We left Sigriswil early this morning – after another great Andrea breakfast. She delivered at 7:45 this morning, knowing that we wanted to make the 9:03 bus and we had a huge hill to get our bags up and over. A few rest stops part way up the mountain but we made it. A feat I couldn’t have done 8 weeks ago when we left home. I would get so stiff and sore from walking with limited climbing. Now we can do 8 or 9 k with some intense hill climbing mixed in and I still feel it, and get tired or occasionally out of breath, but not like I did when we started all this. All of the stair climbing in the Airbnb’s helps too. I found places with stairs considerably cheaper and so booked many. I hardly notice the steps anymore!!
We bused to Thun and then caught a train to Sankt Goarshausen, Germany. We had a change of trains in Basel Switzerland with a five minute connection and missed it. (We actually didn’t but our next train change was Koblenz and the train on the track we went to was marked Berlin. By the time we confirmed it was stopping in Koblenz the doors were locked. Trains are always easy and with the train pass, we just looked for the next train going in that direction. Half an hour later we were able to board to a train going to Cologne but it stopped in Koblenz so it worked.
The police boarded just outside of Basel (as we passed from Switzerland into Germany and checked our passports). All smiles – no stress. We are now back in the EU so back to Euros and no border checking from here on till Canada.
When we missed the train in Basel we had a short delay so we squeezed in a bit of shopping. We had a few Francs left in our pocket and they couldn’t be used after Basel so we bought some chocolate of course, and Jim found a pretzel and had a Swiss Coke.
There was beautiful scenery from the train window out of Switzerland and then as we left the Alps our country side started to look like home. We could have been easily driving through Saskatchewan except when you came to towns, the houses were square and different. Most of the land was agricultural but we saw thousands of trees in bloom. Many looked like apple trees and there were orchards but there were even lots of wild trees in bloom. The scenery was beautiful here too – not dramatic like Switzerland but beautiful. We think Sask scenery is beautiful and this reminded us of home!
And then the scenery started to change again. There were castles and there was the Rhine River!! The Rhine River!!
We changed trains in Koblenz and in 20 minutes we were in Sankt Goarshausen at the door of our Airbnb. Right across from the train station. We love it – it may be one of our favourites; and that was before we looked out the window.
We unpacked, relaxed and then went to find a place for dinner. We were glad to get away from Swiss restaurant prices and we both love German food. Jim’s Grandmas and Mom were such great cooks and made many traditional German meals – we were excited to try to find them.
It was a delicious meal and was about 1/3 to 1/2 of what we’d have paid in Switzerland. Even cheaper than Saskatchewan I think. Off to bed – possible rain tomorrow but time is going fast and we don’t want to waste a day. Hopefully we’ll be able to do some touring!