5th of July waking up in a castle with a view over Lake Constance doesn’t make it easier to leave such a beautiful place, but we had to start early to be in time for a lecture at lunch in Schaan / Liechtenstein. We were just making a little detour downtown to Rorschach to get our Saint James stamp before we followed the lake shore to the Altenrhein, which is the old river Rhine still representing the border between Austria and Switzerland. Stopping in the border town by the church of Saint Margrethen we sent a message to my 102 year old grandma Marga.
From now on it would be just following up the River Rhine into the Alps on the dam. We were lucky to have some clouds to protect us from the sun and no wind against us to make speed. We tried to be faster than 25 km/h to drive without e-bike support, which worked perfectly well.
Peter Demmel had organized a special Rotarian meeting at his coffee roasting company in Schaan/Liechtenstein for lunchtime. Before noon we already had crossed the border into our fourth country on this trip: Liechtenstein. It is one of the smallest countries in the world, but we had no idea what that means for the people living there. It seems like everyone knows everyone and we felt welcome from the first moment.
Another wonderful surprise was the visit of Christine Matthey CEO of the foundation Vacation in historic monuments who came especially from Zürich for this event. Her organisation renovates old historic monuments to turn them into rentable vacation homes, where the booking guests can dive into the history of century old homes and live like in another time combined with the comfort of our times.
Among the Rotarian friends was also the Past Governor 2019/2020 Magdalena Frommelt and president Rainer de Meijer with whom I exchanged the Rotary wimples and I received some wonderful fresh roasted coffee beans as a gift from our Rotarian friends.
In the afternoon we still had to climb with our bikes up to Planken, where Renate and Peter live high above the valley with a great Panorama in a beautiful house and garden.
The evening program was taking place at first in Eschen, where we were invited for the opening of the “li-gi-ta” (Liechtensteiner Gitarrentage) with a guitar concert of Ignacio Rodes and Judicael Perroy. The Interior Minister of Liechtenstein for economics and sports Herbert Büchel was quiet impressed by our “Less-is-more-Tour-project”.
The second event was downtown Schaan, where international stars were performing on FL1life festival in a southern like night. We had no idea how much energy we still had, but the crowd kept us going until midnight.
