Liechtenstein, Europe's slutty aunt

In the family Europe, Liechtenstein would be the rich, single and somewhat slutty aunt, who's lovely to her nieces but regularly gives the rest of the relatives the slap.

Its scenic capital Vaduz is home to, ummm, 5000 inhabitants. (so you could fit 3200 Vaduzs in Cairo). Apparently half of those sell stamps to tourists and the other half works in one of the dozens of banks and money laundries - sorry, I meant assets managements funds.

Me and 96% of the population of Vaduz.

It's ridiculously expensive, significantly more than Zurich it felt to me.
The main advice I found about Liechtenstein on travel websites was a version or another of "don't go unless it's on your way between Switzerland and Austria or if you want to go to say that you've been there".

Yep. *raises hand*. Second category would be me, thank you very much - that and i am less than an hour away by train. So i went for a short day-trip.

I ask the woman at the tourist office how she felt about people only going to Liechtenstein because no one knows what the fuck this Liechtenstein is; she gives me a nasty look and mumbles that "no one knows about the countries they're going to anyway", so i rephrase.

"I have a friend in San Marino who tells me he's upset that tourists just go because it's a micro-country and that they just want to get their passport stamped, even though there are plenty of beautiful things there. Do you feel the same about people who come here?"

She speaks about the castle (umm, yeah), the scenery (not very different from that in Switzerland or Austria, if not inferior), and the fact that they have a Prince - "it's a little like a fairy tale, you see".

Oh I see. The Prince of Liechtenstein is Western Europe's last absolute monarchy - a few years ago, the Prince emotionally blackmailed the people (he threatened to leave the country and move to Austria - if a referendum didn't grant him the right to hire and fire governments at will; he also had the right to dissolve the parliament and call for elections. He was granted his wish, which makes him effectively as powerful as his fellow Gulf princes.

Not exactly fairy tale material, I guess.

I walked around town; we had a beautiful weather. Stopping to take photos of the flag hanging here and there, which I found very amusing in itself.

I hiked up to the Prince's castle - it's a half-hour hike - and got to what was a 12th century hamlet that has been renovated and expanded several times.
It is, for all intents and purposes, architecturally ugly as fuck, unless you're planning on filming a film taking place in medieval Europe, in which case it's great.

Ze castle

There's no visit of the Castle - but, and that's hilarious, there's an electric buzzer on the outer gate. Almost wanted to ring, but there was a guard standing...

So I went up to the guard to ask if I could go in to pee.
He didn't find that funny.

Hello, can the Prince come out and play?

Anyways. Bought me a grossly overpriced fridge magnet, sent a few postcards - thought it would be amusing for friends to get a postcard from Liechtenstein, right? :) -, got my passport stamped, and made my way back to Switzerland, crossing the border by public bus. I found that hilarious... 3.40 CHF to cross an international border! Ah, Europe...

Not exactly innovative, are they.