Preface
It had been 4 and a half years since
I was last in Vorarlberg. Old timers may remember that I did my assistantship
with the British Council here during my year abroad. I returned for a long
weekend as a friend was getting married. In some ways I'd forgotten everything,
in some ways I remembered everything.
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Even I have to admit that I was incredibly grumpy
for our early morning flight to Zürich; it's something about being early,
tiredness, lack of food and well, just too many people. However, despite my
grumpiness, we did in fact make our flight.
I had tried to pre-book our train
tickets, but neither OBB nor SBB gave return options on their sites, which
meant that we had to queue up and buy in person. Lo and behold, the return is
an option! Rich perused the suggested route and was perturbed by the quick
changes. Of course here in the UK, one could never imagine having just 2
minutes to change trains and that not being an issue. Over in Switzerland and
Austria, it's pretty normal. Most of the time, your change is a walk across the
platform. Rich did point out later that the announcements don't have any of the
niceties you might find on a British train such as the below, so maybe they save a few seconds
that way...
- "Please ensure to take all your belongings with
you."
- "We wish you a safe and pleasant onward
journey"
- "Thank you for travelling with XXX"
We arrived at our destination of
Dornbirn without too much fuss, but finding the hotel was a whole different
story, given that neither of us brought a map, directions, or had even written down the
address. Helpful right? So we wandered around based on Rich's estimations
from memory until my cranky side kicked off and I demanded that he purchase an
internet booster for his phone. We had turned a 350 yard walk into a 15-20
minute search. This was at least quickly rectified and we checked into our
hotel Harry's Home before deciding lunch was a
great idea.
We strolled towards the centre,
where as I remember most of the shops, bars and restaurants could be found.
Walking around, you can see the mountains poking their heads above the
buildings, the recent snows still visible on the peaks. It's stunning really.
We settled on a café called 21, which I'm fairly certain Rich chose because
somebody sitting outside had dogs with them. The menu was fairly limited. I
made the mistake of ordering schwarze Tee;
I did also specifically ask for milk, but this was so far from a good British
cuppa and no amount of sugar could take away the bitterness. The waitress also
disappeared for a substantial period of time, so getting the bill to be able to
pay and leave, was far too much hassle. We eventually went back to the hotel
for a nap.
In the evening Raffi and Vera had
arranged for the English speakers to meet up for dinner and essentially get to
know each other before the wedding. They had booked a table at Bierlokal (sorry your location might be blacklisted) and I’d
sneakily checked out the location over lunch so I knew where to go, even
though I’d been once before. Dinner was lovely; there were 3 others from
English-speaking corners of the globe and a few others, who could
speak pretty damn good English. Rich was relieved that he would be able to talk
to people. Secretly me too, as I'm not sure my German would hold up to a non-work related conversation these days. After some tasty food and a number of drinks (gespritzter Weisswein, nothing too strong!) we did go back to the hotel in the end for some well anticipated sleep,
All in a day!
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