Well that’s a rousing title, eh? Just makes you want to dig right in, right? So great, now I’m gonna have to be really entertaining just to keep you from nodding off and dipping your nose into your coffee. Who comes up with these stupid titles anyway?

So did you hear the one about… no, just kiddin’. I like my written humor to be subtle so you almost don’t notice it, because even if it isn’t there I can claim you just didn’t notice it. In any case, my son, grandson, and I decided to drive a loop from Stuttgart to Switzerland to Liechtenstein to Austria and back again. Four countries in one day is nothing to sneeze at, even if they lacked any kind of gotcha moment or monument or monofilament… or monoblob, which actually is a thing.

Zurich

The only thing I really knew about Zurich was that they zur ar rich there. “Ge neva get better jokes,” he said. We thought about going to Geneva, but figured there’d too many conventions, because I guess they’re famous for conventions. In any case, none of us had ever been to the land of the Swiss, but as we expected, it was full of holes. I know, another cheesy joke. They’ll get better, I hope.

And by holes, I mean things like this neverending tunnel. Truly. I mean, we watched the entire movie, The Neverending Story, while driving through that tunnel. Masi started growing beard hair while we drove through that tunnel. One of my body parts fell off my aging body while we drove through that tunnel and I never could find it. I asked the car rental company to send it to me if they ran across it, but I haven’t heard back from them yet.

After we finally made it to Zurich, I overheard an American tourist couple, who, after seeing Masi, looked down at their map of Europe quizzically. Then she whacked her husband on the shoulder while saying, “I told you to take a left, now we’re in Portugal you idiot!” It was then that I really appreciated my single status. Plus now I figure it’s a good time to use this beer photo.

So Zurich is a nice city; but we were there on a Sunday which meant it was fairly quiet and many of the shops were closed. That didn’t bother us because, well, you know, we’re all males. Apparently there are a bunch of museums and galleries too, but we didn’t actually know if they were open on Sunday because we were there just to step foot in another country, and that’s pretty much it. It’s easy to achieve your goals if you don’t set them too high.

Zurich is Switzerland’s largest city, and is a hub for all the major transportation systems. Both the Zurich Airport and Zurich’s main railway station are the largest and busiest in the country.

Not only that, but they have the largest pink T-shirt with the number 9 on it inside a train station… get this… in the world. I looked for a Guiness World Record plaque for same, but Guiness must’ve been too busy measuring the longest distance pulled by a horse while on fire. And I’m honestly not making that up. They also have one for the farthest toss of a washing machine (also 100% true), probably set by a guy who told his wife they didn’t need to call a repairman, and eight hours and two feet of water later, the washing machine was seen hurtling through the air.

Zurich has been permanently settled for over 2,000 years, or almost the combined age of the last two US presidents. The Swiss speak German, although there are lots of Swiss dialects, and boy, those are the ones that really confuse me. Well, besides the German.

Despite its neutrality, Zurich was accidentally bombed during World War II, and there were some dogfights as well. With planes, not dogs. There was some suspicion from the Swiss side that the Allies “accidentally” bombed Switzerland to cajole them into stopping their relationship with the Germans, but somehow bombing never seems to cajole anything. Kaboom maybe, but not cajole.

Here again in the main train terminal, I thought this was interesting in that Americans say, “Gesundheit” when someone sneezes, which I think in German means, “your snot is showing.” Ok, to be serious, it actually means “health,” even though in my childhood someone told me it meant, “God bless you,” which was needed because rumor had it demons could sneak into your body when you sneezed, which is why they wanted God to intervene. Which made me wonder, I’m not sure what’s worse than demons, so what exactly sneaks in when you fart?

Anyway, according to this advertisement, they really say “Sprudein vor Freude!” which may mean “Sparkling with joy.” So if you’re facing a sneezer, you’re now sparkling with all the joyous sneezy bits, and I guess their product will happily help desparkle before you become seriously de-joyed. Of course, maybe she’s not sneezing at all, but drowning. It’s hard to figure out all this different language stuff.

As you can see, Zurich is a pretty city with old buildings and lots of plus signs, since they’re really into banking. Indeed, Switzerland is chock full of powerful banks. A while ago, Zurich was ranked 9th among the “World’s 10 Most Powerful Cities,” and in the 2017 Global Financial Centres Index, Zurich was ranked as having the 11th most competitive financial center in the world, and the second most competitive in Europe after London. We voted it the best city in Switzerland we’d ever been to.

So it kinda bummed me out that we were there on a Sunday, and all the banks were closed. Because there I was, stuck with two pockets stuffed full of Euro coins ready to use to open up my first Swiss bank account. Which made me look a little bit like this woman. Okay, shut up, I’m not fat shaming, she just provided some graphical insight for my joke. If it still upsets you, well, all I can do is thiiiigh… But seriously, if she were a balloon, it’d just be a picture of a street because she’d be up in the sky dodging airliners. If she were a chicken, they’d need an entire KFC bucket for just one of the thighs. Aw, she’s actually a very pretty woman, much better looking than even the cutest chicken.

