

When we walked back to the hostel my son Gareth suddenly said “Look Dad, a Guinness sign”. Sure enough, there in the middle of Schaan, no more than a village to be honest, was Central Bar with a Guinness sign outside. I popped in to check it wasn’t a mirage but no, it was true, they had draught Guinness on tap.

Well spotted son

After tea of wraps and toasties I took my time to explain to the barmaid Veronika the purpose of our visit and the task I was asking her to perform. Fortunately her grasp of English was good so she has a slightly less shocked and suspicious look on her face compared to the other photos I have of people carrying out the same task.

Well done for understanding my challenge Veronika

Getting There and around

We took a Ryanair flight to Freidrichshafen, Germany and then train and bus to Liechtenstein. It wasn’t difficult to find the train station at Freidrichshafen airport, spitting distance from the departure hall (with a following wind). The station was no more than a platform with a ticket machine. The German railway company Die Bahn runs an excellent website, not just for Germany but for much of Europe. Before leaving home I was able to type in the name of the bus stop in Liechtenstein that we wanted and instantly get details of a journey lasting less than two hours involving three trains and a bus, going from Germany, through Austria and Switzerland and into Liechtenstein.

The only problem was that I betted on there being a friendly multi-lingual ticket desk attendant at Freidrichschafen airport station rather than a dumb machine. Added to this a violent hailstorm appeared out of nowhere and there was no cover over the platform. It was like being part of a bizarre game show – “you have just three minutes before your train arrives to figure out how to buy tickets in a foreign language from a ticket machine and to make it more difficult for you and to amuse the audience we will pelt you with ice cubes”.

Good stuff this public transport and hard to miss it by the bright colours too

Team Makeup

The family were joining me on this trip as was a new recruit, Penny, another of life’s great optimists.

Margaret & Penny - it will warm up soon, it's only June

Accommodation

We stayed at the Youth Hostel which was between the towns of Vaduz and Schaan, themselves only 2 km apart. It overlooked fields down to the River Rhine and beyond the snow topped mountains of Switzerland.

Our Youth Hostel accommodation

Sightseeing highlights

Vaduz has a number of museums and galleries on offer and we chose the modern Museum of Fine Arts to visit. It’s only a couple of rooms. One room was full of pieces from the Prince of Liechtenstein’s private collection. He specialises in 19th century Viennese Biedermeier art – paintings so real they could almost be photographs. That’s actually the thought process behind them – wealthy people of the time used to hire artists to take with them on vacation or battles to capture important moments. One can see the drive behind inventing the camera – it must have saved lots of time. Battles must have been held up for days as the different sides posed for the latest painting. The battle scenes such as the one of the Austrian Prince defeating of Napoleon were interesting in that there was no blood in sight – a sort of sterilised form of photography.

The modern looking museum

We took a bus to Malbun, Liechtenstein’s ski resort. We purchased ‘targeskarte’ – day tickets for the bus. As the bus climbed steeply into the mountains two things happened, snow gradually began to appear in the surrounding countryside and the other passengers disembarked. By the time we got the terminus at Malbun, 1600 meters elevation, we were the only passengers remaining on the bus. The town was deserted, all skiers had evidently gone home and the walkers not yet arrived. It was a late spring throughout Europe and evidently unusual for Malbun to be still deep in snow. On the outskirts of town we saw groups of animals emerging from burrows and leaping though the snow. They turned out to be Alpine Marmots, a beaver-like animal that hibernates in winter and emerges normally in spring to play in flower filled Alpine meadows. Today they looked just a little confused. I poked my head down a drainage pipe I had seen one of them retreat into. Its defence mechanism was to let out a very loud whistle like shriek – not unlike the one I let out a fraction of a second later as I jumped backwards.

High up in the mountains

In Vaduz one afternoon I slipped off to visit the Stamp Museum dedicated to philately (as opposed to heavy-footed people). It was obvious it wasn’t the height of the tourist season in Liechtenstein – wherever we went we appeared to be the only people present – perfect for travellers who like to think of themselves experiencing something unique.

The giant stamps in the Stamp Museum

Quirky moments

We passed some workman had just finished digging a neat hole and were tidying up by vacuuming up any loose dirt.

I paid about £1 at the tourist office to have my passport stamped with a Liechtenstein stamp – that should confuse American immigration control next time I go there.

My Liechtenstein passport stamp - more a tourist gimmick than an obligation

Lasting Memories

Liechtenstein may be the fourth smallest country in Europe but Vaduz is probably the smallest capital – it’s even smaller than Torshavn in the Faroe Islands. Blink and you miss it. You’d be hard pushed to have a good game of hide-and-seek here. The shops are smart but the cafes paradoxily were unbearably smoke-filled.

Rush hour in Vaduz

Some claim that Vaduz is the most boring in Europe and not a place generally associated with people wanting to satisfy their ‘wanderlust. That may be, but for people like myself, who like the outdoor life, it was very appealing.

Out of the City

The bus service was excellent so making the most of it we went first to Sargans, just over the Swiss boarder. It’s famous for being the home of bovine-loving Heidi. None of us had any wish to go to the Heidi theme park so we chose instead to wander around the town. Up at the castle we bumped into the Liechtenstein football team on their way out of some sort of photo-shoot or civic reception.

An unusual table design in Sargens

After wandering through the ‘old town’ of Sargans we caught a bus, back through the length of Liechtenstein and into Austria to the town of Feldkirch. The Rossle Park café bar not only brewed its own tasty beer and served tasty food but had some very unusual urinals, comprised of a sheet of glass in front of a rock face.

Rossle Park café bar urinals

Food

In Lindau, on our way back to the airport we had time for coffee and cake outside a café in the warm sunshine on the shores of Lake Constance – an excellent end to a very pleasant few days in good company.