After bringing the dogs back, we hit the road again, this time heading to Tübingen. Tübingen is a small college town outside of Stuttgart that's fun to head to. We've been there several times, including last year with our friends Jenny & Chris. The old town section looks like a picture right out of medieval Europe. Well, with the exception of the modern stores that is. :) This was mostly a shopping trip for Kimber & Shanna, so Josh & I followed around, holding the bags. It was driving Kimber nuts that we kept driving by IKEA's all over Germany without going in, so I think she was happy to finally be able to go shopping. There was an Antique market going on that day, so it was neat seeing all the old things on sale. The prices were ridiculously high though...a frame that Shanna liked was 450 Euros! After meandering through town they were done shopping and we hit the road to head to the nearby town of Lichtenstein. I thought I had posted about Lichtenstein last year, but I couldn't find any blog post referring to it. Lichtenstein is a small town in the hills about an hour outside of Stuttgart. The orientation class where I met Katia & Jenny took us there, but it was a foggy cloudy day. This time it was a bit cloudy out, but no fog.
We walked around for a bit until the tour started. They only do English tours once or twice a week, and this day was not one of those days. They handed us a laminated sheet that described each room as the German tour guide spoke, though, so we were still able to see the history of the castle. The tour guide was really nice too, she'd occasionally speak directly to us in English if she was talking about something not on sheet. For example, she told us that when she first started doing English tours she had a word wrong that people didn't correct her on for awhile. In one of the rooms there is a bullet hole in a mirror. She said that during World War II, that an Alien soldier fired the shot that put the hole there. Eventually she was corrected and told it was an "Allied Soldier". That cracked us up. At one point during the tour she asked, in both German & English, if anyone knew what the state flag for Baden-Württemberg was. Shanna & I did, and she was shocked. She told us afterwards that she couldn't believe of all the people in the group, the 30 Germans didn't know it, but two Americans did. I was surprised no one else knew because you see it everywhere...even on our license plates!
We left Lichtenstein and headed to the Real (pronounced Ree-Al), which is the German Walmart. We found out how accurate that analogy is...it turns out Walmart used to own Real until they sold it and pulled out of Europe completely. Kimber & Josh wanted to get some things for friends back home, and this was the most economical way to do it.
The next morning we left early to get down to Zürich, Switzerland. Shanna had been to Switzerland before, but never Zürich, and Kimber, Josh & I had never even been to the country before. It's about a 2 1/2 hour drive from our house and the tour was at 1pm, so we left with enough time to get down there, eat lunch, and hop on the tour bus. One thing we found while down there was how friendly people were. The tour started at a bus terminal near the main train station, and we had just eaten lunch. Shanna wanted to use the restroom before we started, and they had a pay toilet in the parking lot. The problem is Switzerland is not part of the European Union so it has it's own currency. The pay toilet, therefor, only took Francs. We asked the lady at the ticket booth if she could exchange Euros for Francs. She couldn't, but when she found out why we needed it, she just gave us a Franc out of her own wallet. The tour price was a little steep at 50 Swiss Francs per person (approx. $60), but it ended up being WELL worth it. The tour started off with the guide telling us about the town as we drove around. The first stop was at a dock on Lake Zürich. It was a BEAUTIFUL lake with crystal clear blue water.
We got back on the bus after 15 minutes, and the tour continued. An interesting fact the guide told us was about cost of living in Zürich. In the main part of town the cost of land for a business is 800 Francs per month for 1 square meter. So, for a typical 40sqm building, the monthly rent cost is 32,000 Francs, or a little over $40,000 a month. The next stop was in the old town area near the church. It was pretty walking around the town near the river that runs from Lake Zürich. I got a picture of Shanna looking at a jewelry store...you know it's expensive because no prices were listed on the window outside.
After the 45 minutes we were given was up, we headed back to the bus. The next part of the tour had us driving outside of town. The city has mountains surrounding it, so if you live on them, you have a BEAUTIFUL view of the city. We took a bus part way up the mountain, then disembarked and took a cable car lift up the rest of the way.
Once we got to the top, it was a short 5 minute walk to a restaurant area that over looked the city. We could have stayed up there all afternoon. It was quiet, had an amazing panoramic view of the city, and it was a beer garden! It was one of the few chances we had to get a group picture with all four of us, with Zürich in the background.
We took the same cable car system back down to where the bus had parked, and this time headed to the lake to cross to the other side. It was only a ten minute ride but we wished it was longer. This wasn't a sight seeing ferry, though, cars drove on and it was used to get them across the lake. Since that was the case, the whole point was getting across as fast as possible. The sun was out and it was a beautiful day on the lake. All the sailboats were out too.
We eventually got to the other side, got back on the bus, and drove off. Apparently this side of the coast was where all the really rich people lived. We even drove by Tina Turner's house. Our guide was explaining how heavily the Swiss people are taxed, and your taxation level depends on where you live. People who live in this small part of Zürich accounted for 150 million Francs from taxes last year!
We ended the tour back where we started in the city. I thought the price of the tour was a tad high when we first bought it, but by the time we got back we all agreed that it was well worth the money. Zürich, like Switzerland itself, was absolutely beautiful. Below is a great picture I got of the lake & the city from the restaurant.
That was it for Zürich. We purposely made it a day trip and brought our lunch so we wouldn't have to spend any more money then was necessary. Switzerland is extremely expensive, and the fact that the Franc is worth more then the Dollar makes it even worse. It was a success...the only money we spent in Switzerland that day was on the tour.
We headed home after that began packing for our trip to Austria the following day.
Like I put in the previous post, the pictures above will only take you to a hi-res version of the pictures, not the picture page. Once I have all the pictures uploaded I'll create a separate post with a link. Next up, the post about the last part of Kimber & Josh's trip where we head to Austria, Münich, & Dachau Concentration Camp.
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