While researching for the trip, I found a travel forum that suggested biking in Liechtenstein. When I stayed in Feldkirch, Austria, a city located on the border with Switzerland and Liechtenstein, I checked with other people about biking to Liechtenstein from here but got talked down. Tourists at the hostel where I was staying all took the bus to Vaduz, the capital of Liechtenstein. At first, I didn’t want to go. My overeaten-breakfast stomach and discouraging comments from other hostelers almost convinced me to buy a day pass and hop on the Liechtenstein bus to enjoy a smooth ride. Thank god my curiosity got over my laziness, and I took bus no.2 to Hotel Gasthof Löwen to rent a bicycle. (www.hotel-loewen.at)
Hotel Gashof Löwen
The discouragement didn’t stop even when I was ready to rent a bike. The hotel receptionist rolled her eyes and made a gesture with her hand, “Oh, it’s far away,” when I asked for direction from here to Vaduz. “So, why are there many bikes here?” I asked. “People only bike around the city. There are very nice places to bike around in Feldkirch.” Duh! Look like if I wanted to get encouragement from people around me, I wouldn’t get any.
Should I listen to local people and flag down a bus like other tourists? I didn’t bike often and was not that interested in cycling my legs and producing sweat. Back in the Czech Republic, I was a bit lazy and close to competing in a couch potato contest. My friends had nagged me to go on a bike trip with them. I refused and came up with all kinds of noble excuses. So why now?
This is what you call traveling. You crave and pay for the same things available to you for free at home. Traveling not only makes the heart wander, the brain smarter, the old newer, the boring more exciting, it also makes the adrenaline pump faster. The exact thing you’re shy from doing at home is the exact same thing you embrace in a foreign place.
I reassured the hotel receptionist that I still wanted to ride a bike to Vaduz and asked for a map. The receptionist gave me three different kinds: a Liechtenstein map for cars, a bigger non-tourist map of Feldkirch, and a map of two both Austria and Liechtenstein. She spread all three maps out on the counter and explained to me the different ways to get to Vaduz: 1) use the main road and ride side by side with other vehicles or 2) stay on the countryside road with less traffic but need to watch out for absent-minded cows. Ooh! Which is more challenging: watch out for vehicles or cows? Which causes more damage: colliding with a four-wheeled vehicle or a four-legged animal? Tough choice!
The girl couldn’t be any less helpful. I don’t mean her ability to give direction at all; I mean mine. One thing I dread during traveling is to figure out direction from maps. My mother didn’t give me map-reading trait at birth, and schools didn’t teach me this skill when I was still an eager-to-learn student. I can’t even find a local café that I like located just a few blocks away from my flat because I don’t remember how to get there. I do a triple U-turn around the city to find a store located at the corner of the street I was standing. While the hotel receptionist pointed her fingers at the map and advice, “Come out here, turn left there and follow the road and then another right…,” I imagined a scenario of me getting lost in the middle of some forest or inadvertently trespassing someone’s farmhouse. I can’t read a map even while I’m walking let alone biking. How am I going to bike to a foreign city, enjoy things along the way, and return to the hotel to drop the bike in only six hours?
I have three hours each way to make a series of perfect decisions.
On my bike and take a selfie of my leg.
I studied the map left and right, holding it tightly in my hand for the first ten minutes. But this was not a way to ride a bike, stopping every few meters to look for street names and scan for them on the map. I resolved to go with whatever I felt leading to Liechtenstein while employing the technique mastered by women but frown upon by men, asking for direction.
“Please tell me how to get to…?” After riding the bike for seven minutes, I was already concerned because I hadn’t seen people on the street. I wondered if I should stop and wait until I caught someone instead of biking and then might have to backtrack later. I continued for a little more when I saw an old man heading in the opposite direction. I shouted “Liechtenstein?” and pointed my finger straight ahead. “Nein,” he said and stopped his bike, “Come with me!” Huh! An old man in this tiny border town knows how to speak perfect English? But then he started speaking just German, and I realized he didn’t say “come with me.” He probably said something like “Komm mit mir!” You see, I’m not a pessimist. My eternal self-doubt about my direction-deficit disorder was again proven correct. For the 100th time, I chose the wrong direction. If I had reversed my decision to turn the other way thinking that my previous decision was wrong, I would still make a bad decision. I turned my bike and followed the friendly old man who led me a few hundred meters more to an intersection and waved at me to follow that direction, “The first city is Schellenberg.” He spoke German of course, but I guess from the sound of ‘shtad shelenburrg‘ to assume he meant. Heck, I didn’t know what Shelenburrg meant when he said that, but later on, when I crossed the border and entered the city, I looked at the sign and had a linguistic hallelujah moment. “Ah, he meant this city.”
