Blogs from Sankt Gallen, North-East, Switzerland, Europe

It was mostly a travel day today on the 3 hour return journey from Celerina via Thussis, Chur and Sargans to St Gallen. We arrived in St Gallen at 1.30 to be met by our friends Bruno and Gertrud. After a settling in and a cup of tea we bussed back into St Gallen for a Christmas concert given by several hundred school children, aged 6 to 12, from schools around the city. Bruno and Gertrud’s grandchildren were in the choir which made it more personal. What a wonderful concert! There was an excellent orchestra and conductor and the children sang a range of Christmas songs from various countries like Switzerland (of course), South America, Israel, England and the USA. By all accounts this afternoon was the first time they had actually practiced as one full ... read more

Raining again so we need to be creative with our activities. We went out of town to Flawil the Maestrami/Munz Chocolate Factory to see the favourite eats of the Swiss being made. Who would have thought that so many chocolates could be turned out in one minute – one per second it seemed. Who eats so many chocolates? Most Swiss it would seem. We came away with a nice little stash of chocolates to last for some time including a Swiss Army Knife chocolate to present to Neil and Karilyn on their arrival in the morning. “Welcome to Swizerland Herr and Fraulein Froude. Please accept this wonderful gift from TTAT’s tours on your arrival”. The chocolate is wrapped to look like the real thing. An interesting way to spend an hour or so. We drove back ... read more

Blog -- August 3 Where Am I? We biked through three countries in a matter of hours this morning. At times, we were not quite sure whether we were in Liechtenstein, Austria, or Switzerland. But this evening, we are definitely in Switzerland. We awoke to blue skies and warm temperatures. Biking along the Rhine River, we had 40 kms. in before 11:00. It was about that time that we got “misplaced” in the town of Hohenems, right on the border between Switzerland and Austria when we stopped at a store for a supplies. It was also at about that time that the clouds moved in and the temps got cooler. We eventually found our way towards Rorschacherberg, our goal for the evening. About noon time or so, the clouds opened, dumping their load of rain on ... read more

We headed off by car across the beautiful rolling rural countryside of the St Gallen Canton and on into the Canton of Thurgau to the Bodensee (Lake Constance). The back country roads pass through orchards of cherries, apples, pears, occasionally grapes, dairy farms and grain crops. There are many trees dotting the landscape and areas of forest. I think that is one of the things that strikes you about this country and others around - they value their small forests and trees and it makes the countryside so attractive. We, on the other hand see farmland as an area to clear and make every part available for grass. Fortunately we have large areas locked up into National Parks and Forest Parks for the future. On reaching the lake we parked at Uttwil and headed off to ... read more

Hi All, So a long time between posts but we've been having a holiday withtin a holiday during our time in Switzerland staying with Evi and being spoilt rotten. On our second last day in Munich we meet up with Holly's relatives Pepi and Lily and also Pepi's brotre Rolf and his wife Heidi. They were nice enough to pick us up from the station then take us to there house before treating us to a proper Bavarian dinner. The night was really nice and we also so logged some time on the Autobahn! We ending up kicking on late into the evening before returning to our hostel and organising to meet the following morning. As we organised Pepi picked us up near our hotel in the morning to give us a whirlwind drive by tour ... read more