Liechtenstein Blurb

 It is Sunday tomorrow and no work is to be done outside – so basically we have a day off.  We will see what the morning brings but may travel into the next country Liechtenstein.  It is the fourth smallest country in Europe and sixth smallest in the world.  It is 6km across by about 25km long, has a capital, a ski field, three museums and of course it will have at least one church!  It is long been said it is a money laundering country and due to its low business taxes it has 8000 registered companies and about   35,500 population.  The Liechtenstein family invented the country in 1712, and it got its independence in 1866 – the only country in the world to be named after the purchasing family.  It is still governed by an iron-willed monarch who lives in a Gothic castle on one of the high jaggered rock faces.  It is also the world’s largest producer of dentures – yep it is !  So if anyone’s in the market for some new pearly whites here is the place to come. 

Yep we are off to Liechtenstein! We walked to Buchs, about - 2o minutes then  caught the bus to Vaduz the capital , then decided to stay on the bus  to see what we could see – and that was a whole lot of snow, old buildings, churches and up to the minute new houses, castles and of course the Prince’s castle too.  We stayed on the bus to the end which was Sargens were we got off and had some lunch then caught a train for a change back in Sevelen, where it was our intention to catch a bus to Vaduz, but being Sunday it didn’t run, so we walked the 1.5 hours crossing the Rhine and into Vaduz in the freezing cold, it was chilling to the bone.  There we caught a bus up to Malbun a ski field at about 2090m.  It was a real climb for the bus as the steep road  wound around the mountain face in between houses and farms.  You could look out the bus window and almost straight down to the Rhine.  Once at the top, it flattened out a little, we went through the tunnel at the top and then into the ski field area.  The sky was blue, sun was shining – it was awesome!  Everywhere you looked there were people skiing or walking about, there seemed to be numerous lifts and big runs down.  There were holiday apartments scattered in the lower parts – sort of up to top of the rock garden at Whakapapa.  A cafe had music playing and people out sitting drinking hot drinks and beers.  Really neat happy environment – made us quite jealous that we never had time or $$’s to ski there.  After awhile we headed back down the mountain and changed buses again and headed towards Kilkirch, another good touristy spot to visit.  Unfortunately by the time we got there it was getting pretty late and we never saw much, just a whole lot of random people wearing weird clothes – we found out later that they must have been to a festival.  Kilkirch is in Austria.  We pretty much headed back into Vaduz and then back across the Rhine and home to Switzerland.

How bizarre – three countries in one day – Switzerland, Liechtenstien and Austria.  Also found out when we got home our ticket never covered the trains at all – so lucky for us the ticket controller never came on board = we would have made his day!  Not sure what the fine would have been but they are not very sympathetic about those things.