The way to Vaduz
I continued on the empty country road with just me, my bike, my map and occasion Liechtenstein herbivore inhabitants. Liechtenstein has a lot of influence from Switzerland. Have you ever heard of it? No worry, just consider it a countryside of Switzerland. You see the same ridiculously clean and tidy road, real cows roaming the countryside, and fake cows lining up souvenir shops. The cows were gnawing grass on my right or staring at me just a ditch away. I stopped numerous times to take their pictures with the intention to post process them into a picture perfect. Then I became worried that my bright pink outfit would provoke the peaceful cows, and they would jump over the narrow ditch and charge right into me. I got on my bike and hurried away.
On the way to Vaduz
I was happy and concerned at the same time because I didn’t see any other human being after riding for quite some time and thought I might have gotten lost. When I say that I have no self-confidence when it comes to direction, I mean every single word. Seeing a group of locals working on the grass, I immediately stopped, put on the nicest face and sang my usual song “Where is Liechtenstein?” or “How to get to Vaduz?” Biking, looking at grass and sky and cows, shooting photos with one hand while trying to let it sink in my head that I’m really biking to Liechtenstein, I saw from afar the sign of Liechtenstein.
On the way to Vaduz
Yoohoo! Why didn’t I get into the biking business sooner? Only 15 minutes and I was already sold on the idea of biking. It is so fast and so much fun. Walking doesn’t allow you to see many places before your legs scream rest. When there is nothing special to see, you will be bored to dead and start to regret the time, effort and money spent to travel there.
The scenery from Austria to Liechtenstein remains the same with long roads, flanked by grass field and grazing cows. You don’t recognize that you have entered another country. While I was amazed by the cleanliness and orderliness, at the same time missed the messiness usually seen in the countryside: dog poop, cow shit, brown mud and stuff like that. I stopped for a couple of occasions to do quick photo sessions of unsuspecting cows, lazy goats fat pigs, and the open space before reaching Ruggell, a bigger city with blocks of houses.
On the way to Vaduz
It was a dead Sunday morning. I roamed the city a few minutes and encountered a congregation in front of a church. It was either a typical Sunday morning service or a special event because kids were dressed in traditional costumes. Near the church, I saw a cemetery that had a neat layout, beautiful carving, and decorated tombstones. I sat on my bike and held the fence enclosing the cemetery to examine the tombstones when all of a sudden I heard lively music from the church. What a contrast! The dead and the living.
A cemetery in Liechtenstein
By then I got a bit confused as I didn’t know which way to continue. I saw a grandma floating in and out the cemetery. I stopped her before she got a chance to run away and shouted “Vaduz?” “Ooh, Vaduz?” she responded. That was the only word which I understood. The kind lady started shouting and singing in German on the street, waving her arms pointing to the direction behind me. It was obvious from her expression and gesture that the city was still far away. Since her arms kept rising during her speech, for a moment I thought I might have to cross over a mountain or something like that. Sensing the friendliness of the lady, I asked her for a photo which she happily agreed. But when she pressed the button, the flash automatically released, startling the technically inept woman. Instead of returning the camera to me, she pointed at the camera with wonder, spoke some more and laughed hysterically. I bid her goodbye and only was able to leave after I repeated what she was trying to say three times. I guess she meant goodbye.
I came around a circle that had a red biking sign and turned left. Then I saw a man standing in the front yard with his kid; people in Liechtenstein didn’t stay out often, so I had to take advantage of my chance and ask for direction. It was a good thing because once again, I managed to go in the wrong direction. He told me to backtrack to the circle, cross the bridge and follow down the Rhine. Another 10 minutes of biking, I found myself back in Switzerland. Cool huh? I had just biked the entire width of Liechtenstein. From then on, it was an easy breezy ride along one of the longest and most important river in Europe. The Rhine originated south of Liechtenstein, flowed north, and formed the border between Liechtenstein and Austria on the east, Switzerland on the west before emptying itself in Lake Constance, Germany.
The Rhine is shallow here
It was not the first time that I ventured out to a region along the border. Once I managed to cross three borders in less than a couple of hours between Germany, Czech, and Poland just for the heck of it and for getting additional stamps on my passport. This harmless doing caused me minor stress a few times later when I had to go to Munich to arrange for a work visa. The German border control police checked my passport longer than usual and quiz me about the strange behavior on that day. I had a stamp when I crossed from Liberec, Czech Republic to Zittau, Germany; another stamp from exiting Germany when I walked to Poland; an entry stamp within 15 minutes back into Germany; and another exit stamp a lunch later to be back to the Czech Republic. It was before the Schengen agreement though when border control police spied your every move. There is rarely anything to see at the border, but for some reason, I am attracted to it. Whenever I’m at the border, I see how similar the “different” people are in term of physique,
There is rarely anything to see at the border, but for some reason, I am attracted to it. Whenever I’m at the border, I see how similar the “different” people are in term of physique, language, and way of life. They are even more similar to one another than their fellow countrymen. I was at this tripoint, on the German soil, where Czech, Germany, and Poland met. Right in front of me on the left side was Poland and to the right was the Czech Republic. There was one woman walking her dog in Poland along a stream, a couple walking the same way on the Czech side, and behind me were elderly Germans leisurely riding their bikes. If you remove all the flags, you would not have known which country you are standing and which country you are looking at. This precise moment got me thinking about how ridiculous that only 60 years ago these people fought against each other to death.
