postcard 42: alpine cows, we meet again

climbing mountains in Lichtenstein 🇸🇮

The road grows tighter and windier as we leave Lake Como and head into the mountains. Soon it dissolves into a crayon sketch by a distracted toddler, squiggly lines that don’t quite make sense and certainly are not wide enough for two directions of traffic. But, of course, the Italians don’t seem to mind.

We’ve already crossed through Croatia, Slovenia and most of northern Italy, finding a magical Starbucks where we ordered chocolate cold foam lattes, and we still have two countries to go.

I clutch the oh-shit handle as Topher deftly navigates the curves, the little rental car struggling to climb the massive pass even in first. There’s tunnels just narrow enough for our car and curves that exceed 180° and it's a really bad time for our horn to be malfunctioning. It’s a game of roulette every time Topher taps the center of the wheel. Will it make a noise?

Finally, finally we crest the pass and he pulls over to let us breathe at a pristine alpine lake. Somewhere along the way we’ve crossed into Switzerland. Snow still clings to the peaks and wildflowers carpet the ground. A barefoot family wanders below us, picking a bouquet for their camper van.

Our destination is the tiny principality of Lichtenstein. It’s 15 miles long, has 39,000 residents and the average GDP per capita is nearly $200K a year. When we exit the highway and drive across the bridge from Switzerland, a castle looming in the distance, my suspicions are confirmed. This place is definitely Princess Diaries’ Genovia. The trees we pass on the way to our campground are laden with apples—not pears—but that’s a minor detail. I hope they have string cheese.

This time we have a dedicated campsite, but when we pull up and climb the small hill, I’m not sure that it’s any better. We’ve somehow managed to book a pitch inside a trailer park. The three spots surrounding us are well and truly dug in. There’s shelters built around the RVs, which don’t even have plates, there's a collection of garden gnomes in front of one and the woman next door starts mowing her chunk of meadow as we set up our tent. It’s a little strange and we duck inside as soon as we finish dinner. The man on the other side sits on a lawn chair with a crossword and a glass of wine, loudly farting late into the night.

The moment I swing open the car door, an eerie chorus of cow bells reverberates deep in the pit of my stomach, sounding like low-pitched wind chimes. I can just barely see their forms through the grates that serve as the parking garage windows, their tails swishing flies lazily away.

Standing outside the visitor center bathrooms, loosely holding onto Hazelnut’s leash, I follow the trail up the hill with my eyes, noticing the first electric fence several hundred yards away. We’ll be crossing into enemy territory immediately.

Breathe. I remind myself.

Topher brings me a pamphlet from inside. It helpfully suggests, in three languages with illustrations, to give the cows a wide berth, keep dogs on a short leash and to never, under any circumstances, touch the cows. That last one, at least, won’t be a problem. The first two? A dream for another day.

Less than 10 minutes into our hike and my breathing is ragged. I know it isn’t the meager altitude or the hearty grade of the climb. The closer we get to the first bunch of cows, the more I felt like I’m going to have a panic attack or throw up, or maybe both. Topher keeps Hazelnut on a tight lead and offers an exuberant “Guten mortgen!” and a wave I find highly unnecessary to the huge heifers lounging just off trail. Hazelnut sticks close to his knees, obviously sharing more of my trauma than her dad’s blase attitude. The cows eye the pair suspiciously, but do little more than throw their heads around to watch as they pass.

I follow a healthy distance behind, murmuring “good cows” and trying not to make any sudden movements. I really, really hope they can’t smell fear as I’m sure I stink of it, my heart pounding out of my chest.

We repeat the process three more times, cows in various states of laying and standing, and by the time we finally make it to a length of trail without any dangers, I allow myself to look out at the view, forcing my shoulders down from my ears. The valley below is painted vibrant green, little brown houses dotting the slopes. High up the pastures turn to peaks, their faces caressed by wispy clouds. I spy a marmot in the meadow before us and Topher fumbles for his binoculars, finally crossing off thr alpine variety of his favorite animal off his bucket list.

It’s epically beautiful, but I can’t take my eyes off the cows. Suddenly one way up the slope gets a wild hair and takes off at a gallop, throwing in a little buck. She’s nowhere near us, but I usher Topher up the trail all the same.

