Zurich; Saturday, 18 August, 2007

I left the hotel and headed to the Hauptbahnhof to catch the train to Sargans. The town itself is quite pretty, and has a large castle on a hill overlooking it, but the reason for coming here was purely for a connection into one of the strangest places on the planet. Sargans lies on the West bank of the Rhine, on the right lies the fourth smallest country in the world, and Europe’s only true Absolute monarchy (The Vatican is also an absolute monarchy – where the king/emperor/pope is head of state and head of the government – but nobody is (or at the very least should!) be born a citizen of the Vatican!), Liechtenstein.

The very name conjures up images of un-numbered bank accounts, which it has lots of – unlike the Swiss who were kind of forced to clean up their act in the 1980’s and 90’s everyone, except those not wishing the whole world to know their true worth (or at least their own nations tax inspectors), forgot about Liechtenstein so it has carried on. It is estimated that some Sf 125,000,000,000 (Sf 125 Billion, about £50 Billion) is in the vaults of the various banks in the country. Though it is quite difficult to call it a country when you consider its size. It’s barely 25Km from North to South, less than 10Km wide at its widest point, and a very large part of it is mountain! Though into this space it still manages to cram a massive financial industry, 35,000 people and a large amount of false teeth. For some reason that I could find no explanation for Liechtenstein is the world’s largest exporter of false teeth. I suppose someone had to be! And the final bit of trivia, that might never come is use. Liechtenstein, along with Afghanistan, are the only two countries in the world that are doubly landlocked, i.e. there are two countries between them and the sea.

I arrived in the Capital Village (I would use City, but that is more synonymous with great Metropolises like London, Paris or Madrid, not a place that you can walk the entire length of in less than 5 minutes), Vaduz just on lunchtime and had a brief wander around the centre. I joined the citytrain tour for a short tour around the centre and outskirts of Vaduz. The tour stops briefly below the castle so that you can get a view of the imposing building; it’s closed to the public as the Prince and his family still live there. The tour also goes past several of the vineyards that are scattered across the village centre; wine being one of the next major industries, after “doubly-landlocked-off-shore-banking” and false teeth.

Having been on the tour I had a look around the Liechtenstein Landesmuseum. The museum has exhibits on archaeology and the history of Liechtenstein. It also has a collection of stuffed animals, at least one of each kind of animal that lives in the country. Given how well presented and fresh the animals looked I had the distinct feeling that these were ancient museum pieces which where killed in a different time when people accepted this, rather that these might have still been alive not that long ago and were killed for the museum, I could well be wrong, but as there were no signs in English and nothing obvious in German about the animals, and they were in a part of the museum which is almost brand new…

I left the museum and wandered back to the bus station where I picked up the bus to Malbun on the South Easter side of the country. The journey up to Malbun is spectacular as you climb up hairpin bend roads into the mountains. Just before Steg the road moves into the mountains, through a tunnel and out the other side before climbing the last part into Malbun. The village itself is very pretty, in the end of a valley that looks every part the geography textbook glacial valley. But the main reason for coming here is the ski lift. Open all year round it zips you up to the top of the Sareiserjoch Mountain for views across the Alps and down into Austria. There is also a very nice restaurant with a sun terrace, which today was living up to its name, next to the summit station where I stopped for a bite to eat.

I caught the lift back down to the bottom in time to catch the bus halfway back to Vaduz, and halfway down the mountain as well, to the village of Triesenberg. From here there are views across to the other border, that with Switzerland. This one is far easier to make out. Mountains on either side line a wide valley bottom, along the middle of which runs the river Rhine, not that far from it’s source, and still a long way from it’s might as it powers through industrial Western Germany. This is the natural border of Switzerland and Liechtenstein and it is possibly one of the world’s most beautiful borders.

I had 35 minutes to wait for the bus back down into Vaduz, where I would then have another 25 minute wait for the bus back to Sargans and Zurich. I then spied a “Wanderweg” sign (signed walking route) pointing to Vaduz, 1hour. I decided that it might be nicer to walk back down the mountain into Vaduz than catch the bus.

The route initially is along roads, but soon becomes a farm track, and even this eventually peters out into a small footpath down through woods. After about 2Km of the path it emerges back onto a road, a couple of hundred meters up from Vaduz castle. You continue to walk along the road, right past the main entrance to the Princes home (no police, or security guards, just lots of signs saying private) and a bit further down you can look up the road to a stunning view of the castle in full. The footpath then comes away from the road again and descends down into the centre of town. I arrived back at the bus stop with about 5 minutes to spare before the bus, almost exactly one hour after leaving Triesenberg.

I caught the bus back to Sargans and the train back to Zurich, which with the ruthless efficiency of the Swiss transport network connect with each other with a couple of minutes to spare so that you can walk gently over to the platform, but still not have long to wait. I left the station in Zurich and had a brief wander around the city centre in the fading light, before heading back to the hotel for a bit to eat and an early night as I wanted to be out early on Sunday.