Part 8 (1/2)

Bern is built on a bluff above a broad loop of the River Aare, and the views from the bridges and vantage points are quite splendid, especially back towards the old town a jumble of orangeish tiled roofs broken up with church spires and towers that look like mutant cuckoo clocks. Most of the streets are arcaded in a way I've never seen before: the ground floors are set back and the upper floors jut out over them, their heavy weight supported by thick arched b.u.t.tresses, creating a covered walkway over the pavements. The shops along them were infinitely more varied and interesting even more cla.s.sy than those in Geneva. There were antiquarian bookstores and art galleries and antique shops specializing in everything from wind-up toys to clocks and binoculars to Etruscan pottery.

Culturally, Bern is on the dividing line between French-speaking Switzerland and German-speaking Switzerland, and there is a mildly exotic blending of the two. Waiters greet you with 'Bitte', for instance, but thank you with 'Merci'. Architecturally, it is stolidly Swiss-German, with severe (though not disagreeable) sandstone buildings that look as if they were built to withstand a thousand earthquakes. Bern has the air of a busy provincial market town. You would never guess that it is a national capital. This is partly because of the peculiar nature of Swiss politics. So many powers are devolved to the cantons and to national referenda that Switzerland doesn't even feel the need to have a prime minister, and the presidency is such a nominal and ceremonial position that it changes hands every year. They wouldn't have a president at all except that they need somebody to greet visiting heads of state at the airport. The Bundeshaus, the national parliament, looks like a provincial town hall, and nowhere in the city even in the bars on the nearby streets do you have a sense of being among bureaucrats and politicians.

I spent a day and a half wandering through the streets of the old town and across the high bridges to the more modern, but still handsome, residential streets on the far side of the Aare. It was a wonderful city for random walking. There were no freeways, no industry, no sterile office parks, just endless avenues of fine homes and small parks.

I attempted just two touristy diversions and failed at both. I crossed the high, arched Nydegg Bridge to see the famous bear pits the city name derives from the German word for bear, so they like to keep several bears as mascots but the pits were empty. There was no sign to explain why and locals who arrived with their children were clearly as surprised and perplexed as I was.

I tried also to go to the Albert Einstein museum, housed in his old flat on Kramga.s.se, one of the main arcaded streets. I walked up and down the street half a dozen times before I found the modest entrance to the building, tucked away between a restaurant and a boutique. The door was locked it was dusty and looked as if it hadn't been opened for weeks, perhaps years and no one answered the bell, though according to the tourist brochure it should have been open. It struck me as odd that nowhere in the town had I encountered any indication that Einstein had ever lived there: no statue in a park or square, no street named in his honour, not even his kindly face on postcards. There wasn't so much as a plaque on the wall to tell the world that in one year, 1905, while working as an obscure clerk in the Swiss patent office and living above this door, Einstein produced four papers that changed for ever the face of physics on the theory of Brownian motion, on the theory of relativity, on the photon theory of light and on the establishment of the ma.s.s-energy equivalence. I have no idea what any of that means, of course my grasp of science is such that I don't actually understand why electricity doesn't leak out of sockets but I would have liked to see where he lived.

In the evening I had a hearty meal, which is about as much as the visitor can aspire to in Switzerland, and went for another long walk down darkened streets and through empty squares. As I returned to the city centre along Marktga.s.se, one of the main pedestrian venues, I discovered that all the bars were shutting. Waiters were taking chairs and tables inside and lights were going out. It was nine-twenty in the evening. This gives you some idea of what a heady night-life Bern offers.

Quietly distraught, I wandered around and with relief found another bar still open a couple of blocks away on Kochega.s.se. It was crowded, but had an amiable, smoky air, and I was just settling in with a tall gla.s.s of golden Edelweiss and the closing chapters of The Black Death, The Black Death, when I heard a familiar voice behind me saying, 'D'ya remember that time Blane Brockhouse got the s.h.i.+ts and went crazy with the Uzi in the West Gollagong Working Men's Club?' when I heard a familiar voice behind me saying, 'D'ya remember that time Blane Brockhouse got the s.h.i.+ts and went crazy with the Uzi in the West Gollagong Working Men's Club?'

I turned around to find my two friends from the Geneva train sitting on booster seats behind frothy beers. 'Hey, how you guys doing?' I said before I could stop myself.

