Sunday, 2 July 2006
At Sargans station, I got on the 12:30 post bus. The bus travelled eastwards, and soon we crossed the Rhine River, entering Liechtenstein. Liechtenstein, sandwiched between Switzerland and Austria, is the fourth smallest country in the world, and was gifted with some of the alpine beauty that was also endowed upon its neighbours.
The bus stopped at Vaduz, the capital of Liechtenstein. Several shops and museums surrounded the place, and peeking above over a cliff, was the castle, the dwelling of the King (unfortunately, the castle was not aesthetically pleasant when I visited Vaduz since it was under renovation).
In principle one could walk around the small town, but there was nothing really special to see, so I decided to take bus 10 to Malbun, an alpine resort at 1600 metres above sea level. At first the bus went up a Z (not S)-shaped road, and as it climbed, I had a panoramic view of Liechstein. Indeed, the crux country was simply a narrow strip of river valley between the mountains on the east and the Rhine River on the west. Immediately across the Rhine was Switzerland, and there the mountains towered again.
The bus passed through a tunnel (during this trip, tunnels for me became a symbol of peripeteia). As it emerged, a completely new, alpine landscape appeared. No more paroramic views or river valleys, but we were at the bottom of a funnel, with mountains surrounding. The bus stopped at Malbun, a very small resort village. The village is situated in a U (not V)-shaped valley, clearly glaciated in the last Ice Age, with mountains shielding half of the sky. The place teemed with people with hiking gears, but there was also a chairlift beside the bus stop that could carry people up the mountain. I almost wanted to "accidentally" miss the bus so I could linger here longer (but the buses were hourly).
I returned to Vaduz, and had a better look around, and took another post bus to Schann, there transferring to another bus that carried me across the Austrian border to Feldkirch train station, from where I took a train back to Munich, transferring at Lindau and Ulm.