Lake Constance

So we drove off to Lake Constance on early Sunday afternoon. Already after an one-hour-drive, you can enjoy your first glimpse onto the „Swabian Sea“. On the next day, in the morning, quickly a couple of photographs of Meersburg, before heading to Füssen.

Füssen

Speaking of tourism in Germany, this place gets somehow reduced to one single image abroad which is, naturally, the   Neuschwanstein castle. In order to visit the castle´s interior, we would have had to wait from 3 pm to 7 pm that day. Therefore we rather opted for a visit of its less spectacular precursor, the Hohenschwangau castle.

Then the heavy rainfalls started that led, a few days later, to most disastrous floodings in Austria, in the Czech Republic and Saxony. We had to renounce a tour into the mountains due to the bad view and dreadful weather and took flight, the following day, to the southern part of the Alps.

South Tyrol

As soon as we arrived at the Brenner, glorious sunshine was welcoming us. Before in Füssen and throughout the whole way through Tyrol it had just been bucketting down. In South Tyrol there are that many interesting mountains and valleys that I wouldn´t mind spending four weeks in this region. But my friend is more keen on sunshine and beaches; that´s why we headed for the Lake Garda as our next destination.

Though not without having a quick stop-over in the old customs town of Klausen. A bit later, next stop in Bolzano. It had been an Austrian town from early history til 1919, so I prefer the old German name „Bozen“. I´ve always liked Bozen very much. And while strolling through the sunlit streets, we suddenly see a sign indicating a museum.

Oops, wasn´t there anything ? Right, this odd glacier mummy, called Gletschermumie, Ötzi, is now exhibited in this place. And the Bolzanians have really put a big effort in setting up an extraordinary and interesting exhibition in the Archaelogical Museum of South Tyrol.

Lake Garda

Natascha was the most happy person when finally in the evening, after much time spent in the car and museum, the promised lake for bathing appeared. The pretty place of Riva del Garda is always worth a visit. Nearby we found a hotel which was alright, so that we stayed for two days - i.e. until the next heavy rainfall did start. Fortunately, we had already made a visit to the picturesque town of Malcésine the afternoon the day before when we also had walked up to the Scaliger Castle on the trail of Goethe. Therefore we didn´t mind leaving Lake Garda and taking flight towards the Ligurian coast. What really was worrying us were the constant news about flood disasters, not only in Austria and Germany, but also in different parts of Italy.

Liguria

We were lucky though. In spite of the bad weather in Germany this time of the year, we from now on had marvellous sunshine. After a quick stop-over in Alassio we looked for a place to stay in Arma di Taggia, last seaside resort just before San Remo. After a day on the beach we, most of the time, spent the evenings in San Remo. A hundred years ago it still used to be a high society meeting point with its casino, its famous chess tournament etc, today it is just a pretty small seaside resort. We could even find traces relating to Natascha´s homeland, the Ukraine. Just before San Remo, high above the sea, in Poggio, there´s a restaurant called Medusa. An Italian-Ukrainian couple from Turin had taken it on not long ago - the wife still used to live in Odessa only two years ago. As well a memorial plaque of the first Ukrainian national poet, Lesya Ukrainka, can be admired at the radial highway right next to the Villa Nobel going from the direction of Taggia to San Remo. She had lived here for two years.

A visit of the new and old Bussana should not be missed at any rate. An earthquake a hundred years ago had ruined the old village.

On our way back to Stuttgart we had to avoid Switzerland. Thus our journey led us along the coast to France in order to return via the Rhone motorway. Sure! On our way we then allowed ourselves another stop-over in Monte Carlo and Nice.

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