The Grand Dukes Castle

There's really not much to say about Liechtenstein, unless you’re into tax evasion, and I can’t say I’m at that level yet.. I visited on a day trip from Zurich, Switzerland, with a train through the alpine valleys. In Liechtenstein, I took the bus (€2) into Vaduz. Vaduz is like any other alpine town with 15000 people - clean, quiet, with incredible surroundings. I saw a few statues, one of a fat lady with three kids looking up her skirt, for some reason, and got my passport stamped. Probably shouldn’t have got it stamped, immigration officials that know their stuff can decide the passport is invalid because of certain stamps, and refuse entry, but, be grand. The Grand Dukes Castle, the Grand Duke is Liechtenstein's monarch, overlooks Vaduz. It’s a nice, relatively sober castle, more of a keep really. I couldn’t find any toilets in Vaduz itself, and had hoped I could find one on the walk above the castle, but no luck. Obviously the castle itself is closed to visitors, so no luck there. But there was a nice obscure side alley under one of the walls.

Territory marked, I walked back into Vaduz, bought, wrote, and sent a postcard. Mondays in Vaduz leave a little to be desired. I’d a look at the Franz Josef monument on the walk up - I didn’t realise that the house of Liechtenstein and Hapsburgs of Austria were originally distinctly related, or that the Liechtensteins (The country is named after the family, a la Saudi Arabia) married into the Hapsburgs in the 1900s.Liecthenstein castle actually exists, but it’s not in Liechtenstein, it’s just south of Vienna. As it turns out, the Liechtenstein's were fairly influential in Central European politics until the end of the Holy Roman Empire during the Napoleonic wars, although they didn’t actually live or even visit Liechtenstein for the first hundred years, they only bought the land to become official sovereigns within the empire. The monarchs of Liechtenstein moved full time to the country after World War 1, and from then on took more of an interest (Having lost their holdings in Czechia, and beyond).

After that fun little historical detour, I decided to take the bus to the second city of the country, the village of Balzers, where I visited another castle, Berg Gutenberg. There wasn’t a lot happening at this Berg either. I’d an hour to kill, so I did some calisthetics around the castle, staying warm, and hopped back on the bus to Switzerland. Liechtenstein. Great for money laundering, poor for craic. But at least the views are nice.