Biking Day 4

• Length ridden: 90 km
• Ascent: 665 meters
• Rating: 7 out of 10 - nice areas, but rain at night
• Highlights: Werdenberg, the flowers and the plunge in Walensee
• Lowlight: the rain in the evening, stopping me from biking longer
• Map of the day

I was up and ready to roll shortly after 7 am and bid an unceremonious farewell to Austria. I crossed into Lichtenstein, where there were two border policemen overseeing the traffic, but waved me past, smiling. I had been to Lichtenstein and its capital, Vaduz, on an earlier ride - it was nice, but as someone I used to know would say, it was "nothing special".

On a field, I saw a large number of storks, they seem to like this little country.

My previous through this country took like 2 hours, here it did not last longer than 20 minutes or so - I crossed a bridge, where a small sign read "Switzerland". A funny detail - riding was allowed on the sidewalk of the bridge in Lichtenstein, but from the middle of the bridge, it was forbidden in Switzerland. The entire bridge, crossing an arm of River Rhein, was maybe 20 meters long - why have such absurd rules?

I quickly realized that Switzerland is not part of the EU and as such, it does not have the same lax roaming rules as the European Union, in fact, an active call is charged around €2,50 per minute and data is not much cheaper either. So I quickly turned off my mobile data - but remember, I use Google Maps a lot, so was a bit lost early in the morning. I spotted a small bistro, but it was closed. To rescue came a rather hip architecture office, where I entered and they allowed me to use the WiFi to download some offline maps. Still, as it sometimes happens when reaching a new country, I was a bit lost, not knowing which direction to take.

At first, I was riding on some really boring, rural roads, but the situation improved with time. It was so that I reached the first Swiss highlight, a small village called Werdenberg. The town, with a castle above it, looks back on 800 years of history. Werdenberg is one of the few surviving wooden urban settlements from the Middle Ages in Europe and is in the inventory of sites of Swiss national importance that are worthy of protection.

I was actually quite surprised not to see a lot more tourists there, I was practically the only one loitering around. I rode up to the castle, with my gear-box making a big cracking noise on the way up - but no harm was done (at least not that I know of).

I got to the town of Buchs, which was anything but attractive (the Swiss Touristic Office states there are no bookable event whatsoever in that town), where I managed to find a SIM card for my phone, it cost CHF 20 for 1 week, with unlimited internet, quite a good deal, especially for that expensive country. Then I found that the fast-food Subway outlet offered a menu for just CHF 10, which is yet another steal. I paid with my coins, which I had kept from an earlier trip, it weighed a lot and made up almost CHF 50. In all, I got some acceptable food, unlimited soft-drinks and shiny nice Swiss Franc notes in return. (Note: Aaah! the value of the Swiss Franc increased quite a bit in the recent years vs. the Euro, so maybe I should have kept not CHF 50, but CHF 50,000 at home [good, not necessarily in coins], that would have been a good investment!)

Riding on, I got to a road that was under construction - and then I realized this is unmistakably Switzerland - the diversion of the road was just perfect, as if an engineer would have taken a ruler.

A bit later, I reached a field full of the probably the most beautiful field flowers I have ever seen. It was some sort of a project - but it made my heart sing...

An hour or so later, I reached the town of Sargans, with a castle from the 13th century. The town was really empty - and to be very honest, I have no recollection of having been ever there, but my camera and timeline say otherwise. Oh, now I recall...well, sort of. Anyhow, as you might have guessed, I did not stay for all too long.

Soon after leaving town, I rode next to a huge block of mountain - and this one is a UNESCO World Heritage site, called Tectonic Arena of Sardona. Here one can see upfront how the tectonic plates formed the Alps. Again, I sighed, it would have taken at least half a day or so to visit, but I sent it to my hiking buddy Florian, I sure would like to return.

Now I was nearing a large lake, called Walensee. Just before the lake, I got to a small village, with a church surrounded by flowers. In Walenstadt, the "capital" of the lake, I took a bit of a rest.

The lake is a wonderful Alpine lake, with mountains rising some 1,000 meters straight out of the water.

It goes without saying that I could not leave this lake without taking a dip. There was a railway line running right next to the water, with the bike path being squeezed between the tracks and the lake - so I hid my bike in a little tunnel and in I was in the water - with a few other folks doing the same.

After the plunge, near the end of the lake was a tunnel system, well lit, where I rode through, I enjoyed this quite a bit. At the end of the lake, I turned south, towards Glarus. I stopped at a bike store, as I lost a screw to one of my bags. They repaired it for CHF 10. Looking on, one could see that rain was coming - the question was when.

In fact, when I reached Glarus around 6 pm, a big thunderstorm already had passed, everything was wet (luckily, not me) - but you could feel it was not over. I went to a grocery store and was amazed at the prices. At a MIGROS, which is everything but a high-end supermarket, one small slice of rather old and sticky pizza baked early in the the morning would have cost CHF 8,50. Crazy! I bought some basic grocery items - the prices were at least the double of what they cost back home.

I rode on, but now it started raining steadily - not really hard, but a kind of unpleasant rain. I took cover under a train passage, when I struck up a conversation with a German gentleman, who happened to be the COO of a manufacturing plant just opposite. We chatted for over 30 minutes, me hoping the rain would stop, after all, it was still two hours of daylight. As the rain had no intention of subduing, I asked him whether there was a hotel in the vicinity, and he advised me to go to Braurei Adler. First, I called a place called Adler and asked if there was a room. An older lady with a witty sense of humor told me she had in fact two rooms, but none were to let, as it was a private home, her family name was Adler. The second time I tried harder and found the hotel the gentleman referred to. There I was offered a room for CHF 85, with no chance of haggling and for the lack of better options, I decided to take it. At least I was in a dry place.

I rode some 90 kilometers that day.