Lichtenstein

We have had good luck with small countries over the years--the Vatican is amazing, and our visit to San Marino was one of the highlights of our 2023 trip to Europe. So we were excited to take the chance to spend a day in Lichtenstein on a day trip from Innsbruck. So we got up early, hopped on a train for two hours to Feldkirch, Austria, then took a bus for 45 minutes down to Vaduz.

Immediately we ran into an issue. It was hot. Not outrageously hot, but hot enough to be uncomfortable in the sun amidst all the stone buildings. The town itself is rather picturesque, spread out on a foothill near the headwaters of the Rhine. The prince still lives in the castle above town. The place appears quite prosperous, given the high prices in Swiss Francs.

We were hungry, so we popped into a restaurant for lunch. Afterward, we walked over to the road train, which seems to be the main activity for tourists. It drove us around town for 40 minutes and described the castle, the form of government, the football stadium, and the assembly building, then dropped us back at the start.

Lunch in Vaduz.

Road train around town!

The state Assembly.

After the road train, we decided to try a couple of museums. There is a well-regarded modern art museum in town, but we were interested in the history of the place so we skipped that. Instead, we popped into the Treasury, which holds the valuables of the state. Unfortunately, those weren't much--a replica of the prince's crown, a large Faberge egg (which is maybe exciting for people into that kind of thing), and various other trinkets and jewels. 

Next up was the national museum, which we hoped would have a lot of history and explain the uniqueness of the country (San Marino had an excellent museum explaining its history). And Lichtenstein HAS an interesting history--after picking the right side during a Habsburg political dispute in the 1600s, the area was raised to a principality and ruled directly from the emperor, with no feudal lords in between. After the Napoleonic wars triggered the dissolution of the empire, Lichtenstein had no one to report up to. They quickly made nice with the Swiss, made good decisions to stay out of the mess of the world wars, and remain a principality to the present day.

But we learned none of this in the museum. First, it was a national museum, and included animals, clothing, and archaeology as well as history. Second, the exhibits were all in German, without an English translation. You can get by translating a few blurbs using Google Translate, but this quickly becomes tedious when you don't know exactly what you are looking for. We ran through the whole museum, and the special exhibition on the Nazi era (and how Lichtenstein avoided annexation or invasion) was quite interesting, but we learned much less than we hoped.

After the museum failures, we decided to do something fun to fill the time before our 7 PM return train, so we wandered over to a mini golf course that was free with our day pass. It was fun, still very hot, but helped pass the time pleasantly. One last funny moment happened when we got on the train back to Innsbruck and found an old train with no air conditioning--so we headed off at 90 kph with windows open and hair blowing in the wind.

The day wasn't a failure, we saw what is there, it was fine, but it was not the highlight of our trip the way that we'd hoped. On to Salzburg and Vienna next!