They looked at me as if I were potentially insane. 'Do we know you, mate?' said one of them.

I didn't know what to say. These guys had never seen me before in their lives. 'You're Australian, huh?' I burbled stupidly.

'Yeah. So?'

'I'm an American.' I was quiet for a bit. 'But I live in England.'

There was a long pause. 'Well, that's great,' said one of the Australians with a measured hint of sarcasm, then turned to his friend and said, 'D'ya remember the time Dung-Breath O'Leary hacked that waitress's forearms off with a machete because there was a fly in his beer?'

I felt like an a.s.shole, which of course is a pretty fair description of my condition. Something about their diminutive size and warped little minds heightened the sense of quiet humiliation. I turned back to my beer and my book, the tips of my ears warm to the touch, and took succour in the plight of the poor people of Bristol, where in 1349 the plague so raged through the city that 'the living were scarce able to bury the dead' and the gra.s.s grew calf-high in the city streets.

Before long, with the aid of two more beers and 120,000 agonized deaths in the west country of England, my embarra.s.sment was past and I was feeling much better. As they say, time heals all wounds. Still, if you wake up with a bubo on your groin, better see a doctor all the same.

18. Liechtenstein

You know when you are entering the German-speaking part of Switzerland because all the towns have names that sound like someone talking with his mouth full of bread: Thun, Leuk, Bulach, Plaffeien, Flims, Gstaad, Pfaffikon, Linthal, Thusis, Fluelen, Thalwil.

According to my rail ticket I was headed for the last of these, which puzzled me a little, since Thalwil didn't appear on my much-trusted k.u.mmerly and Frey 'Alpenlander Stra.s.senkarte'. Where Thalwil should have been was given instead as Horgen. I couldn't conceive that the conscientious draughtspeople at k.u.mmerly and Frey could have made an error of this magnitude in their own country, but equally it was unthinkable that the conservative burghers of this corner of Switzerland would have elected at some time during the last eighteen years to change the name of one of their towns, so I put it down to an act of G.o.d and turned my attention instead to spreading out the map on my knees in its full crinkly glory, to the undisguised irritation of the old lady next to me, who hoomphed her bosom and made exasperated noises every time a corner of the paper waggled in her direction.

What is it about maps? I could look at them all day, earnestly studying the names of towns and villages I have never heard of and will never visit, tracing the course of obscure rivers, checking elevations, consulting the marginal notes to see what a little circle with a flag on it signifies (a Burg or Schloss) and what's the difference between a pictogram of an airplane with a circle around it and one without (one is a Flughafen, the other a Flugplatz), issuing small profound 'Hmmmm's' and nodding my head gravely without having the faintest idea why.

I noticed now that I might alternatively have gone from Brig to Geneva on a more southerly route, by way of Aosta, Mont Blanc and Chamonix. It would almost certainly have been much more scenically exciting. What a fool I was to miss the chance to see Aosta and Mont Blanc. How could I have come this far and failed to travel through the heart of the Alps? What a mighty d.i.c.k-head I am. 'Hmmmm,' I said, nodding gravely and folding up the map.

We chuntered pleasantly through a landscape of small farms and steep wooded hills, beside a shallow river, stopping frequently at isolated villages where half a dozen people would climb aboard with empty shopping baskets. When the train was full, we would call at a busy little market town like Langnau or Zug and all the pa.s.sengers would pour off, leaving me all alone, and then the slow, steady refilling process would begin again. It was not a bad way to spend a day.

I left the train at Sargans, just short of Liechtenstein. The railway runs through Liechtenstein, but, in line with the national policy of being ridiculous in every possible way, it doesn't stop there. You must instead get off at Sargans or Buchs and transfer to Vaduz, the diminutive Liechtenstein capital, on a yellow post bus.

One was conveniently waiting at the station. I purchased a ticket and took a seat midway along, the only pa.s.senger not clutching bagloads of shopping, and sat high on the seat, eager to see the little country. It is only about seven miles from Sargans to Vaduz, but the journey takes an hour or so because the bus goes all over the place, darting down every side road and making cautious, circuitous detours around back lanes, as if trying to sneak into Vaduz. I watched carefully out of the window, but never did know at what point we entered Liechtenstein indeed wasn't certain that we were there at all until I saw the city-limit sign for Vaduz.

