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After our walk, Amy and I treated ourselves to a well deserved lunch in some random little joint "downtown" and continued our game of people watching. Sitting behind us was this multi-generational gathering of men, about eight of them, who all looked like Lichtensteinian Mafioso. I was trying to eavesdrop on their conversation, which was all in Lichtenstein-dialect German, and all I could make out was that they were talking about buying some random something for 50,000 German Marks ($30,000) and charging it to the government roster. Most likely they were the Prince's goons - instructed to enhance the material quality of his life while charging it all, secretly, to the tax payers of his tiny little principality. And like corruption everywhere around the world, the goons were probably rewarded with drug-trafficking rights across huge swaths of Liechtenstein.
Crack and kiddies aside, around sundown Amy and I hopped on a public bus and rode our way across the entire country (in 20 minutes!) to Austria where we caught a train across the panhandle of western Austria (only 10 minutes!) into southern Germany where we met up with my friend Gesine Wernecke who lives in Munich. Unfortunately for Gesine she had gotten ill right before New Year's Eve and had to spend the millennium sick in bed! She wasn't feeling very well when we showed up four days later, but she was happy to see us nevertheless and we were happy to see her too! That night we just stayed in her apartment, relaxed and spend the rest of the night having a couple drinks and being paid a visit by her neighbor Wolfgang (Wolfi) - a * real * native of Bavaria! :-) |
On
the 4th Amy and I tried to be as stereotypically American as we
could possibly be and wanted to see how many European countries we
could cram into a 24 hour period of time. We had started with Italy
the night before and Tuesday morning we took the train from French
speaking southwestern Switzerland to German speaking eastern
Switzerland where we then took a bus across a river into tiny little
Liechtenstein. This micro-country is the home of approximately 30,000
people and takes up no more space than my big toe. (Actually 11 miles
from north to south and 7 miles from east to west.) Liechtenstein is
what I consider to be the picturesque "real" Europe - the
one that existed before vandals overran the entire continent with
graffiti. (Or perhaps this is just an image I have that never really
existed universally?) In any case, Liechtenstein is a clean, safe
little country with immaculately well-swept and maintained streets
with gorgeous views of snow capped mountains in all directions!
What's not to like?
Amy
and I scaled one of these little mountains (hills?) climbing a
bazillion steps (maybe a couple hundred) and tromped across steep,
snow covered grassy inclines (alright, half an inch of snow on a bump
on the side of the road) to get a gorgeous view of the Prince of
Liechtenstein's family castle as well as an amazing view of nearly
ALL of Liechtenstein as well as the beautiful mountains butted up
against Liechtenstein in Switzerland to the west. As they say in
Germany, "Traumhaft!" (dreamy!).
Or
maybe they were just talking about the cost of building a playground
in the local children's park?