At a border tripoint of Poland, Czech Republic and Germany. I was standing on the German side. To my left is Poland. Behind me is the Czech Republic.
As I crossed the Rhine to enter Switzerland, I hardly saw any difference among the Swiss, Liechtensteiners, and Austrians. There are many bikers and a few inline skaters along the river bank going in the opposite direction. I don’t know what got into me that day because I kept asking for Vaduz even after every single one confirmed that I should follow the river. You know there is only one direction when following the river bank right?
If anybody wants to confirm the stereotype about women don’t-read-map and ask-for-direction, just use me. By the time I came back to Feldkirch after my mini bike tour, I had asked a total of 16 people.
I saw seeing a bridge in front of me and suddenly remembered that I was on the Swiss side and crossed the bridge to Schaan. I wanted to stay as much as I can in Liechtenstein, visting Zurich, Swizerland will be the job for tomorrow. It took another minute passing more cows and goats before I got to the city center. Good heaven I didn’t stay in Schaan like the original plan. Feldkirch was quiet but charming while this city was dead. I rested at a church before continuing out of the city center.
A local church
Along the road, I saw a large vineyard, so I skipped the main road and wandered in to check out the house behind the vineyard and the street leading up to the castle. The castle was not open to the public because the royal families still live there, and I’m standing right on their vineyard. Taking photos of grapes and green pasture got bored very fast so I did what any person would do in my situation: stealing grapes. I started picking vines from the branches, mouthful of a handful of small juicy grapes. The sweetness and juiciness of the grapes quenched my thirst, but that was uncomparable to the excitement knowing I was binging on stolen fruits, not just from anyone, but from the Prince of Liechtenstein.
The prince lives in that castle and owns this vineyard.
My excitement was soon taken over by my paranoid, thinking that eating too many grapes would get me fruit poison. That would be bad, stealing and ending up death on the vineyard of a royal prince.
I got back to the main road and continued my road, and shortly after I arrived in Vaduz.
As warned by the German at the Hostel Feldkirch who complained about his Chinese coworkers who laughed in the group, the moment I set foot on the main square, I heard noise and laughter from a group of Chinese tourists.If it weren’t for the Chinese, Vaduz would have been a dead town.
Vaduz city center
The only few open places on Sunday were the Museum, the tourist information office, a few shops, and pricey tourist restaurants. A lunch menu cost from 27 to 40 euros. Like Swiss, Liechtensteiners adore their cows, judged by the wide range of cow souvenir displayed on the shelves. Aren’t they creative and understand their customers? There was a geisha cow covered with sushi and adorned in Japanese motif standing next to chocolate and farming cows. These cows cost up to 150 euros.
A geisha cow carrying sushi
A souvenir cow sold in Vaduz
Another pretty souvenir cow sold in Vaduz
The square was small. You will see it all in 15 minutes. I was glad to have the bike, otherwise, I would not know how to entertain myself for the rest of the day. I bought a tourist stamp from the Tourist Information Office for 2 euros. Not sure why other countries don’t copy this business model. There is no overhead, no cost, and no expense to set up this business. All they need to have is the ink-soaked stamper, make an attracting advertising sign and just sit there waiting for naive tourists to come in and pull out their passports “I want a stamp please.” With the Schengen treaty ratified, I miss my days of collecting stamps and don’t mind paying for these silly tourist desire.
A statue at the main square, Vaduz. The city is quite plain, but it has many interesting statues.
Statues at the main square, Vaduz
It would be another two hours before I had to return my bike to the Hotel in Feldkirch, so I started riding back. This time, I decided to remain on the main street Feldkircher. It was like a mini highway with no boring scenery. There were just cars and occasional bikers. It took me another hour until got to the Austria-Liechtenstein border.
Found a rural cow on my way back to Austria. They adore cows, don’t they?
I'm a motivation explorer, personality type hacker, behavioral investigator and storyteller. I help startup founders, entrepreneurs, and corporate managers to understand themselves, the people they manage and how to get the best of their people. Specialty is in psychological personality types and brain-based methods. When I don't do the above, I hop around planet Earth with TravelJo.com to learn the Art and Science of people from everywhere and to give you all the free travel and tips and advice in many cool destinations.
My name is Cindy, also rhymes with travel junkie. A friend said I was probably a gipsy in my previous life. One of my many secret missions in life is to convert you to run off every once in awhile.
One thought on “Biking from Austria to Liechtenstein – Cows to My Right, Pigs on the Side and I Stole from the Prince of Liechtenstein”
FrankPosted on 7:16 am - Nov 4, 2016
The first day out, my e-bike had a low tire and faulty valve – not a great start, but the rest was very good. Sometimes, the route was to as clearly marked as we would have preferred. Nevertheless, I’ve told several friends about this trip and one is considering booking reservations! Thanks for everything.