Finally, there is just one single group of bovines between us and the high alpine. Once we get to the rocky ridgeline, I know we’ll be safe from their presence for the next few hours. As Topher and Hazelnut walk up the trail, a bright eyed, Brown Swiss lifts her head to watch. She takes two steps forward and I freeze. Topher slows down but keeps approaching and she moves into the middle of the trail. Every ounce of my being is screaming to run, but there are several cows clumped behind us, blocking our exit. One lets out a comedic sounding moOOOoooOoo and shatters the last of my sanity. My sweet, gentle, naive husband lifts a hand up to the cow and she steps forward like she’s either going to sniff it or charge. Hazelnut quietly tucks herself behind her dad’s legs and the cow drops her head to investigate this dog I know she perceives as a threat. My mind, as it's been doing all day, is flashing back to Austria (see postcard 1) where the whole damn herd charged us and sent us sailing headlong into an electric fence, bruising my tailbone for months and instilling this semi-irrational fear of cattle.

“Back off, back off,” I whisper/shout but Topher calmly tells the cow they're going to pass and keeps walking. She, miraculously, let’s them go. I scurry after them, giving her a wide berth and as soon as we’re a healthy distance up the trail, burst into tears and hug Hazelnut. She’s the best dog.

I’m not sure Topher realized how anxious I was until I started crying. We sit in the middle of the trail and eat snacks and try to breathe. I’m exhausted and we haven’t even really started, but there’s no way I’m turning back now. I can see the other end of the loop and for some reason there aren’t cows on that side of the valley.

We climb and climb and climb, the pastures giving way to a rocky ridgeline that reveals pretty peaks in every direction. There’s a dirty patch of summer snow, it’s edges slightly pink with lichen, but Hazelnut thinks it’s the best thing in the world. She zooms and zooms, slipping down it on her side like a baby penguin.

I’d given the trail description a solid peruse, but had definitely missed the part where we’d be climbing two mountains. Topher falls behind and we make our way at a snail’s pace up the first summit and then towards the second. A giant cross looms above us in the talus and suddenly I notice the clouds have taken on a rainbow iridescence. It’s a rare occurrence of polar stratospheric clouds, ice crystals high in the stratosphere scattering the light into individual wavelengths. It’s even rarer this far south. It’s my Uncle Kurt’s birthday weekend and this feels like too beautiful of a coincidence. I watch, enrapt, until Topher catches up.

There’s a hut along the route I was planning a beer stop at, but shortly after the cow debacle I’d realized I forgot my wallet in the car. There went the reward that was supposed to be our motivation and when the stone hut, perched at the end of the long ridgeline, comes into view, it feels like rubbing salt into a wound.

“Check your wallet,” I urge Topher, who has stopped talking from exhaustion and a growing sore throat at this point. He magically produces a forgotten €20 bill. Victory! As long as they accept euros in addition to Swiss Francs.

The patio is full of mountaineers lounging, eating soup and drinking wine. A guy in approach shoes follows me inside and slips behind the counter. He’s the caretaker and he does, in fact, take euros. I walk away with two big beers from one of Lichtenstein’s six breweries, branded specifically for the hut, and a single euro in change. It’s expensive here, but this also might be the most needed beer of my life.

Hazelnut finishes her kibbles and falls asleep under the table as we drink our beers in the sun. We still have several miles to go and we’ve been on the trail for hours at this point. It’s turned into an epic we were, perhaps, not prepared for and we’re all exhausted. The beer, and a package of spicy cashews, does revitalize us, some.

From here, it should be all downhill to the car but it’s not long before we realize we’re one valley over. The trail climbs again and the breeze has left us. We slog uphill, barely stopping to watch the meadow full of marmots. Hazelnut’s so tired her tail drags the ground and she walks half a step behind me, getting inadvertently kicked every few paces. Finally, we see the last, long descent. The trail doesn’t bother with switchbacks and our knees are swollen and achy by the time we get back to the car. Thankfully, we don’t encounter a single cow.

