Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
tax haven, the only country in the world with more registered companies than people (though most of these
companies exist only as pieces of paper in someone's desk). It was the last country in Europe to give
women suffrage (in 1984). Its single prison is so small that prisoners' meals are sent over from a nearby
restaurant. To acquire citizenship, a referendum must be held in the applicant's village and, if that passes,
the Prime Minister and his cabinet must then vote on it. But this never happens, and hundreds of families
who have lived in Liechtenstein for generations are still treated as foreigners.
Vaduz is not terribly picturesque, but the setting is arresting. The town nestles at the very foot of Mount
Alpspitz, 6,700 feet high. On an outcrop directly above the town is the gloomy and fortress-like royal
Schloss, looking uncannily like the Wicked Witch's castle in
The Wizard of Oz.
Every time I looked up at it I
expected to see those winged monkeys flying in and out. Curiously, despite centuries as a backwater,
Vaduz retains almost no sense of antiquity. The whole town looks as if it were built twenty years ago in a
hurry - not exactly ugly, but certainly undistinguished.
It was a Saturday and the main road through the town was backed up with big Mercedes from
Switzerland and Germany. The rich must come at the weekends to visit their money. There were only four
hotels in the central area. Two were full and one was closed, but I managed to get a room at the fourth, the
Engel. It was friendly but outrageously expensive for what it offered, which wasn't much - a lumpy bed, a
reading light with a twenty-watt bulb, no TV, and a radio so old that I half expected to hear Edward R.
Murrow broadcasting details of the Battle of Monte Cassino. Instead, all I could get was polka music,
mercifully interrupted at frequent intervals by a German-speaking disc jockey who had evidently overdosed
on sleeping pills (or possibly on polka music), judging by the snappiness of his delivery. He ... talked ... like
... this, like someone trapped in a terrible dream, which I suppose in a sense he was.
The sole virtue of the room was that it had a balcony with a view over the main church and town square
(really just a strip of lawn with a car park) and beyond that a handsome prospect of mountains. By leaning
perilously out over the street and craning my neck at a peculiar angle, I could just see the Schloss high
above me. It is still the home of the Crown Prince, one of the richest men in Europe and possessor of the
second-finest private collection of paintings in the world, outdone only by the Queen of England. He has the
only Leonardo in private hands and the largest collection of Rubenses, but a fat lot of good that does the
eager visitor, because the castle is completely off limits, and plans to build a modest national gallery to
house a few of the paintings have yet to get off the ground. Parliament has been debating the matter for
almost twenty years, but the thought of parting with the necessary funds has proved too painful so far and
evidently no one would dare to ask the royal family (worth an estimated $1.3 billion) to dip into their treasure
chest and pass down some bauble to get the ball rolling.
I went out for a walk and to check out the possibilities for dinner, which were not abundant. The
business district was only a couple of blocks square and the shops were so pedestrian and small-town - a
newsagent's, a chemist's, a gift shop selling the sort of gifts that you dread receiving at Christmas from your
in-laws - that it was impossible to linger. Restaurants were thin on the ground and either very expensive or
discouragingly empty. Vaduz is so small that if you walk for fifteen minutes in any direction you are deep in
the country. It occurred to me that there is no reason to go to Liechtenstein except to say that you have been
there. If it were simply part of Switzerland (which in fact it is in all but name and postage stamps - and even
then it uses the Swiss postal service) nobody would ever dream of visiting it.
I wandered down a pleasant but anonymous residential street where the picture windows of every
living-room offered a ghostly glow of television, and then found myself on a straight, unpaved and unlit road
through flat, still-fallow fields. The view back to Vaduz was unexpectedly lovely. Darkness had fallen with that
suddenness you find in the mountains and a pale moon with a chunk bitten out of it hung in the sky. The
Schloss, bathed in yellow floodlights, stood commandingly above the town looking impregnable and
draughty.
The road ended in a T-junction to nowhere and I turned back for another look around the town. I settled
for dinner in the dining-room of the Vaduzerhof Hotel. Two hours earlier I had been solemnly assured that
the hotel was closed, but the dining-room was certainly open, if not exactly overwhelmed with customers,
and people also seemed to be coming in through the front door, taking keys off hooks in the hallway and
going upstairs to bedrooms. Perhaps the people at the hotel just didn't like the look of me, or maybe they
