Part 1 - A State in the Third Millennium
Part 2 - Vaduz
Part 3 - Balzers
Part 4 - Triesenberg
Part 5 - Malbun
Part 6 - Eschen
Part 7 - Schellenberg

We arrive in Vaduz - the capital of Liechtenstein. We enter the hotel and for the first time I encounter the phenomenon self-check in. We register on our own, on a machine which spits keycards for the room. During the whole first day we didn't see a single person in the hotel - neither from the personal nor from the guests. There was an Honesty bar in which you can take things like fruits and coffee for free but the alcohol is paid but you are not paying to a human. Of course there is video surveillance. We didn't realize yet but this was our first encounter with one of the strangest things in Liechtenstein - the general lack of people. It seems like the high wages coupled with rich population and minimal crime makes a lot of jobs suitable for automation. People do exist, for example we met the personal and the other guests the next morning at breakfast but personal ranging from hotel to people fixing the roads is far less than we are used to seeing.

Probably the most crowded place in the principality is the main street of Vaduz. Along it are the buildings of the post office, the parliament, a music school and several museums. Most people on it seem to be tourists half of which are Japanese. Crawling up the hill is a tourist route path. If you follow it and have enough breath you can get to see the castle of the Prince and look at it from the outside. The castle is not open to visitors because the princely family lives there and doesn't want you to look at them while they write their books, embroider stuff, train fencing or whatever the hell people born with blue blood do (do their grandkids play Fortnite?)

The castle of the Prince

The princely family owns a restaurant and a winery. We decided to skip the winery (next time!) and although we were ready to spend a lot of money the restaurant was the only place we decided to pass because of the price. Our info was that a dinner there easily costs 150 CHF per person.

The neighborhood above the restaurant is the most surreal place I have visited. It looks like it was taken out of a fairy tale or a postcard. They literally had weathercocks on the roofs. Houses are classical, kept in perfect condition, decorated with a lot of ornaments and covered with flowers. The yards have water fountains and statues and the larger ones have very real vineyards. It is obvious that people who live there are very rich even by Vaduz standards. You can see very little people not only on the streets but also in the yards and in the houses itself at least as far as we can see through the open windows. I suspect that many of the owners do not live there full time. Of course they probably hire people to keep their property in perfect condition.

Poor Vaduzians need to grow food in their yards to survive

Fruit and vegetable store. No human personal

The antiques store. Here you buy stuff to make your brand new house look old

On the streets of the town you can see Porches and Teslas but also retro cars ranging from Ford Mustang and ending with those absurdly expensive old cars which have a spare tire on the trunk or on the side door. People drive to get their morning coffee in them.

We walked in the part of the city where people who are not super rich live. The architecture becomes visibly more ordinary and there are buildings with apartments but everything is still in perfect condition and decorated with flowers and other plants. At this point we realize the lack of people because in this neighborhood we expect to meet quite a bit more of them. We see empty backyards and playgrounds without any children. However Vaduz doesn't feel like a dead city, nor does it invoke particularly negative feeling because you do meet some people so it is obvious the place does function but it is weird. In all honesty there was part of the city that had what seemed to be classic blocks of flats. I wonder who lives there, probably guest workers?

Probably the Vaduzian's idea of a ghetto

On a lawn in the town we see totally real cows. Obviously there is no human observing them and it is not clear where they are supposed to go when the night falls and it is already getting dark.

Note the amount of vineyards in the middle of the neighborhood

The next day (and for you in the next part) from the travel journal) we are visiting Balzers