Otherwise, we spent the rest of our time making fun of their signs. Clockwise, I’m thinking fock.com is a porn site for bad spellers. Headsquarter must be a casino because I think they’re already calling heads on a flipped quarter. I took a picture with Heidi, which was the name of an old girlfriend I now wish I’d never broken up with, plus she didn’t look like that cow at all. Kalte Lust shows some spanking paddles in their logo so the rest is up to your imagination. But if you’re thinking of going through the previously mentioned door, you might consider getting your anus hair styled first. In fact, 33 euros is the best price I’ve ever seen for that.

On the way to Austria and Liechtenstein, we took a side trip off the freeway to have some lunch. Little did we know we’d encounter some of the most beautiful scenery of the whole expedition while there. These photos were taken around a little town called Amden, in Switzerland. We had lunch in one of the few places that was open, it was kinda lousy, but y’know, I can’t taste the food anymore while I can still gaze at this scenery anytime I want, so it’s all good. We went up and up a winding road without knowing where the hell we were going, but it was all worth it for these awesome views. Of course, when we came down I think we ended up in Italy, but that doesn’t count here because we’re still not sure of it.

Austria

After the whirlwind tour of Zurich, we hopped into the rental car (the change in my pockets clinking like a hundred loose screws inside a dryer) and made our way toward Austria and Liechtenstein. And just in case you don’t believe we actually entered Austria, here’s proof from our rental car, because, as we all know, AirPlay never lies.

We didn’t really give a Fuchsberg where exactly we were, we were just there for the pushpin in our “Countries We’ve Been To” map. Maybe Fuchsberg is in Italy.

But the rewards from the highway were more than gratifying. While driving through these mountains, we merrily belted out, “THE HILLS ARE ALIIIIIVE, WITH THE SOUND OF MUS–” By “we,” I mean “I,” and yeah, that’s all I could get out before Rage Against the Machine was pumped up to full volume. Sorry, Julie.

The drive through Austria, short as it was, provided beautiful vistas that might only have been more impressive had they been they covered in snow. But then we might’ve ended up with one wheel up in a ditch, cursing the snow like it was snot from a demon who had snuck into our bodies during a fart.

But truly, Austria is a country with almost as much natural beauty as Catherine Zeta Jones in Zorro, or the “most beautiful young girl in the world,” or my late wife Dolly. That’s almost. Honestly, I’d give up the memory of every view I’ve ever seen, and pretty much everything else, just to see Dolly alive again. She still makes me smile when I look at pictures of her, which is an amazing gift she left for me. Her smile could light up a room, and even the photo of one still melts me inside.

Liechtenstein

This is about all we got from Liechtenstein. After taking this picture, I looked up only to realize we’d already made it all the way across the country.

So, we returned to Stuttgart, with memories of scenery and funny signs and– okay, I’m joking, we actually took loads of pictures of Liechtenstein:

That is if you call six pictures a load, with four of them being of the same two things. We stood around downtown Schaan, Liechtenstein’s biggest “city” with about 6,000 residents, looking like the crew in Star Trek IV loitering aimlessly in San Francisco wondering what to do next. Since Liechtenstein is landlocked, we couldn’t even ask anyone if they knew where any nuclear wessels were.

Liechtenstein is Europe’s fourth-smallest country, with an area of just over 160 square km (62 square miles). To put that into perspective, Rhode Island, the US’s smallest state, is 25 times larger than Liechtenstein. In fact, Washington, D.C is about the same size as Liechtenstein. But Liechtenstein (I just like saying Liechtenstein for some reason) does boast a whopping population of about 40,000 Liechtensteiners. Liechtenstein is also one of the few countries in the world with no debt. In fact, Liechtenstein has one of the highest gross domestic products per person in the world. Maybe every country should only consist of 40,000 people. Like Liechtenstein.

As a final note, that part of Europe seems hell bent on extracting money from those with weak bladders, even to the point of selling WC (Water Closet, aka toilet, aka shitter) access cards in vending machines. They must do a booming business with the Shitter Cards because there are more of them inside that machine than anything, even counting all the M&Ms.

Since we travel on a budget, Luke figured out his own way around that system.

On the flight back, we could see some of the fires that were plaguing Portugal at the time. So here’s a genius idea: it seems like the airlines could help put out the fires by having passengers buy a bunch of drinks (they would probably be tax deductible for Americans) and convert it all to urine if there’s time, if not, just pour the leftovers down the sinks, and then fly directly over the fires and have each airliner dump their whole waste tank over the area. That’s even a very environmentally friendly plan because it would make the planes lighter, saving on fuel. Plus, it would all be colored blue so people on the ground would know who to thank.

Of course, I hope the “dump waste” button isn’t anywhere near the “dump fuel” button, but otherwise, I’ll accept the Nobel Peace Prize for this idea anytime. My plan would’ve put out 8 fires already.

(I remind myself sometimes of Michael Keaton’s character in Night Shift: “Wanna know why I carry this tape recorder? To tape things. See, I’m an idea man, Chuck. I get ideas coming at me all day. I can’t control ’em. I can’t even fight ’em if I want to. You know, ‘AHHH!’ So I say ’em in here, and that way I never forget ’em. You see what I’m sayin’? Stand back! This is Bill. Idea to eliminate garbage. Edible paper. You eat it, it’s gone! You eat it, it’s outta there! No more garbage!”)

Exit here, please. I guess twice because you can never ausfahrt just once.

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