Across a Country on Foot
114 kilometers and 144,868 steps exploring Liechtenstein
This trip was partially supported by Liechtenstein Marketing. All opinions are my own.
I’d been in Liechtenstein half an hour when I realized I was being followed. Not by border guards, despite my casual stroll across an international border. Not by cows either; they’d already been moved to their summer pastures. My pursuers were quieter, stranger: a squadron of robo-lawnmowers. They whirred in circles and lines in the yards and green spaces below Gutenberg Castle, each one moving with the cheerful determination of a little black beetle. The Alps loomed above, dramatic and self-important, but all I could focus on were the machines.
I’d chosen this crossing point deliberately: it was the beginning of the Liechtenstein Trail. Seventy-five kilometers (47 miles) in all, it threads through eleven municipalities and past 148 points of interest, carrying a hiker from the Swiss border in the south to Austria in the north. In a country the size of Washington, D.C., but with fewer than 40,000 people, seventy-five kilometers turns what you could drive through in half an hour into something you’ll remember for years.
As I walked, the LIstory app, created in 2019 to mark the country’s tricentennial, traced my progress in loops and lines across the map, echoing the movements of the mowers. Unlike them, my job wasn’t to keep the country neat but to walk it —to see if covering every meter of the trail might reveal something the checklists never could.
Most visitors don’t bother. They arrive in Vaduz, Liechtenstein’s capital, queue for the passport stamp, mill about the quaint downtown, and leave an hour later satisfied they’ve “done” the country. At the tourist office, the man behind the counter told me thousands pass through for the stamp every day. Thousands.
The trail, however, asks for something slower. On paper, it might look like performance: a route you can log, a certificate at the finish line. But the reality resists that frame. What it offers back isn’t spectacle or bragging rights but something smaller: moments that don’t need an audience.
The LIstory app was part of that paradox. Yes, it was technology, with its neat little map and GPS trail. But it wasn’t asking me to perform. It was asking me to notice. To let the line of my body follow the line of the trail, step by step. In a world where travel so often performs for others, this one let me be.
Making my way through Balzers as the now self-appointed pied piper of the robo-lawnmowers, I was immediately struck by the water. Not the Rhine, which slides along the border, but the fountains: stone troughs and spouts, each more ornate than the last. They seemed to appear on every corner, cool streams spilling as if the mountains themselves were still melting. Later, I would learn they were centuries-old fixtures of village life, once as essential as roads or churches, many of which I would use to top off my water bottle on the journey. As the days went on, each fountain felt less like infrastructure and more like a reminder that in a small country, what sustains you is never far away.
In a small country, what sustains you is never far away.
The app divides the trail into twelve neat stages—eleven on the main route, with a Malbun Loop at higher alpine elevations above the country’s ski resort. It looked simple enough. But six months earlier, my core had been cut open, thirty staples closing a travel emergency. In the hospital, I loathed the twice-daily laps the therapists demanded, circling the ward so the clots wouldn’t win. Now I was asking those same legs for seventy-five kilometers.
The trail was well marked, but in the heat, with first-day nerves and too many pauses for photos, I fell behind. At dinner, I realized I’d stopped in Triesen, not Triesenberg—a full stage short of where I’d meant to be.
I set off early the next morning, the air still cool and my legs already wondering why we’d started so soon. Climbing out of Triesen, the path shot upward more than a thousand feet, a reminder that recovery doesn’t follow straight lines.
Then, just when each breath burned more than before, I found myself face-to-face with a herd of llamas and alpacas. Their soft eyes blinked behind long lashes beside an unmanned farm shop Marc and Anna Lena keep stocked with local cheese, jam, and souvenirs—all on the honor system. The absurdity of the moment broke the morning open. One minute I was climbing; the next, smiling like an idiot at a llama.
Not long after, I caught up with the first hikers of the trip, two figures I’d photographed from behind for scale a few minutes prior. The woman was cheerful: “Second day, late start, but we love it already!” The man, flushed and winded, turned his back and attacked an interpretive sign with the intensity of a man desperate to avoid eye contact. His silence was so deliberate it became its own reply. I took the hint and kept climbing.
Open slopes gave way to forest, then opened again. By the time I reached Triesenberg, I realized —this was supposed to have been yesterday’s endpoint. I still had plenty of trail left for today.
I kept going, not in haste but with purpose. The path leveled out; the views widened until the panorama gave way to a forest of birdsong. As I descended, I began seeing more people, day hikers, mostly, filtering up from below. That meant one thing: I was nearing Vaduz.
The prince’s castle appeared first, poised on its perch above the valley. It’s not open to the public —he still lives there— but once a year in August, he invites the entire country to a party in the garden. I found myself wondering if he, too, had a squadron of robo-lawnmowers.
After a full day of solitude, I was about to descend into the one place in Liechtenstein where I expected a crowd: the capital. On the main pedestrian street, museums and cafés buzzed with people making the most of a summer day. Outside the visitor center, you could hear the thwacks of passport stamps. Down the block, a bride was speaking to her flower girls. I lingered for a moment, then kept walking out of respect for the occasion, and because I smelled like someone who’d just hiked from Switzerland. Because, frankly, I almost had.
