Date and Time of Visit: September 12, 2017, approximately 5:00 p.m.
This is the third beautiful village in German-speaking Switzerland. By the way, Switzerland is bordered by France, Italy, Austria and Germany, but what forms the border with Germany? Mountains? No, it’s actually the Rhine River. The Rhine River. It is the upstream region of the Rhine River. The Rhine is a river that flows out of Lake Constance on the border between Germany and Switzerland.
The Upper Rhine River is a very atmospheric place and one of my favorite parts of the European countryside. I’ve blogged before about my visit to a German enclave in Switzerland in this area.
Eglisau is a very beautiful village on the upper Rhine River. It is the second village I visited after Belmgarten which I introduced last time. What is impressive is the Rhine River and the vineyards behind the village. After all, the Rhine is a major wine-growing river.
The village is located in the northern part of Zurich, along the Rhine River, so it is almost in Germany. But if you look at the map in detail, you will see that only the area of Eglisseau is in Swiss territory even on the north side of the Rhine. It seems to be a little irregular here. I wonder if it’s a similar situation to the enclave of Büsingen (many European enclaves are caused by the Catholicism or Protestantism of their lords after the Reformation).
We arrived at Egliseau at around 6 pm, I think. This is the third village we visited on the first day of our tour of the most beautiful villages in Switzerland. This is the first time to pay for parking. But we ran out of change! Fortunately, there was a supermarket right in front of the parking lot, so I went shopping and got some change. 2 CHF per hour, I thought it was a bit expensive. It seems that German-speaking countries are expensive.
The village itself is very small. Like the town of Bremgarden, which I want to visit before this one, there was a clock tower, but the scale was smaller here, and the main street of the village was almost empty, as you can see in the picture. And the walk around the village was really small, about 100 meters radius around this square. But this is about right.
Then we went to the vineyards behind the impressive village. There are stairs inside so we could go to the top of the vineyard. The hill was surprisingly steep.
Finally, we went to the other side of the river and took pictures of the village. I went to the other shore by car once I got in the car because the time of the parking lot was about to pass one hour. This is free and can be parked on the street. I thought it was good to park here from the beginning.
The visit of the first day of the beautiful village tour is over. As we had entered Switzerland at once from the French side, the fatigue of this day was at its peak. On this day, we stayed in a Swiss town called « Stein am Rhein » which is also located along the Rhine River.