Everything about Liechtenstein is ridiculous. For a start it is ridiculously small: it is barely 1/250th the size of Switzerland, which of course is itself ridiculously small. It is the last remaining fragment of the Holy Roman Empire, and so obscure that its ruling family didn't even bother to come and see it for 150 years. It has two political parties, popularly known as the Reds and the Blacks, which have so few ideological differences that they share a motto: 'Faith in G.o.d, Prince and Fatherland'. Liechtenstein's last military engagement was in 1866, when it sent eighty men to fight against the Italians. n.o.body was killed. In fact you're going to like this they came back with eighty-one men, because they made a friend on the way. Two years later, realizing that the Liechtensteiners could beat no one, the Crown Prince disbanded the army.

More ridiculousness: it is the world's largest producer of sausage skins and false teeth. It is a notorious tax haven, the only country in the world with more registered companies than people (though most of these companies exist only as pieces of paper in someone's desk). It was the last country in Europe to give women suffrage (in 1984). Its single prison is so small that prisoners' meals are sent over from a nearby restaurant. To acquire citizens.h.i.+p, a referendum must be held in the applicant's village and, if that pa.s.ses, the Prime Minister and his cabinet must then vote on it. But this never happens, and hundreds of families who have lived in Liechtenstein for generations are still treated as foreigners.

Vaduz is not terribly picturesque, but the setting is arresting. The town nestles at the very foot of Mount Alpspitz, 6,700 feet high. On an outcrop directly above the town is the gloomy and fortress-like royal Schloss, looking uncannily like the Wicked Witch's castle in The Wizard of Oz. The Wizard of Oz. Every time I looked up at it I expected to see those winged monkeys flying in and out. Curiously, despite centuries as a backwater, Vaduz retains almost no sense of antiquity. The whole town looks as if it were built twenty years ago in a hurry not exactly ugly, but certainly undistinguished. Every time I looked up at it I expected to see those winged monkeys flying in and out. Curiously, despite centuries as a backwater, Vaduz retains almost no sense of antiquity. The whole town looks as if it were built twenty years ago in a hurry not exactly ugly, but certainly undistinguished.

It was a Sat.u.r.day and the main road through the town was backed up with big Mercedes from Switzerland and Germany. The rich must come at the weekends to visit their money. There were only four hotels in the central area. Two were full and one was closed, but I managed to get a room at the fourth, the Engel. It was friendly but outrageously expensive for what it offered, which wasn't much a lumpy bed, a reading light with a twenty-watt bulb, no TV, and a radio so old that I half expected to hear Edward R. Murrow broadcasting details of the Battle of Monte Ca.s.sino. Instead, all I could get was polka music, mercifully interrupted at frequent intervals by a German-speaking disc jockey who had evidently overdosed on sleeping pills (or possibly on polka music), judging by the snappiness of his delivery. He ... talked ... like ... this, like someone trapped in a terrible dream, which I suppose in a sense he was.

The sole virtue of the room was that it had a balcony with a view over the main church and town square (really just a strip of lawn with a car park) and beyond that a handsome prospect of mountains. By leaning perilously out over the street and craning my neck at a peculiar angle, I could just see the Schloss high above me. It is still the home of the Crown Prince, one of the richest men in Europe and possessor of the second-finest private collection of paintings in the world, outdone only by the Queen of England. He has the only Leonardo in private hands and the largest collection of Rubenses, but a fat lot of good that does the eager visitor, because the castle is completely off limits, and plans to build a modest national gallery to house a few of the paintings have yet to get off the ground. Parliament has been debating the matter for almost twenty years, but the thought of parting with the necessary funds has proved too painful so far and evidently no one would dare to ask the royal family (worth an estimated $1.3 billion) to dip into their treasure chest and pa.s.s down some bauble to get the ball rolling.

I went out for a walk and to check out the possibilities for dinner, which were not abundant. The business district was only a couple of blocks square and the shops were so pedestrian and small-town a newsagent's, a chemist's, a gift shop selling the sort of gifts that you dread receiving at Christmas from your in-laws that it was impossible to linger. Restaurants were thin on the ground and either very expensive or discouragingly empty. Vaduz is so small that if you walk for fifteen minutes in any direction you are deep in the country. It occurred to me that there is no reason to go to Liechtenstein except to say that you have been there. If it were simply part of Switzerland (which in fact it is in all but name and postage stamps and even then it uses the Swiss postal service) n.o.body would ever dream of visiting it.