Vaduz was also where I first stepped into Lagederhof, Herbert Lageder’s antiques shop, half treasure chest, half time capsule: alpine cowbells, hand-crank coffee grinders, folk figurines, even the occasional piece of farm equipment stacked and stored with care. I picked out a few things, but had no cash. Herbert only waved it off: “Come back later. Tomorrow, two days, whatever. You’ll be here. I’ll be here. It’s Liechtenstein.” He wasn’t being folksy. He was telling me how it works.
I did come back—the next afternoon, when thunder cracked across the Alps and sent everyone scrambling indoors. I was standing under his overhang across from my hotel, waiting for him, when Herbert wheeled a wooden cart of yellow roses beneath it to shelter them from the rain. The flowers sagged under the sudden downpour.
“Sorry,” he said as he passed. “I put them out for public relations. But they’re not waterproof!”
Herbert settled into his chair, his grandson planted firmly in his lap. “This is my real boss,” he said, stroking the boy’s head.
Business is quieter these days, but it carries on. “Young people,” he laughed, “they drive to St. Gallen for IKEA. They don’t want old things.” Still, Herbert gets a few calls a week—someone’s passed away or moved to a smaller place—and he drives out to make sure the good stuff doesn’t end up in the trash. “I can’t save it all,” he said, “But I can save the best of it.”
From my chair, I asked him how much Liechtenstein had changed.
“If someone died fifty years ago and came back today,” he said, laughing, “they’d drop dead all over again. You wouldn’t believe how much it’s grown.”
And maybe he’s right. The old chalets are now neighbors to sleek, angular homes in cantilevered concrete. Vaduz has a contemporary art museum and a parliament building that feels equal parts modernist sculpture and mountain chapel. But the core of the place—tight-knit, independent, unhurried—feels remarkably intact. Maybe that’s what happens when you’re double landlocked, hemmed in by larger nations. Maybe smallness, when handled with care, just becomes intimacy.
I left Vaduz on foot, the trail slipped past half-acre pastures where cows grazed, pressed up against modern apartment blocks and tidy rows of vines. The city was quiet, almost half-asleep, but my legs were already restless. They’d grown used to the rhythm—stiff before breakfast, then impatient to be moving again. It was both encouraging and humbling, given what they’d been through.
By the time I reached Schaan, I was desperate for coffee and spotted Demmel. The doors were still locked, but through the glass stood a life-sized cardboard cutout of a man hoisting a cup. I turned to leave, disappointed—only to nearly collide with the real man himself.
“Gutenmorgen,” he said, with the cheer of someone who had already sampled his own product.
Peter Demmel, a trained coffee sommelier, unlocked the door and ushered me in before opening hours. He poured a cup of his award-winning Verona espresso blend, talking as much with his hands as with his voice. We spoke about beans and roasting, but soon he turned to the trail. “The best way to walk it,” he said, “is at night. More wildlife. More peace. You experience it differently in the dark.”
It was the kind of thought that lingered as I walked on toward Nendeln. The trail was one line across a small country, but it carried as many versions as people who set out on it. My walk would never be someone else’s.
By early afternoon, I reached the stage’s end in Nendeln. It wasn’t far on paper, sixteen kilometers (10 miles), but my core knew otherwise. It ached but held, and I felt the steady reassurance of recovery: a body still marked by scars, but now capable of carrying me across a country.
The trail was one line across a small country, but it carried as many versions as people who set out on it.
After marking my progress on the main trail, I headed for Malbun, the alpine loop that climbs to sixteen hundred meters. The ski lift was under repair, and the replacement shuttle wasn’t synced to the bus schedule—and had already stopped for the day. Instead, I improvised a lower loop along the ridge. The views were generous anyway: jagged peaks, meadows in bloom. If it felt like a missed summit, it also felt honest. Not every plan fits the trail; not every trail fits the plan.
Back in Vaduz, I ducked into the museums before closing. The history museum handed me a token for entry to the crown jewels, a glittering room where the guard repeated “no photos” every fifteen seconds to anyone with a phone in hand. At the back, though, sat something stranger: two lunar samples, gifts from NASA’s Apollo missions. Each was mounted beside a Liechtenstein flag that had traveled to the moon and back, then returned as a gesture of Cold War goodwill.
It was the first moon rock I’d ever seen, tucked away in one of the smallest countries on earth. A fragment of humanity’s grandest reach, offered not as spectacle but as a reminder: the scale of a place is never the same as the scale of its meaning.
The scale of a place is never the same as the scale of its meaning.
