Switzerland

Holidays by Destination Europe Switzerland The Northeast 

Ostschweiz

Known as eastern Switzerland, the area is much less touristy than the better known parts, extending to Lake Constance (Bodensee) in a relatively flat landscape.

Appenzellerland is genuinely rural with traditional farming and cooking, plus hill walking country. If you want to know more, the village of Stein has a folk museum, which covers for example folk art, plus regular exhibitions of weaving or traditional musical instruments. Next door is a show dairy where you can watch cheesemaking in the mornings.

The main centre is St Gallen with another of those fine old town centres, a giant cathedral with late baroque interior, and a World Heritage Site rococo library next door, one of the oldest in Europe with books and manuscripts dating back to the Middle Ages, including more Irish manuscripts than in Dublin. Also typical of the town are carved oriel windows.

North of St Gallen is Lake Constance/Bodensee, bordered also by Germany and Austria, naturally explorable by boat, but without the mountain backdrop of most competing waters and therefore less protected from wind and rough weather. Rorschach is probably one of the better resorts if you want to stay.

Near Schaffhausen, another attractive medieval town, are the Rhine Falls, the largest waterfall in Europe where in summer around 600 cubic metres per second drop 23 metres. It's very touristy but the closer, southern side is probably the better.

In Schaffhausen itself worth looking for is the Zum Ochsen house with an oriel window showing in the five panels a figure of a women embodying the five senses (the children can guess them). At the city's northern gate the tower bears a panel of a boy with pig dodging traffic and an inscription which reads Silly people should keep their eyes open, ie, watch out for traffic. At the Zum Ritter house the fresco of knightly virtues is described as one of the most significant Renaissance ones to survive north of the Alps. The Munot circular fortress includes one of Europe's three internal spiral ramps. Next to the cathedral is Switzerland's largest cloister and a recreated medieval herb garden, while the Hallen fur Neue Kunst has a good collection of art from the ‘60s on.

Stein am Rhein is a medieval village known for 16th century frescoes on the houses, best seen after trippers leave, in the evening. The Museum Lindwurm in a manor house dating back to the 13th century, gives a good feel of bourgeois life in the 19th.