The smallest country I'd ever been to was Bahrain. Living in the Geneva area, I'd often glanced across Switzerland on a map and been intrigued by Liechtenstein lying on the other side of it. It's a country known for being a tax haven, being extremely small, and having an extraordinarily wealthy prince. Tantalisingly, it's also known for producing rare stamps for sale to collectors, and is apparently the world's largest producer of false teeth.
Cole had expressed an interest in European country-bashing and when he and Tom (see Georgia and Armenia) landed in our little corner of Europe, a trip to Liechtenstein was on the cards. We'd go through three countries in one day (Cole, living in Vancouver, would have to do a day return to Mexico to accomplish this back home - Tom would have to sail to Indonesia via Papua New Guinea). We'd borrowed my parents trusty old car ("are you sure ? I wouldn't take this any further than Lyon, it would break down...") for the trip. And at 10.30am, a mere 2 hours later than planned, we hit the road.
...and our intrigued tourists
Driving through Switzerland is not particularly exciting - the more beautiful, mountainous regions of the Valais and Graubunden are away to the south and our highway took us along the plans through the picturesque town of Bern and the reputedly dreary city of Zurich, famous for being full of banks and also for being voted the second most boring city in Europeto travel to by an online survey. The winner of the survey's most boring city award was Brussels, which I happen to find quite a fun place to be, so I'm not sure if Zurich is that bad. However, if it beat Geneva into the list as the Swiss representative, it must be pretty terrible. In any case, we didn't stop there. We did, however, want to stop somewhere. And this was chosen on the strength of the comedy of the name as well as its proximity to the motorway. Several towns called Egg were considered (as were offshoots named Wildegg and Handegg, amongst others), as was the Bern suburb of Wankdorf, but Wangen an der Aare won out. We pulled off and wandered around.
Tourists flock to Wangen
It turned out to be a delightful little place - a bizarre-looking wooden covered bridge led us from the motorway to a small car park where we were immediately swamped with armed soldiers. This being Switzerland, though, these guys were assembling for their regular military service and trotted off down the road, weapons strapped around their backs. Quite why Switzerland has compulsory military service every year when it is neutral and has not been involved in a war since the late Jurassic period I cannot work out, but at least it gives the residents of small towns like Wangen something to do over the weekend.
We pushed on and eventually crossed a small bridge over the Rhine, went past a fluttering blue and red flag and that was it. Not only were we in Liechtenstein, but we were in Vaduz, probably the least imposing capital I have ever seen. But it's also the smallest capital I've ever been to, so that's fair enough. Our plan to get a bus up to Malbun, from where we could walk across the country back to Vaduz, hit a snag when we rather amateurishly waited on the wrong side of the road.
Foreground: Delighted tourists in the Co-op supermarket car park. Background: Humble abode of the prince of Liechtenstein
The next bus would come in an hour, which meant we'd be walking in the dark half of the time. Maybe it could wait until next time. We hopped back into the trusty car, struggled up the hill to Malbun, looked around and then found a spot from which we could admire half of the country as well as a decent chunk of Switzerland over the river Rhine. From here, we ate the sandwiches we'd put together in the car and drank the Liechtenstein Brauhaus beer we'd got in Vaduz.
The Xsara struggles up Liechtenstein's steep inclines, with M's gentle encouragement...
After watching the sun go down from our impressive vantage point, we realised we had another 5 hour drive to get back home. I don't have a license, Cole's is expired and Tom didn't fancy driving on the "wrong" side of the road for fear or landing the car somewhere undesirable and so M, the soldier at the wheel, took us back across the Rhine from whence we had come.
It's worth saying that I'd like to come back to Liechtenstein for slightly longer. We left later than we thought, the drive took longer than we thought, and we probably spent about 2 hours in the country overall, which is quite a bit less than we'd planned.Nonetheless, not only is the country rather small (at 160 square kilometres, it would fit nearly 8 times into New York City and it is also narrower than the Congo river) but it also slightly impenetrable. Its border with Austria is largely inaccessible due to high mountains and the only road into Austria goes right in the north. After Malbun, the road peters out and the border is reachable only along footpaths. I'd imagine that one would probably run out of things to do there after a short while.
Still, it's a beautiful little place and well worth a visit for someone who has a spare day or two, and the beer is surprisingly tasty. Just make sure that you get to the bus on time. And the trusty old car CAN go further than Lyon.
