merpmonde - the finer details

Stein am Rhein is a picturesque town in two senses. It is, as shown in the top photo, genuinely wonderful to look at from some angles, but it is also a town with lots of pictures on the buildings. Colourful trompe-l'oeil, artistic representations of episodes of urban life or other symbols, timber frames and ornate oriels are everywhere on the delightful main square.

Our next stop is Diessenhofen (56 km), where we find a common feature of previous episodes of the Hochrhein series: a border bridge between Switzerland and Germany. Like at Säckingen, this one is largely made of wood, but unlike others we'd seen previously, it does not connect two villages with the same name (on the German side it's Gailingen), and cars are allowed on it, which can make it not the most pleasant crossing.

The Swiss railway line doesn't follow the Rhine very closely from here, so what I did last week was catch a boat to Büsingen (62 km), a German exclave, which means it is German territory surrounded by Switzerland - and its logo says so much! I would have hiked from Diessenhofen to Schaffhausen, but I'm glad I didn't because it was getting very hot, and the edge of the Rhine didn't seem that interesting. In fact, Büsingen was a bit of a disappointment. I didn't find much there, though I might not have been looking in the right places, and the walk was a very exposed affair, not immediately along the river.

The border back into Switzerland is intangible but boy, can you tell you've changed country! The path is back along the river and you've got trees! What's more, Schaffhausen (67 km) and the Munot forteress are in sight.

We've now completed the connection between the Hochrhein and the Bodensee, and, when it comes to purely train connections around the Untersee, the route is Radolfzell > Konstanz > Stein am Rhein > Schaffhausen > Singen > Radolfzell. The link is to our numerous posts on Singen, and there's not a lot to talk about outside Singen on that last leg as far as I can tell, so I'm considering this circuit done. Around the Untersee by local train is 96 km, but a lot of it is away from the lake. In fact, at the time of writing, completing the circuit by train is impossible as the bridge between Feuerthalen and Schaffhausen is closed for works, but I did ride it in April.

I'm under the impression that there's not much going on from here on out, the area is rather residential, though I didn't stop to check anything out either. Maybe another time. Above, we've just passed Bottinghofen (4 km), with the German Bodanrück peninsula in the background.

We've reached Kreuzlingen Hafen (1 km), from where some trains cross the border and terminate at Konstanz. We can also get off and walk through the park, where the border is materialised by a line of abstract statues representing the tarot major arcana - here, Sun and Moon.

And that concludes the Bodenseegürtelbahn, or the railway line that goes around the Obersee, for a total of 173 km. We'll get to operations and trains in service another time, but for now, we've got another lake to tour - the Untersee! For this circuit, we start at Radolfzell and go down to Konstanz (20 km), so part 1 in reverse. Kreuzlingen is a triangle junction, with the Swiss trains from Romanshorn not going to Konstanz continuing straight on to Kreuzlingen station (21 km).

The highlight of the Swiss shore of the Untersee is Arenenberg, served by Mannenbach-Salenstein (30 km), where a short climb will take you to a 19th-century estate previously owned by the Bonaparte family, in exile from 1815. Emperor Napoleon III occasionally returned to this place. I feel the château itself isn't very special, but the view of the Untersee, with the German Höri and Reichenau sides visible opposite, as well as the park and fields around the estate are worth the visit, before reaching Stein am Rhein (47 km), which we'll get into next time.

With plenty of interesting buildings, trompe-l'oeil facades and sculpted oriels, Rorschach (34 km) is the visual experience its name suggests, though the Rorschach inkblot tests were named after Hermann Rorschach, not the town. That said, Mr Rorschach lived not all that far from here, having studied in Schaffhausen and died at Herisau.

But the most stunning views of this side of the lake, in my opinion, can be found at Arbon (27 km). From the Eastern edge of the town, we get a panorama of neighbouring Steinach, with lots of water birds grouping and nesting on the artificial island in the foreground, and the Austrian Alps standing in the background.

A stroll through the charming historical centre later gets us to the Seepark on the Western side, with a clear view of our next stop, Romanshorn. More on that next time (Friday, I will be skipping a post on Tuesday), but until then, we complete our walk along the lake shore in Arbon with the Seemoosriet, which, like the zone around the island in the earlier view, and places like Mettnau at Radolfzell (haven't been yet) or the shore between Nonnenhorn and Wasserburg, is a restricted nature reserve.

