Daytrip to Lichtenstein

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March 16th, 2009

Emily and I have been itching to get out and explore Europe ever since we got here.  On Saturday, we finally got out and explored another country…well, technically, at least.  We woke up on Saturday morning and decided to take a daytrip but didn’t know where to go.  After looking at a few options, we decided to go to Lichtenstein and were on a train half an hour later.  We took a one hour train from Zürich to Sargans, followed by a half hour bus ride from Sargans to Vaduz, the capital of Lichtenstein.

Lichtenstein is one of the smallest countries in the world.  It is located in the Alps between Switzerland and Austria, and as far as I can tell is completely indistiguishable from Switzerland.  Just about everything is the same:  money (Swiss Francs), language, terrain, etc.  The border between Switzerland and Lichtenstein is not marked and you do not have to go through customs or immigration when you arrive.  You just go from one town in Switzerland to another one that looks almost the same, except it happens to be in a different country.  Luckily, for tourists like us, they are willing put a stamp in your passport (for CHF$3) at the tourist information office.

To be honest, the only real reason to go to Lichtenstein is just for the novelty of it.  Vaduz is a nice town and Lichtenstein is a pretty country, but there is no compelling reason to go there (unless you collect stamps or want some fake teeth, both local specialties). But now we have another country under our belt and we can check Lichtenstein off of our list.  Hopefully there will be many more European travels in the near future (we are already looking into trips to Berlin and Italy).

More pictures from Lichenstein on Flickr.