A labrador outruns its master on the other side of the river, getting in and out of the morning shadows sweeping the meadow. Treetops and the gabled roofs of ancient houses reflect in the blue-green waters. An idyllic European scene plays out on the shores of the Rhine. I follow its course.
I boarded a train to this old Swiss town just across the German border because of its proximity to Rhine fall. The river leaps 23 metres near Schaffhausen to form Europe’s largest waterfall. At the fall, the river is about 150 metres wide. And there I was, on a silly search for the superlative in Switzerland. At the railway station, I looked up a map and found I could trace the river a few streets away and then follow it until the fall. No GPS, no Google Maps, not even a phone. The old-fashioned treasure hunt from map to map and sign post to sign post. That works in Europe. Borders are a blur here. The canton of Schaffhausen juts out to the southern German state of Baden-Württemberg. In fact there is a German town, Büsingen, trapped inside the Swiss canton. The Americans had bombed the canton during the World War II despite the Swiss neutrality. They later blamed it on navigational error and offered reparations.
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