9 November 2008: Schaan, Liechtenstein

(FIRST OF ALL, I'VE BEEN UNBELIEVABLY OUT OF INTERNET ACCESS SINCE VIENNA. ALTHOUGH THERE ARE MANY GOOD STORIES BETWEEN THEN AND NOW, THE STORIES IN LIECHTENSTEIN ARE MORE PRESSING, AS ARE THE ONES THAT COME AFTER. I WILL FINISH THE AUSTRIA STORIES AT SOME POINT, BUT FOR NOW YOU MUST REMAIN PATIENT. AND ENJOY THESE ONES.)


I had set my alarm for 9:00 in order to start hitch-hiking, but the combination of wanting to hike and wanting to see Emilie made me turn the alarm off and go back to sleep. (Although not before I witnessed the culmination of the previous night's birthday girl situation-- her phone rang, Giacomo told her "SHH" loudly, she left, and that was it. Clearly nothing had happened, and Giacomo confirmed as much later that day.)

I woke up again at 11:45 and, after Giacomo made pasta for lunch, I started hiking just before 1:30. Giacomo had told me a particular route to take to get to the mountain, but since you couldn't possibly miss the mountain even if you tried I just figured I would head towards the nearest mountain and, well, hit it soon enough. Which I did.

I spent the next hour or so hiking up and around the mountain and absolutely realized why people choose to go to school in Innsbruck. The town, as I've said, isn't much to speak of, but who needs a town when the mountains are just out your window. Hell, I'd go to school in Cleveland if I could escape to the mountains whenever I wanted to. Maybe even Columbus-- well, not Columbus, but you get the point.

The point IS that you're a 15 minute walk from the mountains, which means hiking and snowboarding and a perfect view of the city. Which means, unfortunately, that the University of Innsbruck isn't for you if you don't like snow, sunshine, or doing things.

So I hiked around for a bit, but at 3:00 I was suddenly overcome by the feeling that I had to go to Liechtenstein. Not so much a feeling as a premonition, almost, that I just had to go. Right then. I had done some hiking-- and had gotten the mountain-feel of Innsbruck-- and I could hopefully see Emilie in France eventually. But right then, right there I had to go. There was no avoiding it.

I hiked back down for the bottom and walked back to Giacomo's place, where I got my stuff and bid Giacomo adieu. He was very surprised-- and, I kid you not, had not opened the door at first because he had been scared it was going to be the birthday girl-- but he offered me a couch for the night in case I didn't actually make it out of Innsbruck that night.

It was a nice offer and a rather likely situation, not because the hitch-spot was bad but because, by the time I had gotten my stuff from Giacomo's and walked to the highway-- I wasn't going to tempt fate on the tram on my last day with all my stuff-- it was already 4:05. I wasn't feeling even slightly optimistic about my chances, but it only took 24 minutes for a car to pull up. It was going to Switzerland, all the way past Liechtenstein. It couldn't have been any more perfect.

I got in and talked to the driver, Stefan, for a little while, but I fell asleep pretty soon thereafter. As such, the ride was incredibly quick-- and uneventful-- and when Stefan woke me up we were in Feldkirch, the last town in Austria before Liechtenstein. I asked Stefan if he could take me a bit farther, and so he drove to where we were no more than 50 meters from the Liechtenstein border. At which point he gave me CHF10-- Swiss Francs, the currency in Liechtenstein-- and I got out.

I walked up to the customs agents and told them I was going to Vaduz. They didn't seem even the least bit surprised to see someone crossing the border on foot and with a bag on his back, which was a bit disappointing to be honest with you, but I handed one of them my passport and waited while he went inside. I was actually a bit nervous because I hadn't shown my passport when I crossed into Austria, and I wasn't sure how receptive Liechtenstein would be to outside influence when the last documented country I had been in was Hungary, but the customs agent came right back out and ushered me through.

And that is how, at 6:02, I crossed the border and walked into Liechtenstein.

I kept walking down the same road, and the first baby town I came to was Nendeln, but all the hotels were closed. So I kept walking to Schaan, which was the first major-ish town and where I figured I would find something. The walk took me about an hour, but all I had to was keep going straight. For most of the walk, on the left there are just a row of regular buildings. But on the right you can see lights going on forever with the outline of a mountain behind them. It's just lights on top of nothingness, like looking out at night upon an impossible number of boats on the sea. You couldn't possibly walk into the country and see this sight and not immediately realize that Liechtenstein was going to be an entirely different experience.

When I finally got to Schaan the first hotel I came to was called Hotel Post, and an old man greeted me at the door to the kitchen. I told him I needed a place to sleep for the night, and he said "it's not a problem" and motioned for me to sit at his table. Boy was that easy.

Except that five minutes later the actual manager came out, and I had to repeat to her that I needed a place to sleep for the night. She also said that would be fine, told me to meet her at 9:00 the next morning for a job, handed me a room key, and told me to take my stuff up. Boy, that WAS easy.

When I came back down the manager asked if I wanted dinner, and so I sat down at the old man's table again and by the time my plate of steak and rice had come out, the old man had bought me a beer. Although it wasn't just the one old man. There were three old men, none of whom worked there or had any authority in the place whatsoever but all of whom had been had been supportive that "it's no problem" when I asked if I could sleep there. And so I just spent a couple hours hanging out with these three old men, and it was really just like I had happened to walk in on their weekly "checkers night"-- they were just three old friends sitting around in a bar having a few drinks.

Of the three, one spoke bad English, one spoke too-good Spanish, and one spoke complete jibberish. And all spoke at the same time, so even discounting the jibberish I couldn't understand even one-fourth of everything that was being said.

The first old man, the one who had first invited me to sit with them, was the one who spoke too-good Spanish. He was from either Italy or Argentina, I'm not sure which, and claimed to have been to 44 states, including Montana but not Idaho-- I'm not sure how you can go to one but not the other-- but he said that his favorite state of all was Miami. This guy, Denato, was clearly the leader, and he kept flirting with the absolutely non-responsive waitress. I guess when you're not working for tips you're not as inclined to humor old men, but seriously, you gotta let the brother work his game. Denato kept laughing and shaking my hand and buying me beer, though I didn't understand even a fraction of what he thought I was understanding.

The other guy-- I'm not counting the jibberish-speaker, since I haven't a clue about him-- was, to be honest, kinda weird. He spoke a very little bit of English, but as he kept drinking he gradually stopped speaking English and it all became German. Which didn't get us far. He said he was in love with the waitress, which was easy to see as she was pretty cute and this guy probably spent five nights a week at this place, but I didn't have the heart to tell him that Denato already had dibs. Which, if it ever in a million years came down to it, is probably how it would have happened. Even with me included, sadly.

This guy, Norbert, said I could stay at his house "two weeks, it's no problem," and though I wasn't really so keen on that-- and kept telling him I couldn't stay at his house because of my allergies to cats, which was a convenient excuse-- he kept repeating "two weeks, it's no problem" over and over and over again. Weirdness aside, I guess you do have to hand it to the guy for being hospitable.

Anyway, I spent the evening talking with these guys, and though I couldn't understand most of what they were saying I did catch that they love Barack Obama and hate Fidel Castro. And, though I couldn't understand most of what they were saying, all I could come up with after I went to bed was-- these are Liechtensteiners? I loved them already.