This weekend is a long weekend!  To make it interesting, we’re having breakfast in Germany, lunch in Liechtenstein, and dinner in Austria, all in one day.  Breakfast in Bavaria started with a few extra donuts in our hotel room, because who doesn’t need a few extra donuts…

 

Good-bye, Germany!

The next stop is Breganz, a town on the Bodensee that is popular for summer bicycle trips, also featured in the James Bond movie Quantum of Solace.  So of course we had to stop and take a picture.

And try a slushee.  “Mom, I just sneezed slushee out of my nose!!”

We rented a boat to get up close to the Opera House, and spent a nice hour boating on the Bodensee.

 

Back on shore we tested buttercups to see if we all liked butter.  The answer is yes!  Thank goodness.  What would life be without butter.

We could sit here watching trains and tulips for hours.

But we have to keep moving to have lunch in Liechtenstein!

So we left the Bodensee and pointed the car toward Vaduz.  We didn’t know what we would find in Liechtenstein on a Sunday, but were happy to find free parking, a church, a gift shop, and a Frenchish-Germanish-Italianish brasserie that had a menu of pizza and burgers and pasta in 4 languages.   A bit like TGIFridays.  There was a very modern financial feel to the city, more like Scandinavia than central Europe, and the scenery was absolutely stunning.

It’s hard to stay in Liechtenstein very long though, it’s so small!  Soon after lunch we found ourselves in in Switzerland, then on our way back to Austria through one of the longest tunnels in the world.  I was hoping we’d be above ground to see the Tyrolean Alps, but I guess it’s easier to blast a road through rock then to build roads all over the mountains.  We stopped for the night in a tiny town along the river, called Stans.

One of our new favorite apartment rentals!

Classy and modern, with cows, goats, and chickens, and this really cocky rooster.

In the morning we woke up to see a new baby goat born overnight in the barn.  Jake and Eli were pretty impressed.  They fed the Mommy Goat flowers.

Stans is also the home of the D’Arbo jam company.  Kegs of jam were piled outside the warehouse, and the whole city smelled like strawberries.

I went out walking in the morning and was overwhelmed again by the huge openness of Austria.  It’s like the whole country is a postcard with nobody else around, just miles of Alps and flowers.  The air is alive with sunlight and full of cowbells and church towers.  Some sounds defy and define stillness.  How is that?

All around for miles there are only horses and haystacks, glowing gold against the slate blue mountains rising up on both sides.  A river runs by the road, adding the peaceful chaos of rushing water.  The air is sweet, even sunlight seems to have a fragrance in places like this, or maybe I’m just smelling the strawberry jam…

Dinner in Austria was the end of our quest.  Not typically Austrian because we were still stuffed full from lunch and couldn’t handle another schnitzel, but fortunately Tyrolean cuisine includes pizza, with a glass of wine and a beer.  The Indian Kingfisher beer was not Tyrolean or Austrian at all, but a perfect end to our day.

Breakfast, lunch, dinner, in three different countries in one day:  Mission Complete.