Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
correctly suspected that I was a travel writer and would reveal to the world the secret that the food at the
Vaduzerhof Hotel at No. 3 St￤dtlestrasse in Vaduz is Not Very Good. Who can say?
In the morning I presented myself in the dining-room of the Engel for breakfast. It was the usual
continental breakfast of bread and butter and cold cuts and cheese, which I didn't really want, but it was
included in the room charge and with what they were charging me I felt bound to empty a couple of little tubs
of butter and waste some cheese, if nothing else. The waiter brought me coffee and asked if I wanted
orange juice.
'Yes, please,' I said.
It was the strangest orange juice I've ever seen. It was a peachy colour and had red stringy bits
suspended in it like ganglia. They looked unnervingly like those deeply off-putting red squiggles you
sometimes find in the yolks of eggs. It didn't even taste like orange juice and after two polite sips I pushed it
to one side and concentrated on my coffee and cutting slices of ham into small, unreusable pieces.
Twenty minutes later I presented myself at the checkout desk and the pleasant lady there handed me
my bill to review while she did brusque things with my credit card in a flattening machine. I was surprised to
see that there was a charge of four francs for orange juice. Four francs is a lot of money.
'Excuse me, but I've been charged four francs for orange juice.'
'Did you not have orange juice?'
'Yes, but the waiter never said I'd be charged for it. I thought it was part of the breakfast.'
'Oh no, our orange juice is very special. Fresh-squeezed. It is—' she said some German word which I
assume translates as 'full of stringy red bits' then added - 'and as it is
razzer
special we charge four francs
for it.'
'Fine, splendid, but I really feel you should have told me.'
'But, sir, you ordered it and you drank it.'
'I didn't drink it - it tasted like duck's urine - and besides I thought it was free.'
We were at an impasse. I don't usually make a scene in these circumstances - I just come back at
night and throw a brick through the window - but this time I was determined to take a stand and refused to
sign the bill until the four-franc charge was removed. I was even prepared to be arrested over it, though for
one unsettling moment I confess I had a picture of me being brought my dinner in jail and taking a linen cloth
off the tray to find a glass of peach-coloured orange juice and a single slice of ham cut into tiny pieces.
Eventually she relented, with more grace than I probably deserved, but it was clear from the rigid all-is-
forgiven smile she gave me as she handed me back my card that there will never be a room for me at the
Hotel Engel in Vaduz, and with the Vaduzerhof also evidently barred to me for life, it was obvious that I had
spent my last night in Liechtenstein.
As it was a Sunday, there was no sign of any buses running, so I had no choice but to walk to Buchs,
half a dozen miles to the north, but I didn't mind. It was a flawless spring morning. Church bells rang out all
over the valley, as if a war had just ended. I followed the road to the nearby village of Schaan, successfully
gambled that a side lane would lead me to the Rhine, and there found a gravel footpath waiting to conduct
me the last half-mile to the bridge to Switzerland. I had never crossed a border by foot before and felt rather
pleased with myself. There was no border post of any kind, just a plaque in the centre of the bridge showing
the formal dividing line between Liechtenstein and Switzerland. No one was around, so I stepped back and
forth over the line three or four times just for the novelty of it.
Buchs, on the opposite bank of the river, wasn't so much sleepy as comatose. I had two hours to kill
before my train, so I had a good look around the town. This took four minutes, including rest stops.
Everything was geschlossen.
I went to the station and bought a ticket to Innsbruck, then went and looked for the station buffet. It was
shut, but a news-stand was open and I had a look at it. I was ready for something to read - Ziegler's
relentless body-count of fourteenth-century European peasants was beginning to lose its sparkle - but the
only thing they had in English was the weekend edition of
USA Today,
a publication that always puts me in
mind of a newspaper we used to get in primary school called
My Weekly Reader.
I am amazed enough that
they can find buyers for
USA Today
in the USA, but the possibility that anyone would ever present himself at
the station kiosk in Buchs, Switzerland, and ask for it seemed to me to set a serious challenge to the laws of
