Today, we made the journey from our residence in Luxembourg to another small country called Lichtenstein. To get there we needed to travel through a few different countries to arrive there.
There was a total of five different transport services we took today.
I had some difficulty working out what bus we should be on when I booked the ticket last night. The bus was numbered 82033. This did not provide much useful information though. There was a Luxembourg coach station which was not near the train station.
I continued to google and try to work out where it left from, but I had not had any success by the time we approached Central Station. Remarkably, I copied my ticket into ChatGPT. It told me that the bus was a connection between two train stations and therefore must leave from the train station in Luxembourg. Mitchell confirmed this when I could not work it out. He found the service to be numbered L95 which helped a lot.
And indeed, when the bus did turn up, I could see why there was not much information on it. The bus seated a total of six people and all seats were purchased.
We travelled on a this small bus for about an hour until we reached a station called Lorraine TGV. Lorraine was in France. It looked like it was a regional station which did not have a town around it. It must’ve been a connection between multiple different rail services where people hopped off the train and then got on another train heading in a different direction.
At this station, I purchased my breakfast. Café allongé et croissant au chocolat is what I requested the from meal deal at the ‘Relay’ shop, aptly named. A chocolate croissant and a long black.
From Lorraine TGV, we travelled to Stratsburg which was on the border of France and Germany but still in France. While on the train, I saw our speed reach 317km/h on the French high speed rail. If Mitchell delivered coal this fast he would only need 1 train a day! We were doing 1km every 11 seconds. Or 90 metres every second.
In Strasburg, we purchased some lunch. Once again visited the convenient grocery stores. We found one just up the side street from the main station. We made a quick dash to this location between our two trains. We passed a community vegetable garden in the court yard out the front of the train station.
I ate my sandwich on the platform station and my couscous on the train. We are still using the small packet of bamboo knives and forks that we purchased on the first day.
From Strasburg, we were on a train to Basel. Basel is right in the corner of three countries. France, Germany and Switzerland. From Basel, we were on a train to Zürich. From Zürich, we hopped on a regional train to Sargens. I took a photo of our first sight of mountains and lakes.
And from Sargens, we hopped on the bus number 11 to cross the river Rhine to Lichtenstein. The river Rhine flows all the way down to The Hague which we visited early on in our trip.
We checked into our motel number 96. We were checking in at about 4:40pm. It was taking a long time to check in despite there being no queue and no other tourists in sight. We were very worried we would not make it to the supermarket which closed at 5:00pm to buy our favourite style of meal. We quickly dashed through the rain down the street. We made it just in time. The shopping centre did not have the greatest selection of meal snacks. Perhaps because it was a Sunday.
In our room, we took photos of a very nice place that Mitchell had booked. Outside of our window is a great view which I will include photos of below.
We were very pleased to be in the small country of Lichtenstein which has a population of only 40,000 people. It is about the same population as Bathurst.
We are learning all sorts of fascinating facts about which now that we are here. We have been googling all sorts of things. The country of Lichtenstein does not have a military. Its last military was in 1868, it went off to fight the war with a military size of 80 men. When their military returned from battle, they returned with 81 men. In Italian soldier came home with them as one of them made a friend. They expanded their military after this date.
It looks like tomorrow is going to be a rainy day. It might be difficult to do walks as Mitchell wishes to do. We may visit the countries capital and see what is on offer. It can’t be very far away.