I've been living in Zuerich since the end of April this year, and with just a couple of weekends left before I return to my home in London, I decided to take a day trip to the principality of Liechtenstein, which is sandwiched between Switzerland and Austria; and thus only one of two double landlocked countries, the other is Uzbekistan. I took a train from Zuerich HB station to Sargan. From Sargan it's just a 20 minute bus journey to Vaduz (pronounced Vaduetz in English). The tiny town centre was almost empty on the gray, wet and fairly miserable day that I had chosen to visit on.

I was surprised to find a fair amount of culture and activity inside the Kunstmuseum in the town centre, a smooth cubic black stone building, that was bustling with people listening to various music whilst enjoying upmarket sushi in a fairly swish setting reminiscent of the Tate Modern's interior. The exhibits were just as peculiar as the Tate Modern as well, surely they could have exhibited some local painter or photographer. I was thoroughly disappointed with the rolled steel plating wrapped in a military blanket exhibit, not cool; the thousand empty shot glasses with a small metal plate on top was equally un-inspiring. After a small lunch at the bar I walked up to the castle via a small footpath. The castle is still the prince's official residence and home, and therefore no visits are permitted. You might wonder from my photo's why I have not captured a landscape shot of it's entirety, the reason is that a huge yellow crane and scaffold rather spoilt the view. Here is a picture of the castle if you are intrigued however.

After walking down from the castle into the town, I decided to take a bus to a point marked on the small map, that I had obtained from foyer of the shut on Sunday's, tourist office. If the office had been open I would have paid the 2 Swiss Francs for a Souvenir Passport stamp. The foldout map showed a historical point of interest marked "Russian monument" and something about World War 2, with a fantastic view of Switzerland, Austrian and the Liechtenstein border. I managed to get on a bus to Schellenberg, which took about 25 minutes and took my to the other end of Liechtenstein. Already in the 4 hours I had been in country I had traveled it's entire length. I got off the bus in a tiny hamlet, and I couldn't see another person or shop open anywhere. I used the map and the odd signpost to walk through the woodland track towards the Austrian border. I reached another hamlet called Hinterer Schellenberg, and asked a lady for directions to the monument; she laughed and said that it was just a stone, I found out that it was just a German stone as well. A friend of mine at work Tobi translated it for me (he's a translator by trade so I know it's accurate), and I have created a wikipedia entry.

I felt a little apprehensive, I was a long way from anywhere, it was heavily raining and was approaching late afternoon and sun was obviously getting low in the sky. I decided to walk on a bit further though and within 100m I found the unmanned border post, I found this to be a real novelty, and decided to walk down into Austria for the sake of it. I found that this border post was also un-manned, suddenly I had visited 3 countries in a day. After some photo's I was fortunate to find a bus stop in Hinterer which saved me having to walk through the woods in the fading daylight. The buses in Liechtenstein are run by the Swiss, and of course run to the second which I was very pleased with, and I didn't have to wait more than a couple of minutes, which I found remarkable for a Sunday in a small and largely deserted hamlet. This was rather good luck though with only 1 bus every hour or so. From Vaduz I went straight onto Sargan and jumped on a train back to Zuerich. It was a strange day, in the world's smallest German speaking country, which has the second highest quality of living anywhere in the world (according to the UN) after Switzerland of course.