While I was living in Switzerland, I’d been wanting to go to Schaffhausen and visit the Rhinefalls for some time – I’d just been waiting for a good day for it and this day was apparently the one. I changed trains at Winterthur and according to my notes had half an hour there during which I felt I covered everything interesting, since art museums aren’t my thing. Maybe I’ll have another look at Winterthur and add it to the places to visit next time I’m there, see if 30s me can appreciate it more than 20s me did.
At Schaffhausen I managed in a ridiculous polyglot of English, French, GermanĀ and Spanish to buy a bus ticket from a very patient bus driver who surely should have realised pretty instantly what this obvious tourist wanted in his town – to see the falls. When we reached the stop, and there was a handful of us, we couldn’t figure out where to go so he got off his bus and pointed us in the right direction: follow the yellow footprints.
The waterfalls themselves are more like extended rapids – it’s a drop of only twenty-three metres, but over several sort of half-steps. All the same, the water is wild and braver folk than me were taking boat trips right the way out to a boulder in the middle of the swirling water. Maybe 30s me would be brave enough to do the boat trip.
When I’d had my fill in Rhinefalls I took the bus back into the town centre. Schaffhausen is surrounded by Germany on three sides and was bombed by the USA during WWII, apparently in error. There’s no sign of it now. Schaffhausen is a very decorative, almost stereotypical Germanic town and despite being cantonal capital, it’s very quiet and very low-key. Presumably because all the tourists are at the waterfalls rather than the town.
Such a beautiful spot š I visited with friends on the way back from a weekend in Bodensee during my year abroad, we took the boat out to the middle and I recall getting rather wet!