Luxury escorts in Schaffhausen

Schaffhausen grew rich on the river that stops here: the Rhine Falls, Europe's largest, forced every cargo ashore for portage, and the merchants' gratitude is still legible in the old town's hundred and seventy oriel windows and painted facades. The Munot fortress rings its vineyard hill above the roofs, and the town below remains what it was — prosperous, compact, unhurried, and largely spared the tourist volume of the lakes.

The modern money is precision: IWC has made its watches beside the Rhine since 1868, and its museum, manufacture visits and industry calendar bring a steady traffic of collectors and executives who make up much of our Schaffhausen diary. The engagement that suits the town is a composed one — dinner in a guild-house dining room or at the Fischerzunft on the riverbank, the falls floodlit afterward, perhaps a Blauburgunder tasting in the Klettgau villages whose pinot is the region's quiet pride. Companions here speak German and English; Zurich is forty minutes away, and an engagement can begin there and end above the river.