Weekend Trip 3: Buchs (St. Gallen)
Next up is the Saxer Lücke viewpoint in Appenzeller region of eastern Switzerland. This is a rocky trail that follows along the ridge of the mountain out to some spectacular views out over Liechtenstein and into western Austria.
We took the train to Buchs (the one in St. Gallen/SG, not Aargau/AG) on Friday evening. Buchs is a really cute, non-touristy village right on the border with Liechtenstein. We got a restaurant recommendation from the lady at the hotel desk, so we walked to Gasthof Rössli (4th pic). It was too dark for pics, so I snapped one when we passed by it on the bus the next day. Saturday morning, we had breakfast (included, also including a side of judgment from the server when I ordered a Coke to drink) at the hotel, dropped our bag off, then headed to the bus station. The bus took us through several little villages - Grabs, Gams, Haag, Sennwald. We got off at the stop near Bergbahn Staubern, which is the gondola we were to take up to the top of the mountaian.
We walked by a goat farm, up to the parking area for the gondola. It’s a self service, solar powered gondola. You purchase your tickets right inside the door, scan your ticket, go through the gate and get on. There are only 2 cars that hold 8 people each, so there is only ever 1 car at the top and 1 car at the bottom. It was pretty busy when we got there at noon-ish, so we had to wait in line about 45 minutes.
At the top of the gondola ride is a restaurant. Off to the right of the restaurant is the path to Hoher Kasten, and behind the restaurant is the trail to Saxer Lücke. The paths really are just right up on the very ridge, wide open. It was pretty disorienting to me (I have a thing with heights), so it took a little while to adjust. But we had gotten a late start, so we started right down the trail. The pic of the lake was unidentified at the time, but later we discovered it is called Sämtisersee. At this time, it was just “Look at that pretty lake down there!”
The trail was rocky, narrow, tricky, steep, and scary - but those views were gorgeous. I couldn’t take pictures of the worst switchbacks because I was trying not to die. We stopped at some point to let me catch my bearings a bit, and we met a caterpillar friend. When we started back on the trail, I took my glasses off and it made everything much, much better.
We made it out to the Saxer Lücke viewpoint. More gorgeous views. The third pic is out over Liechtenstein and Austria. We sat at the viewpoint for a bit. There was another American couple with a little boy who took a million selfies with their GoPro. Now we go around yelling “GoPro TAKE PHOTO!” because of them.
Oh hey, “Look at that little house way down there by the lake!”
I get most of the ideas for hikes from a couple of blogs that I read, and the lady who recommended this hike mentioned that you should hike down to the restaurant by the lake and have the Rösti because it’s supposed to be the best in the region. What she didn’t mention is that the restaurant IS ACTUALLY that cute little house that is so far away it looks like a tiny dot down by that lake - AND you have to practically scale down the vertical face of the mountain to get to it. But Cass wasn’t going to be denied the best Rösti in the region, so we went down without really knowing what we were getting into. Again, I have no photographic evidence of this part of the hike because I was trying not to die. Apparently, they don’t want anyone to know what that part of the hike looks like because I couldn’t find any pics of it using Google either. It was scary.
The Rösti was pretty good though. And the Fälensee was beautiful.
While we were enjoying our food, we started planning how we could get back without having to go back UP the part we had just come down. Surely, there has to be another way out of the place, right? Not all of these people are going back up that thing, right? RIGHT? We asked our server, and she kept apologizing for her bad English, which should have been a clue, but she got us a map and showed us what looked like an alternate way out. We were supposed to pretty much walk though the valley behind the mountain, where the 2 lakes are, and come out at a village called Brülisau. There is bus service there, which we can take back to Buchs. Ok, let’s do that! It’s almost like we’re cheating!
This part started out mostly flat, some downhill, then we came to the Sämtisersee. It was beautiful. There were a couple of cabins down there beside the lake, which I’m sure are available for rent. Then back uphill a little bit and we came upon another restaurant, where we sat down for a drink.
Back on the trail, downhill, downhill, and more downhill. It sounds like no problem, but it’s really quite taxing on your muscles and joints. You don’t feel it that day, but 36 hrs later you will feel like you did a million squats. After what seemed like forever, Cass said “Look, civilization!” - I point you to the 3rd pic to see what he called civilization. This was the outskirts (farms) of Brülisau. After 20 more minutes of walking, we finally made it to the village, found the bus stop, and discovered that we missed the last bus of the day by TWENTY MINUTES. Ok, so now we’re stranded in this little village on the wrong side of the mountain with no bus and no hotel. Cass always figures everything out, so he went inside the gonldola (which is the one for the other side of Hoher Kasten) and asked for the number for a taxi. The guy gave us 2 numbers - the first one didn’t work, but the second one got us a guy who said he could come take us from Brülisau to Appenzell (which has a train station) in 3-0 minutes, just like that THREE-ZERO minutes!
In the meantime, we decided we would ask him when he got there to just take us all the way back to Buchs. He shows up in his Kia that he loves, and we proceed to try to communicate with him. He is speaking a mix of English and German, and I’m trying to translate what he’s saying, and he can understand English better than he can speak it, so we finally get it figured out. There is a “big” festival in Appenzell that evening and he already had another customer lined up right after us. He will take us to Appenzell and leave us at the Bahnhof (train station). Then we wait for him while he goes and takes care of his other customer (ein anderer Kunde), but then he will come back again (Ich komme wiederholen) to get us and take us to Buchs.
So we stand there on the corner across from the Bahnhof. There was a lot going on in the town square that Saturday night, and we got to stand and observe. I’m sure we looked like something that the cat dragged in at that point. But just when we were about to give up on our friend with the Kia, he showed back up and we left the lovely village of Appenzell.
Taxi driver guy was a trip. He was carrying on a conversation and trying to remember English words while zipping up and down the backroads over the mountains back toward Buchs. We found out that he is originally from Serbia and has lived in Italy and Switzerland. He learned to speak English by watching YouTube with his kids. He also thinks Joe Biden is too old (schon alt!), he really likes Chevy Camaros, and he really likes his Kia. We also touched on the German Parliament elections and the geography of Texas among other topics. But he totally saved our lives, returned us to the hotel where we were reunited with our bag, and then we were able to catch the train back to Zürich around 8pm. Whew!
What did we learn? Make a plan and STICK TO IT.
Also, congratulations to Switzerland for voting to legalize gay marriage on Sunday! Ja, ich will!