I wandered down a pleasant but anonymous residential street where the picture windows of every living-room offered a ghostly glow of television, and then found myself on a straight, unpaved and unlit road through flat, still-fallow fields. The view back to Vaduz was unexpectedly lovely. Darkness had fallen with that suddenness you find in the mountains and a pale moon with a chunk bitten out of it hung in the sky. The Schloss, bathed in yellow floodlights, stood commandingly above the town looking impregnable and draughty.

The road ended in a T-junction to nowhere and I turned back for another look around the town. I settled for dinner in the dining-room of the Vaduzerhof Hotel. Two hours earlier I had been solemnly a.s.sured that the hotel was closed, but the dining-room was certainly open, if not exactly overwhelmed with customers, and people also seemed to be coming in through the front door, taking keys off hooks in the hallway and going upstairs to bedrooms. Perhaps the people at the hotel just didn't like the look of me, or maybe they correctly suspected that I was a travel writer and would reveal to the world the secret that the food at the Vaduzerhof Hotel at No. 3 Stadtlestra.s.se in Vaduz is Not Very Good. Who can say?

In the morning I presented myself in the dining-room of the Engel for breakfast. It was the usual continental breakfast of bread and b.u.t.ter and cold cuts and cheese, which I didn't really want, but it was included in the room charge and with what they were charging me I felt bound to empty a couple of little tubs of b.u.t.ter and waste some cheese, if nothing else. The waiter brought me coffee and asked if I wanted orange juice.

'Yes, please,' I said.

It was the strangest orange juice I've ever seen. It was a peachy colour and had red stringy bits suspended in it like ganglia. They looked unnervingly like those deeply off-putting red squiggles you sometimes find in the yolks of eggs. It didn't even taste like orange juice and after two polite sips I pushed it to one side and concentrated on my coffee and cutting slices of ham into small, unreusable pieces.

Twenty minutes later I presented myself at the checkout desk and the pleasant lady there handed me my bill to review while she did brusque things with my credit card in a flattening machine. I was surprised to see that there was a charge of four francs for orange juice. Four francs is a lot of money.

'Excuse me, but I've been charged four francs for orange juice.'

'Did you not have orange juice?'

'Yes, but the waiter never said I'd be charged for it. I thought it was part of the breakfast.'

'Oh no, our orange juice is very special. Fresh-squeezed. It is-' she said some German word which I a.s.sume translates as 'full of stringy red bits' then added 'and as it is razzer razzer special we charge four francs for it.' special we charge four francs for it.'

'Fine, splendid, but I really feel you should have told me.'

'But, sir, you ordered it and you drank it.'

'I didn't drink it it tasted like duck's urine and besides I thought it was free.'

We were at an impa.s.se. I don't usually make a scene in these circ.u.mstances I just come back at night and throw a brick through the window but this time I was determined to take a stand and refused to sign the bill until the four-franc charge was removed. I was even prepared to be arrested over it, though for one unsettling moment I confess I had a picture of me being brought my dinner in jail and taking a linen cloth off the tray to find a gla.s.s of peach-coloured orange juice and a single slice of ham cut into tiny pieces.

Eventually she relented, with more grace than I probably deserved, but it was clear from the rigid all-is-forgiven smile she gave me as she handed me back my card that there will never be a room for me at the Hotel Engel in Vaduz, and with the Vaduzerhof also evidently barred to me for life, it was obvious that I had spent my last night in Liechtenstein.

As it was a Sunday, there was no sign of any buses running, so I had no choice but to walk to Buchs, half a dozen miles to the north, but I didn't mind. It was a flawless spring morning. Church bells rang out all over the valley, as if a war had just ended. I followed the road to the nearby village of Schaan, successfully gambled that a side lane would lead me to the Rhine, and there found a gravel footpath waiting to conduct me the last half-mile to the bridge to Switzerland. I had never crossed a border by foot before and felt rather pleased with myself. There was no border post of any kind, just a plaque in the centre of the bridge showing the formal dividing line between Liechtenstein and Switzerland. No one was around, so I stepped back and forth over the line three or four times just for the novelty of it.

Buchs, on the opposite bank of the river, wasn't so much sleepy as comatose. I had two hours to kill before my train, so I had a good look around the town. This took four minutes, including rest stops. Everything was geschlossen.