The waterfront offers some great panoramas, with Lindau in the background opposite, though the Swiss shore is hidden by the extensions of the canalised Rhine.

Approaching the station, we can see this timber-framed restaurant contrasting with the Seebühne open-air theatre behind it. This runs to the same principles as the open-air theatre in Hornberg, just with the lake as a backdrop, and it is, I feel, quite a bit bigger. Like the theatre in Hornberg, it is possible to walk in on non-play days.

From the restaurant, we get the opposite view, with the Pfänder mountain and ropeway dominating the landscape.

The summit of the Pfänder is a hive of activities for another time, though one of these is paragliding, with flyers aiming for the lake shore to land.

After that, we arrive at the main town on the short stretch of the Austrian Bodensee shore: Bregenz (113 km). Bear with me for a moment, because I suggest we change metric here, from distance from Konstanz along the North shore, to distance to Konstanz along the South shore. So again, that's Bregenz (60 km to Konstanz - and that's the distance remaining to complete the tour of the largest lake, the Obersee).

Bregenz is the capital of the Austrian Land (state) of Vorarlberg, and it has a lot to offer, so here are just a couple of views of the histrocial Oberstadt, or Upper Town, with the Martinsturm and a view of St Gallus Church. The shores of the lake are also lovely, and then there's the cable car up to the Pfänder mountain, from where the aerial shot of Lindau from a previous post was taken. All of these deserve their own posts, in good time.

We board another train for the short hop to the Swiss border. Moving inland slightly, we go through Hard (55 km) and this peculiar house with tower, which is home to the town history and textile museum. The last stop in Austria is Lustenau (50 km), where we can wander along the Rhine as it flows before entering the lake, with the Alps from whence it came in the background. This section of the river is known as - wait for it - the Alpenrhein.

Just 15 km, and that's all for Austria on the Bodensee. Our train terminates at St. Margrethen (47 km), and is seen below on the left about to turn around back to Bregenz, while the Munich to Zürich EuroCity Express, which followed us in, makes its stop.

The Austrian Vorarlberg line was extended to Lindau in 1872, and the two lines meet at a junction at the North end of the embankment. Being the shore of the lake, a road naturally runs across, and this means we have a four-track-wide level crossing. But it's more complex than that: the crossing is also a crossroads, with a street arriving smack in the middle of the railway junction (on the left in the picture below). For this reason, the crossing requires human supervision, from the hut in the picture above, and is the first example of a manually operated crossing that I can remember seeing.

When the signal is given to the attendants, they start by ringing the warning bells slowly, before picking up speed and the barriers coming down once the crossing is clear. Another clue for a lack of automation is simply how far ahead the barriers come down. While it's no Higashi-Yodogawa (link to a video showing the crossing closed for up to 40 minutes at a time, though this crossing was re-designed in 2019 and is no longer the bottleneck it once was), it's still signposted that you might be better off using an alternate route!

Shorter barrier closing times to Lindau-Insel left. Waiting times of up to 15 minutes here!

The Insel embankment junction is one corner of the Lindau triangle, linking Insel, Reutin and Aeschach stations. Express trains like the EuroCity Express between Munich and Zürich skip Insel, while other regional trains start and Reutin, turn around and Insel and continue through Aeschach towards Kempten. Trains from Friedrichshafen in Germany, Bludenz in Austria or Romanshorn in Switzerland, will typically terminate at Insel, meaning that one can spot trains from three countries on the embankment!

Medieval remnants still stand, though much of the castle has been rebuilt over the centuries, morphing from a fortified dungeon to a stately residence. When the Protestants took over the village church, the lords had a chapel built in the castle, featuring the above stained glass displaying the coat of arms of the Empire and the blue, white and blue of Fénétrange.

The castle also features an unusual, for the time, pillar-less and anti-clockwise spiral staircase. The lack of a pillar thus gave right-handed soldiers a huge advantage in defence, as they could swing right with no obstruction.

