This is the church in Vaduz, which is Catholic.    I think this is the main religious hub here in Liechtenstein.

This is a fairly ordinary sort of typical Catholic church.

In 1880, the Duke of Liechtenstein permitted religious freedom in the country. For several years pastors from Switzerland and Austria served the Protestant community. In 1963 a church was built in Vaduz. The Evangelical Church in Liechtenstein adopted this name in 1970 and includes Reformed and Lutheran churches.

Outside there is a poster for service for a young (maybe late 40s) woman who passed away from cancer.

I didn’t find any functional churches in Andorra.   I’d like to see if there are any evangelical churches that meet in a dedicated building or a community centre or someone’s home.   The small close-knit community seems appealing.

It was hard to find local people to chat about life here.   I got to do this on my next post.

GERMANY 1. Dachau concentration camp – 2. BMW museum – 3. BMW World futuristic showroom – 4. Neuschwanstein Castle – 5. 1972 Munich Olympics village – 6. Tourism and going out in Munich – 7. Deutsches Museum – 8. Business in the UK, Germany and Israel – 9. Friedrichshafen, a pleasant German town on a lake

SWITZERLAND 1. Trying to do ‘cheap’ Switzerland – 2. The town of Grusch – 3. Clever Swiss made things – 4. Train from Grusch to Zurich – 5. Zurich, the more liberal Switzerland – 6. Swiss dinosaurs

LIECHTENSTEIN 1. Plans – 2. Getting into this tiny nation – 3. Motorbikes, cars and kebab shops in Vaduz, Liechtenstein – 4. Small country topography – 5. Road up to the castle – 6. The Prince’s castle and vineyard – 7. bars, shops, Olympics – 8. Tiny country, big output – 9. Vaduz church – 10. Government buildings and museums

So the Germans can do industry like Mercedes and Siemens, and the Swiss can make small and precision things like watches, this nation has its only unique portfolio of industries.

One of the places I really wanted to see in Liechtenstein was the headquarters of Hilti.  I didn’t get time to, but I’ll demonstrate from this 3D map.

This is in the bigger town of Schaan.   Martin and Eugen Hilti who are brothers set up this company in 1941, and is now a $5B company with offices all over the world and 29,000 staff, yet amazingly, they are still in this teeny nation.

Wikipedia tells me Liechtenstein has a population of only 37,877, yet about 20,000 people actually commute into a tiny country.

Ivoclar Vivident is the world’s largest maker of false teeth, also based in Schaan.

This might be the wrong poster, but a sign similar to this was advertising a current mayor who I spotted had the surname Hilti.  When I visited another tiny country, Malta in 2014, I noticed there are a lot of very common occurring surnames, from certain families.

https://www.hilti.com/content/hilti/W1/US/en/company/about-hilti/company-profile/history.html 

GERMANY 1. Dachau concentration camp – 2. BMW museum – 3. BMW World futuristic showroom – 4. Neuschwanstein Castle – 5. 1972 Munich Olympics village – 6. Tourism and going out in Munich – 7. Deutsches Museum – 8. Business in the UK, Germany and Israel – 9. Friedrichshafen, a pleasant German town on a lake

SWITZERLAND 1. Trying to do ‘cheap’ Switzerland – 2. The town of Grusch – 3. Clever Swiss made things – 4. Train from Grusch to Zurich – 5. Zurich, the more liberal Switzerland – 6. Swiss dinosaurs

LIECHTENSTEIN 1. Plans – 2. Getting into this tiny nation – 3. Motorbikes, cars and kebab shops in Vaduz, Liechtenstein – 4. Small country topography – 5. Road up to the castle – 6. The Prince’s castle and vineyard – 7. bars, shops, Olympics – 8. Tiny country, big output – 9. Vaduz church – 10. Government buildings and museums

This is really something you don’t expect to see in Switzerland at all.

This is a museum that is part of Zurich University.   The collection of stuffed animals is pretty good, but what really surprised me was this:

This is a Tanystropheus, its a 3 metre long dinosaur I’ve never seen before.  I never expected dinosaur bones to be found in the Swiss Alps.

The other one not pictured is a Helveticasaurus, could be a posh type of font found in a dictionary.   Helvetia is actually the Latin word for Switzerland, where the letters “CH” are used to denote Switzerland, being Confederation of Helvetia.

This reminds me of a story.   When I was about 9 years old, my teacher asked me to go to the library and look up what was the biggest dinosaur.   I looked in 4 different books, and each one told me something different.    This was because one of the books was very old, and one very new, and few in between, new types of scientific discoveries happen over the years.

A few months later I was asked to research planets, how many moons around Jupiter.   Because of the books being of differing years, one was 3, another 6 another 12.

This is taught me a lesson in life, and that is to research and question everything you are taught and respectfully challenge authority.   I’ve applied this to my way I look at the bible, science, government and work (I am in IT)  but sometimes gets me in trouble!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanystropheus 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helveticosaurus 

https://www.zm.uzh.ch/en/ 

GERMANY 1. Dachau concentration camp – 2. BMW museum – 3. BMW World futuristic showroom – 4. Neuschwanstein Castle – 5. 1972 Munich Olympics village – 6. Tourism and going out in Munich – 7. Deutsches Museum – 8. Business in the UK, Germany and Israel – 9. Friedrichshafen, a pleasant German town on a lake

SWITZERLAND 1. Trying to do ‘cheap’ Switzerland – 2. The town of Grusch – 3. Clever Swiss made things – 4. Train from Grusch to Zurich – 5. Zurich, the more liberal Switzerland – 6. Swiss dinosaurs

LIECHTENSTEIN 1. Plans – 2. Getting into this tiny nation – 3. Motorbikes, cars and kebab shops in Vaduz, Liechtenstein – 4. Small country topography – 5. Road up to the castle – 6. The Prince’s castle and vineyard – 7. bars, shops, Olympics – 8. Tiny country, big output – 9. Vaduz church – 10. Government buildings and museums