Phespirit goes to Germany
Lindau     July 2004

A Coupe Danmark ice cream and a quarter litre of Lindauer Seegarten white wine .....

..... is what Phespirit ordered for himself on the ferry across from Bregenz in Austria to the German island of Lindau on Lake Constance (or Bodensee, as the German-speaking nations have it). This seemed to be an ideal refreshment after the two hour road trip from St Anton am Arlberg to Bregenz. However, Phespirit had miscalculated that the crossing would probably take between half an hour and an hour. In fact he had less than twenty minutes to scoff a vast cream-drenched sundae and chase it all down with a good drink. His spoon clinked around the empty glass just as he chugged into Lindau harbour .....

Phespirit arrived with his belly full of ice cream and wine but with his head thoroughly devoid of knowledge or pre-conceived ideas about the place. In his time on the island he learned that it takes barely an hour to dawdle around its perimeter, that it has good selection of old buildings in the middle, and that it's northern shore is just a couple of dozen metres from the German mainland. His full mooch from the harbour went:

• up and down the 33m high New Lighthouse on the west harbour wall;
• clockwise around the perimeter to the 'Bavarian Lion' on the east harbour wall;
• into the middle, passing the Lindavia Fountain to see the be-frescoed Old Town Hall;
• queuing for a cone of fish nuggets and chips from a Nordsee takeaway (all hail Nordsee!);
• eating fish and chips outside St Stephen's Church and the Minster "Of Our Lady" (ex-Convent);
• feeding the last of the chips to armfuls of brash pigeons (probably to the annoyance of local volk);
• looking inside the churches, then finishing up around the Thief's Tower and St Peter's Church.

And then leaving. Not much really, but Phespirit enjoyed doing it.