Super Awesome Swiss Weekend XVIII

Like I said in the previous post, much of my work recently has had to do with fences. On Friday, my afternoon work was to screw in the pieces that hold the electric wires. By hand. After doing about 30 of them, the palm of my right hand had a nice hole worn into it that not even my gloves could prevent. Unfortunately, 30 posts was only a fraction of the number that surrounded the field...the total turned out to be more towards 300, but that's only a guess since I lost count after 220-something. Here's a picture of the field. Notice the lighter brown, unweathered posts, those are the new replacement posts. Also, see the fence posts at the top of the hill, to the right of the large tree? I was also up there...it was a long afternoon but counting made things go quickly.



I'd been looking forward to Friday for awhile, because that meant that Sharon* and Alyssa were coming for Super Awesome Swiss Weekend XVIII**. After I had finished work, Dirk and I had supper as Maya had taken the kids swimming. After supper, I mixed together some bread dough and let it begin rising. Then I took a shower. By that time I was finished, it was time to pick up Debbie and Alyssa in Wattwil, since they were coming after the last bus. What did this mean? After three months of just riding in the car, I finally got to drive the car through the winding roads down from Hemberg to Wattwil and back.

When we got back, it was time to put the bread in the oven. I make enough dough for two loaves and one of the loaves usually has raisins mixed into it. As the bread was baking, Debbie took command of making a batch of chocolate chip cookies courtesy of the chips and brown sugar that Mom had brought when she visited in March. They were (and still are) tasty.

The main plan of SASWWXVIII was to visit Liechtenstein as a day-trip on Saturday. The weather cooperated wonderfully throughout the weekend. Here's a picture from our walk to the bus from the house:



Some fast facts about Liechtenstein:

Population: 35,322 (204th largest country); Hutchinson, where I come from, has about 40,000 people
Area: 62 sq. miles, about the size of Manhattan Island (NYC)
GDP: $4.993 billion (1st in the world)
Main export: false teeth
They also use the Swiss Franc and speak German. There are also many banks and companies registered because of flexible business laws.

I've wanted to go to Liechtenstein mainly because Hutchinson is larger than the country. It's also cute as a button...Liechtenstein, that is. With Debbie and Alyssa, we were set to visit the capital city, Vaduz (pop. 5,109; twice the size of South Hutchinson). The smallness of the country was the draw for all of us.

Alyssa and Debbie, on the bus from Hemberg to Wattwil:



It was a rather uneventful trip. We did, however, manage to ride on a double-decker bus from Nesslau-St. Johann to Buchs. Being the young people we are, we managed to elbow our way in front of old people and sprint up the stairs to get the seats at the front for views like this:



The three Swiss Intermennonites:



From Buchs, it was a 20 minute ride to Vaduz after we crossed the Rhein River. Here's the flag, soon after crossing the river:



Vaduz is a rather interesting town...for a few minutes. Immediately you can tell that it is built for one of the largest trades, tourism. This is evidenced by giant plastic cows in the style of the national flag, which we of course had to take a picture with:



Along with the Asian tourists, we walked up and down the short pedestrian zone purposely not going into the many shops that were selling Gucci and Armani threads. Instead, we decided to get some food and plop ourselves down onto a bench and do what we do best: people watch. We sat ourselves at an outdoor restaurant and promptly noticed that Asian tourists liked to have their pictures taken with random things, such as balloon animal artists:



Vaduz is the residence of the prince of Liechtenstein, Prince Hans-Adam II. He lives in a giant castle above the city and only invites people in on Liechtenstein National Day (August 15). It's pretty big:



We decided to hike up to the castle. This walk took us near some interesting architecture, such as this center for Communication Arts:



The hike also gave us some wonderful views across the valley and of the Swiss Alps:





Switzerland allows the team from Vaduz to play in the Swiss League, since there is no Liechtenstein League. Here is the National Stadium (capacity 6,127):



We finally made it up to the castle and celebrated with a picture:





I ended up making a few purchases, notably adding a bottle of wine from the prince's vineyards to my collection. I also sent a postcard (but to who!?).

As we were waiting for our bus back to Switzerland, we noticed someone had some fun with a trashcan sticker. It roughly translates to 'Please dispose of your dog here'.



I think my favorite part of Liechtenstein was perhaps the license plates. They just looked cool:



I don't think I need to go back to Liechtenstein. It's nice to say that I've been there, but for what? It's small, there are a lot of nice cars (we saw a couple Ferrari's, a Lamborghini, among gaggles of Mercedes' and BMW's), and I think the people are nice.
-------------------------------
Today we went to St. Gallen. There's not much to write about here since nothing was open as it was Sunday. We just walked through the old city and relaxed on a bench for most of the day. I bid Sharon and Alyssa farewell and I made my way back to Hemberg.

When I got back, the kids had made a fire in an old tree stump in front of the house. That was where we had supper. We baked bread wrapped around sticks over the fire while wurst was being grilled. Then, Maya added banana's wrapped in foil that had chocolate added to them. It was all really swell.















After an eventful weekend, full of sun and wind and early mornings, I must retire now to my bed. Who knows what will happen next weekend?

'Til later,
Jon

*I like to call Swiss Committee Member, Debbie, the name Sharon from time to time. It's her middle name and I feel like she doesn't hear it enough, so I took liberties to change that.

**We have not had 18 (XVIII) Super Awesome Swiss Weekends all together, but it needed a snazzy name.