From here, the Alps come firmly into view on the Swiss side of the lake, and the views become spectacular with the contrast. After Kressbronn (92 km), we also change Land, moving out of Baden-Württemberg. Nonnenhorn (94 km) is the first stop in Bavaria, and a good place to get off to walk along the lake to Wasserburg (96 km) and its picturesque peninsula, like a mini-Reichenau.

The end of this line is on the island of Lindau, Lindau-Insel (102 km), which I showed views of in the post immediately after my trip. The town deserves several posts to be honest, but as part of this series, you can expect a very geeky one on the Aeschach-Insel-Reutin rail triangle soon.

Unteruhldingen (9 km from Überlingen) has a closed station, which had me thinking that maybe there used to be a shore line. But that's not the case: this was just a short 2.5 km branch line that ended here, and closed in 1950.

Unteruhldingen's star attraction is the Pfahlbautenmuseum, a reconstruction of prehistoric stilt houses. An actual archaeological site is located a few hundred metres further along, but first, it's obviously protected and a UNESCO-listed site, and second, you won't see anything from above the surface. All that's actually left of the houses are the bases of some stilts, with some artefacts being found every now and then during dives.

The next stop is Meersburg (13 km), which has a lot to offer. Two castles no less, one Medieval, one Baroque opened in 1750, a cracking view from the Mariä-Heimsuchung church, a bustling waterfront and charming historical streets, in both the upper and lower towns.

Meersburg probably deserves a full post to itself. I'm not promising it just yet, I should probably mix up the posts a bit, the idea was to spread the Bodensee tour so it wouldn't monopolise the blog for a month... Meanwhile, for people travelling on the Bodensee Ticket, Meersburg provides one of the two ferry routes included on the pass, back to Konstanz.

There are a lot of decorated buildings in the town centre. This one makes a note of the times it burned down or was bombed (13 May 1634 and 25 April 1945), with the prayer

Vor Krankheit Feuer und Beschuss bewahr mein Haus, Sankt Luzius Protect my house, Saint Lucius, against disease, fire and shelling

The outdoor season on the lake starts late April, so in mid-April, preparations were in full swing. The pedalos are coming out, including... some with slides on them?!

I thought I recognised this Fasnacht carnival character from Oberkirch, as we had seen some whip-wielding Narren there this year. But they were not Überlinger Hänsele, seen on this statue; they were from Markdorf, which isn't far away, but I'm sure they'd insist, it's not Überlingen.

The following stop is Sipplingen (40 km), where I felt a similar atmosphere to Allensbach in my previous post: a more easy-going place than the busier, more touristy towns nearby, a place to relax and just take in the views of the lake. The train gets spectacularly close to the water on this stretch, possibly the closest of the entire circuit.

We continue into Überlingen (46 km), a place I had only previously heard of as the skies above were the site of a tragic mid-air collision between a passenger jet and a freight plane in 2002. While I considered walking out to the memorial, I found the town had plenty to offer, so the next post will go into some details.

According to the association's website, the boat is still functional, and did a couple of tourist outings in 2025. However, it spent most of the summer moored near the Imperia statue serving as a floating café - not cheap, but certainly a unique setting. So while the ferry wasn't in port in April, I expect it'll be back for the high season. I don't know where it is in the mean time...

Before continuing, let's have a quick look at the map for the trip we're embarking on. Starting in Konstanz, we head North along the shore of the Untersee, the western smaller half of the Bodensee. At Radolfzell, we'll branch off to start the tour of the eastern larger Obersee, back round to Konstanz through Austria's far West and Switzerland. After that, we'll tour the Untersee.

A first stop on the route would be Reichenau (6 km), the station that sits on the road to Reichenau island and its famous church, via a bus connection. However, I stopped at Allensbach (11 km), which is a village with a view of Reichenau, and, I found, a really nice atmosphere. Much calmer than the bustling Konstanz and not touristy like Reichenau, the lake shore seemed to be occupied by locals: children enjoying the play area, friends playing boccia (similar to bowls or pétanque), a couple sitting on the jetty...

Continuing along the lake, we reach Radolfzell (20 km), which was my first base on the tour. When coming in on the Schwarzwaldbahn from Karlsruhe, this is the first station directly by the lake. It has a charming historic centre, a peninsula apparently worth walking around (maybe next time), and is a prime location for sunsets on the Untersee.