Liechtenstein

Teeny tiny countries that have more businesses than people.  Liechtenstein is one of many.   We spent just an afternoon driving across the country.  We hiked to one of the castles and looked over the valley bottom.  The country is very narrow, and the eastern side is quite steep.  There is no real border between Switzerland and Lichtenstein.  It does not have its own currency; they use the Swiss Franc.

Interlaken

There is so much to do around Interlaken.  You could spend weeks hiking if it's the right time of year and he weather is good.  It was winter for us, but the weather was not bad.  Every day was beautiful and sunny.  Even in the shade the air was not too frigid.

We spent a few days staying with a sweet little family outside the center of town.  They had a big fat cat that would try to get on my shoulders - despite my protests.  This cat was pretty funny; he would go out for a walk with them and the dog.  The house smelled of orange peel, because the dried the peels on top of the stove for use as kindle later.

The strongest memory I have of this area is the period of time it took us to hike to an overlook facing the Jungfrau.  We started rather late in the morning - as is common for us - and we did not get to the top until quite late in the afternoon.  It was clear to us as we reached the top that we did not have much time to spend enjoying the view.  We knew we needed to get down.

As it grew dark, we rushed to get down the more technical parts of the hike.  We had to down-climb some small escarpments to get to the more gentle valley below, and I was becoming nervous that Javier might slip.  We managed to get past the final scree field shortly after dark, but this did not give me any relief.  Javier's headlamp battery had died, but his headlamp would not have helped much anyway.  For three or four hours Javier held onto the back of my jacket as I hiked us out of the valley back to the car.  It was slow going and nerve-racking, but we eventually made it.

Come to think of it, it is not only my strongest memory of the area, but also my favorite.

Swiss Passes: They're Everywhere

If you are driving around Switzerland, you will eventually have to cross a mountain pass.  Since it was winter, not all passes were open.  What are you to do if you can't drive over?  Well you go through a tunnel, many of which require you to drive your vehicle onto a train car.  Oh the things we do to get from place to place.

 

Lucerne: On the way back to Sins

On our way to Sins, the village where Javier's mother was raised, we stopped in Lucerne to see the Kapellbrücke.  Considering the time of year, it was quite foggy on the Vierwaldstättersee (Four forested-cantons lake).  

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The Kapellbrücke is a wooden truss bridge dating back to the 1300's.  The sad thing about the bridge is that it survived for hundreds of years, only to be severely damaged by a fire in the 1990's.  The bridge was restored, but the original paintings from the 1600's that lined the interior are forever gone.  Out of almost 150 paintings, only 30 were restored after the fire.  It is clear when you visit the bridge today that they are very wary of fire, considering the abundance of no smoking signs.

Lugano and Bellinzona

In Switzerland they speak three main languages (Swiss German, French, and Italian), and a lesser spoken language (Romansh).  The southern canton of Ticino is where Italian is primarily spoken.  In this canton are two cities - Lugano and Bellinzona.  Lugano is a lake-side city and the largest in the canton, while Bellinzona is the canton capital known for its castles.
 

In Bellinzona we stayed with a wonderful woman in her family's home.  She was part Italian and part Swiss, and she felt conflict between her two nationalities despite the common language.  We were fortunate to get our own apartment for the time we stayed with them, though we spent quite some time chatting and eating together.  We even spent one full day with her just walking around the city.

The Matterhorn

 

This pyramidal peak located on the Swiss-Italian border is well known around the world.  People come from all over to ski the slopes below.  We spent a day walking around Zermatt and the valley below the Matterhorn.  To get to this small village, you must park your car in the village below and take a train up the valley.  When you get there, there are numerous opportunities to spend money on excessively priced ski clothes and gear.  It wouldn't be a Swiss skiing destination if there weren't any boutiques.  We walked through the village, hiked a small trail looping up the valley, and took the gondola up to the Trockener Steg station.  Our time viewing the mountain from up higher was short, because it was late in the day, but very beautiful. 

Chamonix and Mont Blanc

Mont Blanc - the highest mountain in Europe.  We spent a couple days in this area hiking.  Mont Blanc itself is really not very spectacular itself.  It is not a craggy peak, but is rather rounded and often shrouded in clouds.  There are many paths to take around the area.  There were two paths we explored: one towards the base of Glacier de la Mer de Glace, and a panoramic view on the other side of the valley. 

Aiguille du Dru

Glacier de la Mer de Glace

 

Chamoix (Rupicabra rupicabra)

 

Here you can see Mont Blanc in the center covered by a cloud.

Massif Central

Mountain villages, special cheeses, and old volcanoes! A wonderful place to explore.  The Massif Central is a large area of old worn down volcanoes in south-central France.  To those of us originating from mountainous areas of the world, we may view the Massif Central as a bunch of large green rolling hills.  Indeed the volcanoes are so old and have been inactive for so long that they are no longer rocky peaks.  They are just rounded knobs covered in lush green grass. 

The part of the Massif Central I will mention here is designated as the Auvergne Volcanoes Regional Park, which lies between Clermont-Ferrand in the north and Aurillac in the south.  We spent a few days exploring different parts of this park.  Driving between villages, taking hikes, and trying the cheeses. 

One thing I always forget about the park is that I found my favorite church there.  We have seen hundreds of churches in our travels, including classic cathedrals, the painted monasteries of Romania, and the wooden orthodox churches of Slovakia and Poland.  There is even the ridiculous little church in southern Mexico that has become famous solely because they charge a lot of money to get in.  The only churches that might compare are the carved churches of Cappadocia, Turkey.

