Day 0: Lindau, Germany

After a wonderful two days of visiting friends and reacquainting ourselves with Zürich we are off, first by train to Rorschach, then an hour and twenty minutes by lake boat to the small town of Lindau on the German shore of Lake Constance/Bodensee. (And yes, that’s all OK because we don’t officially start walking until tomorrow.)

But why start here? Well, we want to share the experience of pilgrims from Eastern Europe in earlier times of setting out on a short cut over the lake, the anticipation of an early morning crossing, arriving on the Swiss shore in Rorschach and taking the first steps of our trek in Switzerland.

This evening we are girding up our loins for the rigors ahead, starting with getting acclimated to the weather: we arrived to a thunderous downpour, which then settled into a steady hard rain. Already soaked, we found our hotel, then ventured back out to find the rain had stopped. So on to the nearby Münster “Unserer Lieben Frau” to get our credential stamped and fill our water bottles at the Neptunbrunnen.

Then to dinner and a taste of the local red before an early bedtime.

Tomorrow we begin!