Schaan, Liechtenstein


September 11-12, 2000

Schaan can feels a bit sterile place: a boarder town this Alpine crevice which hides half of this small country whose total population would fit into a few New York City blocks. The towns run into each other along the road/river parallel. The hostel is near the board of Schaan and Vaduz, the capital city (which is actually just a town). There's not much to do here but watch the apples fall off the trees and the sun being eclipsed by the peaks towering above the corn fields. Modern buildings and light industry (Liechtenstein is famous for false teeth) dot around Schaan without much style, while further North of the country has the typical Austrian/Alpine architecture.

My second day here was spent on the mountainside opposite the river. There are ruins up there that peer into Switzerland. On the way up I came across a strange bubbling pool in the middle of the woods, perhaps a reservoir. On the way down, there was a sort of channeled drainage dry river bed which was reassuring to jump into and see the road ahead. My time allocated to hiking corresponded to the schedule of the post office bus that would take me to a Swiss train station.


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