We crossed the border into Switzerland crammed, with our packs, into the back seat of the Ehrengrubers' Renault Twingo. Border crossing, again, proved to be uneventful as Markus cleverly held up only his and Franziska's Swiss passports (bright red with a big white cross) and kept ours out of the sight of the guard. (Just one hitch: Hannah spent the rest of our time in Switzerland fretting that we wouldn't be allowed to leave if we didn't have a proper entry stamp. No such difficulty awaited us.)
St. Gallen is a quiet little town. We stopped in for a look at their famous monastery, and, more importantly, for ice cream, but it was here in St. Gallen that we spotted a most impressive technological advance: the auto-sterilizing toilet. This fascinating device looked much like an ordinary toilet, but with four lights on the tank labeled "Please flush," "Sanitizing," "Ready," and "Out of order." When the "Please flush" light is lit, depressing the lever not only washes the bowl but causes the seat to rotate and pass beneath a device that presumably disinfects it. It was at this moment that I most wish we'd had a video camera. The seat chugged all the way around, slowly and meticulously, until it reached its starting point and the "Ready" light came on. Ah, progress!
After a post-ice cream stroll through the streets of St. Gallen we were back on our way to Zurich.
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