In the lobby before breakfast, I met another hiker, Agnes, on holiday from Poland. She spoke easily, explaining that she’d chosen Liechtenstein not only for the scenery but also because German was spoken here—practice, folded neatly into vacation. When I asked what stage she had planned for the day, she smiled and shook her head: she had already finished the Trail. After reaching Ruggell the day before, she told me, she hadn’t stopped—she simply kept walking through the last stages until she crossed the border. What was meant to be a two-stage day had become nearly five, an extra twenty kilometers on top of the plan. Today, she said, she was headed up to Malbun to try the alpine loop and a few other paths. There were, after all, more than four hundred kilometers (249 miles) of trails in Liechtenstein; the Trail was just the famous one.
Her words landed softly, but wouldn’t let go. I packed my bag for delivery to the next hotel, and the sentence kept repeating itself: You could finish today if you wanted to. Thirty-eight kilometers (24 miles). Not impossible. The past two days after the short start, once I counted my detours through town, I’d already logged twenty-six, twenty-nine. A quick search on my phone reminded me that Levison Wood, whose expeditions I admired, tries to average thirty-two kilometers (20 miles) a day for his walks. Compared to that, crossing the rest of Liechtenstein in a single push didn’t seem reckless. It almost seemed reasonable.
From Nendeln, the trail threaded past the towering altar from Pope John Paul II’s 1985 visit, then wound through Eschen and Bendern, the morning light softening the edges of farmhouses and steeples. By late morning, I was in Ruggell, the day’s intended endpoint, standing in front of the Landgasthof Rössle. One of the owners, Ramona, told me my bag hadn’t arrived yet, but I was welcome to access the room. Instead, her words tipped the balance. If the bag wasn’t here, neither was I. I would keep going.
The decision turned the day from a walk into a test. Normally, the Ruggell Reit Reserve beds whisper with birdsong, peaceful, but I was now striding through them in a relentless mid-day heat. Shade was scarce. Finally, at the treeline, the insects found me for the first time on the trip—flies, persistent and biting nuisances that pushed my pace faster until I missed a marker and had to double back about two kilometers. By the time I reached Schellenberg, I was gassed, slumped on a bench, tearing into my last cheese sandwich and banana like they were life preservers. Slowly, blood sugar caught up with ambition, and I realized my body was doing what, only months ago, would have been impossible. With that, I was back to enjoying it again.
My body was doing what, only months ago, would have been impossible.
That is, until I realized my passport was still in the bag that hadn’t made it to the hotel. If border guards stopped me, I might cross an entire country only to fall one step short of proving it. The thought clung as I pressed on through Hinterschellenberg, sweat soaking the straps of my pack. The north surprised me in how different it felt from the south—not better or worse, but unexpected for a place so small. The climbs were shorter here, but they stacked up all the same.
From a ridge, I caught a panoramic view of Feldkirch, the first Austrian city across the line, then dropped into Mauren, where I stopped at Birkahoflädile, a cooperative shop run by people with disabilities. Inside, the air was cool; baskets of vegetables lined the tables, refrigerated cases hummed with wine and cheese, and shelves held handmade crafts. After all the distance I’d come and the hour or so I had left, it felt like a reminder that the trail wasn’t only geography. It was also people, labor, a community quietly sustaining itself.
After that came the final push. The border station loomed larger than any I’d seen yet, but I walked across without a passport check, relief cutting through exhaustion. Elated and drained, I sank into a bus seat back on the Liechtenstein side, carrying a smell that I hoped would guard the seat next to me. Back at the guesthouse, my bag was waiting upstairs, and after a shower, I went down for a celebratory dinner.
Geri, the fifth-generation owner of the Landgasthof Rössle, set down a plate of Käsknöpfle—soft dumplings tangled with melted cheese and crowned with fried onions, apple purée on the side. It was his grandmother’s recipe, he said, and it was delicious. At the neighboring tables, locals gathered for Mord Z Nacht, a community theatre murder mystery staged over a multi-course meal. My German wasn’t good enough to follow, so I let the voices and laughter blur into the background and, full and finished, went upstairs to bed.
The next afternoon, on my way to the station in Sargans, I stopped at the tourist office in Vaduz. The clerk glanced at the LIstory app on my phone, congratulated me, and handed over a certificate and a finisher’s book to sign. I was only the 502nd person to complete the trail since it was created for the tricentennial in 2019.
On the bus out, the scenery slid past: farms, villages, the steady line of mountains. My hand rested on the scar across my stomach. I smiled—not at the certificate or at being able to say I’d walked across a European country, but at the trail itself. The app had given me proof, sure, but the trail gave me something proof could never hold. Liechtenstein hadn’t asked me to perform. It had simply asked me to walk. And in return, it gave me a country that was exactly what it was—small, unhurried, whole. 🥾
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I walked Liechtenstein one step at a time, but the story doesn’t end with me. If this piece reminded you of your own journeys — or of someone who’d enjoy discovering this remarkable country — pass it along. Stories only grow when they’re shared.
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I'd never given Liechtenstein much thought, so I very much enjoyed the tour!
Thank you for the great review of the hike. I put on my list to do. Is it steep in many areas? And any hint on accommodation? Prebook or go with the flow?