The Euro 2024 soccer tournament is in the quarter finals and there’s a giant screen set up in Lichtenstein’s capital, Vaduz, where seemingly the entire city is gathered to watch Germany play Spain. The car in front of us slams on his brakes at 6pm on the dot and stops to affix Spanish flags to the mirrors while we wait. It’s chaos. We work our way north, trying to find somewhere for dinner, and I muse that we’re almost at the border when we stop 15 minutes later for Tibetan momos and drinks. It’s an exceptionally random dinner, but it’s delicious. We don’t even make it to sunset by the time we’re asleep in the tent.

The smell of chocolate hits me immediately as the elevator opens into the Lindt Home of Chocolate. A giant, free standing fountain drips molten candy off a whisk and it perfumes the air. We take a tour, learning how chocolate is made, seeing vintage packaging that delights me and, of course, tasting. Enrapt, we watch through thick glass windows as little squares of chocolate move down the conveyor belt. We fill the cooler with truffles to bring home and head into Zurich.

The sky is dark and wind whips up as we walk through the West end neighborhood tucked under the train tracks. Stores and bars are made of shipping containers or tucked into the supports. It’s hip and industrial and not like anything we’ve seen since getting to Europe. We eat overpriced sausages and fried cheese in a biergarten, noting that the entire town seems to be staking out a spot for the Switzerland game later in the afternoon. Shops have signs noting an early close, it’s more all-consuming than even the Super Bowl. It’s started to drizzle by the time I poke my head into what I think is a small, specialty market. Through the back, I find myself in a collective marketplace that takes up an entire city block. I wander, amazed at the sheer variety of international food represented, and then quickly duck back out. We need to ditch Hazelnut in the car and return, stat.

We order second lunch, or maybe early dinner, from a little stall selling kaarage and ramen. The tables are made out of Japanese beer crates and I spy Chinotto, a drink made from a rare Italian citrus I’ve just read about in an obscure book. We hide from the rain and wish, for the thousandth time, that we could make living in Switzerland work. Maybe we should buy a lottery ticket. Do the Swiss have a lottery?

On the walk back to the car in the rain, sheltered by the umbrella we caved and purchased last month, we discuss our options. We’re supposed to camp for two more nights, one in Austria and one in Italy, but the forecast shows torrential downpour for the next 48 hours across the region. It’s 4pm, and home is at least 9 hours away, but we make the call. I battle FOMO the entire drive through Switzerland until we see a waterfall literally shooting off of a cliff through the rain. I’ve never seen floodwaters that powerful and later I’ll read about the landslides in the valley nextdoor that killed several people. It’s a good call, even though we’re absolutely spent when we roll into Pula at 2am.

It’s officially unbearably hot here. It never drops below 75°, even at night and the humidity makes it feel like the reptile house at the zoo. We experiment with a late night walk into town for gelato and Hazelnut spends the next two hours panting. These Colorado kids were not designed for this weather. We briefly consider taking our dog walk to the air conditioned mall, but decide to try a secluded stretch of coast north of us instead. We strap Hazelnut into her life vest and I swim out into the deep water. The first time Topher pushes her off the rocks, she splashes nervously over and tries to climb me, leaving angry red claw marks on my chest. But then, she gets the hang of it and it's not long before she's swimming out into the depths unprovoked, doing circles around me and investigating the dock. It’s only taken 10 months, but she can finally swim. I’m so proud of her.

Topher receives an email that he should come to the MUP at 10am on Wednesday. We take a number and go to the market to kill time, filling our bags with perfectly ripe peaches, cherries and heirloom tomatoes the color of a bruise. The morning passes on the MUP steps, drinking canned coffee in the heat and waiting for our number to be called. It's been exactly 365 days since I submitted our visa applications. I wonder if we'll look back at these moments fondly, time rosing the annoyance we feel dealing with the bureaucracy. The woman at the foreigners’ counter tells us we didn’t need to take a ticket, we had an appointment and we’ll have to wait since it’s after 11 already. She points to a door, one that has definitely never had a sign about appointments on it before, and we wait again. Finally, we’re called back, Topher's documents are inspected, and just like that he’s approved for a temporary stay visa. It’s too hot to be anything but annoyed at the process.

I hope you’re staying cool wherever you are in the world. May there be many an iced coffee in your future.

-Mikaela