We came across this church quite by accident; we found it after taking a wrong turn.  The church is perfectly carved from a large volcanic rock intrusion.  The inside is really nothing special.  There are no breathtaking paintings.  No intricately made stained glass windows.  It really is one of the most simple churches I have ever seen.  Its unique location and construction are what make it so wonderful and special.

The views are absolutely breathtaking.  The park is covered in pastures for the cattle and sheep.  In fact, there are several famous cheeses that originate from this area.  One of those cheeses is Salers.  We visited the town of Salers to buy some of this cheese.  The village itself is perched upon a small hill.  When it comes to European villages, this one was like many.  Streets were closed of car traffic.  There was a classic central square.  It was a cute village nonetheless, and the cheese was great!

We took two or three hikes during our time in the park.  Considering the worn condition of these peaks, none of the hikes were particularly strenuous.  We got lucky enough to have fairly good weather and visibility.  It is beautiful to look out across the park from a high place and see the old volcanoes and bright green pastures.

One problem with hiking around in this park is the lack of privacy.  Depending on where you hike there could be dozens of people hiking along with you.  This was the case when we went to hike the volcano Le Puy Mary.  So many people go to hike this volcano that they have put in stairs on the side of the mountain.  Unfortunately this has not helped to prevent compaction and erosion of the adjacent hillside, because even the wide staircase is not large enough to accommodate all the people.  This particular hike is fairly steep.  Not long, but it is still a bit of a work out. 

From the top of Le Puy Mary we were not able to see anything because a small cloud had gotten stuck on its peak.  The base of the volcano was quite high as well though, and the view was wonderful as the sun set on the park.

Lescun and the French Pyrenees

We left Spain and traveled towards our next host in Oloron-Sainte-Marie.  Elisabeth and her teenage daughter were not at the house when we arrived, so she told us over the phone to just break into the house through the back door.

They were really wonderful people, and during our time staying there we discovered an interesting coincidence.  Elisabeth worked for a conservation group that had recently been focusing on bear-livestock interactions, and they were trying to come up with some good strategies to protect the bears while preventing livestock predation.  In their desperation to come up with some answers they paid a lot of money to have Chris Servheen - coming from the university in Missoula - teach them some methods to deal with the bears.  To put it lightly - they were not happy with the information he had to offer (or lack of), especially considering the money they paid.

The second day we were in the area, Elisabeth suggested we go to Lescun for a hike.  This little gem on the French-Spanish border is probably one of the most beautiful places in the area.  After a short drive south from Oloron, you get off the road and drive up a steep and narrow set of switchbacks to a small village.  From that village is a spectacular view of craggy peaks and green meadows.

We started hiking without any real plan about what our final destination would be.  The paths were well worn and we were not concerned about getting lost, so we just started heading towards the peaks.  It was clear that the meadows were heavily grazed by cattle and sheep, and as we began climbing higher we began to see signs warning you not to approach the sheep for danger of being attacked by the Great Pyrenees.

We got to the drainage below the rocky crags and sat down to have a short lunch.  It was well into the afternoon, so we knew that if we wanted to get to the pass we would need to go quickly.  We started climbing the scree slopes, ignoring the comical warning signs scrawled on the rocks next to the path.

 "Estamos muertos hay delante" - We are dead over there!

 

We got to the top, and realized that we were actually at the Spain-France border!  It was pretty funny for us, since we had only been in France for about 24 hours.  We played around; jumping back and forth across the line of the signs.  The whole hike turned out to be spectacular.

Off into Europe a Second Time

After running across Europe to reach our visa interview in time, the brevity of the interview itself seemed offensive.  Nonetheless we were happy to be done with yet another step in the process, and we began to plan our next excursion into Europe.  Of course planning is not really our thing, so we basically just left Madrid with the idea of going to every country we possibly could.  We even had the idea that we might make it to the eastern coasts of the Mediterranean, but nothing was certain.  We packed up the car again - this time perfectly experienced in the art of car-living - and headed north towards France. 

This time we decided to stop in Vitoria-Gasteiz to spend one last night in Spain.  After leaving the capital, we immediately began to have trouble with our GPS.  This was not such a huge issue for the short term, but we were pretty concerned how this would affect our navigation later on. 

In Vitoria we stayed with two different men.  The first was a young man named Julen.  He treated us to some lovely tapas when we arrived, but it is really what he did for us the next day that left such strong impressions in our minds.  Because we were having issues with our GPS, we hoped that there might be some shop that could help us with our issue.  Julen was very accommodating and helped us look around a bit.  When we at last gave up our search, we faced yet another fiasco: our phone had gone missing.  If it had not been for Julen, we would never have found it.  By the end of the day, it was very obvious that Julen was exhausted.  Despite this, he was still cheerful and showed no sign of frustration.  He was probably the most helpful couch host we have had.

The second man we stayed with was Patxi.  Patxi had just moved into a big new apartment, and was still furnishing it.  When we arrived he set us up in his spare bedroom, and it immediately felt like we were old friends.  Because of the debacle with the GPS and phone I had not drank sufficient water that day, and I got a cold.  Patxi did not mind though.  He just made us some paella, watched a movie with us, and generally made us feel very at home. (We watched Before Sunrise, which turned out to be a huge influence on my feelings for Vienna).  He did not mind that we needed to stay an extra day for me to get better.  He was a great guy.

Our second trip out into Europe did not get off on a good foot, but we at least got some good memories out of it.  When we left Vitoria to go to the French Pyrenees, we realized that we could actually use the GPS.  The screen did not show the whole image, but enough for us to navigate.  It was in this way that we traveled for months.  Using only half the map and not being able to see what our next turn or exit would be.  It made things exciting.