Medicating in the Sun

i know it's been a while, mein journal, but you'll have to forgive me.

i was kidnapped.

no, really. keine scheiße! well, maybe not actually, but in a psuedo-way.

you remember when i told you about fridvall, ja? the handsome nordic jung who came to work with our financials? i really thought i was falling in love with him. minus his couple of faux pas at dinners and such, he was so charming and so handsome i thought my little heart might melt. totally smitten.

he started saying he was in love with me, too, and that he really wanted me to come back with him to norway. wirklich? it seemed to me to be a bit fast, but the only other boy i had loved was frettchen, and we all know how that turned out. perhaps this was the way with wahre liebe. but the thought of turning my back on my beloved homeland frightened me, even if only for a week. i cannot comprehend countries that you cannot walk in a day. i mean, people go on walks through the countryside all the time, but here in my lovely liechtenstein, you can actually walk through the country. and wind up in switzerland. makes it feel like home. i think the smaller the country, the bigger the patriotism. i mean, i've probably seen every inch of fair liechtenstein. do you think those russian communists could say the same thing? i think not. and they say russia's not communist anymore, but i have my doubts. from pictures, the buildings all look too brown and boring not to be communist.

sorry. my little gehirn can't stay focused.

anyway, he get asking me to come with him to norway, and i did. it was only supposed to be for a week. as soon as we showed up, though, i thought things seemed a little strange. i mean, he's very wordly and sophisticated, but i thought that there was a bit too much neon lighting for my taste. Then again, my village in liechtenstein didn't even have running water until 1954, so what would i know about fancy european apartments?

he would say little things to me at dinner, like "i just wish the whole world could see how beautiful you are."

and we would machen sie liebe [i'm blushing so i don't want to write it in english] and he would hold me and say anyone who got to experience this was so lucky and don't you wish everyone could share it?

it seemed romantic and sensitive. he wanted the rest of the world to be as happy as he was.

but after a while, it was more than a week and i still hadn't met his family. not even too many of his friends. many of the gentlemen seemed to have a lot of mustaches [it must be popular in norway or something]. i kept asking him and he kept putting it off. in the meantime, i got to see a lot of norway and it's a really pretty country, so i didn't mind too much. but after 3 weeks, i needed to get back. i missed liechtenstein and my law firm wasn't pleased that i had run off so quickly without too much notice and was now being vague about coming back.

he said he had a special night planned. something really romantisch. he even bought me a dress, though it was a little more flashy than i like to wear. i'm very modest about showing off my brüste.

but it was a nice candlelit dinner at a very posh restuarant. i was really impressed, though i did feel he was ordering a bit too much wine, but that seemed ok too. we always took cars every where we went. but i wasn't really used to drinking all that much, but i suppose it happens sometimes and he was just telling me how beautiful i was and everything that i just got caught up in the romance of it all.

when we got back to his place, i figured out why he had so many lights. he had a studio set up while we were at dinner. there were some of his mustached friends setting it up, and one of them was naked. there was also a lady with very unnatural breasts standing next to him.

i was totally shocked. utter unglaube. fridvall looked at me, smiled and said "i've got a maid YOU can milk."

i ran out as fast as i could. unfortunately, i left my purse behind and when i didn't come back, fridvall the love of my life [ha! i laugh now when i think about it], stole my money and sold off my id and everything. that arschloch. i've been spending the remaining time away from here dealing with my government and getting as much back as i could. when they went to fridvall's "apartment" it was abandoned except for a few videotapes of people doing things that i bet only happen in america. apparently fridvall, on top of being an accountant, is an amateur filmmaker as well. i don't know why he ran, nothing on the tapes was illegal, but it gives me pause to think about what else might be going on that he abandoned his place. so no, i wasn't really kidnapped, but it's hard for me to admit my loving boyfriend tried to get me into one of his "movies."

i just can't seem to get lucky in love, eh mein freunde?

but mostly, i wanted to write and say happy birthday to my beloved liechtenstein, langes lebendes liechtenstein!!!

americans are silly. i think all those video games and mcdonald's have turned their brains into borscht.

but i feel bad for them.

this junge has never known the touch of a woman.

if you go here, you can maybe help the poor pummeliger bastard.

today is fridvall's birthday. imagine that. only 10 days before 60th birthday celebrations of king carl XVI gustaf! my sweetheart is practically a könig. i guess i could have told him that. i suppose that makes me a königin! i can't wait to order my subjects around!

glücklicher geburtstag!

mein goodness, meinjournal. i am just ausgeschöpft. i know you're thinking, what, did liechtenstein fall off the map AGAIN?! well not funny. it's so hard convincing people that you're actually a country and not some deadly form of influenza. if you had to do it all the time, you wouldn't think that was so funny now, would you? i am so sick of that joke.

i've been very busy at work and also with my nordic junge, but also there was a big celebration recently in our village. not kuhherzle (little cow hearts), if that's what you're thinking. it takes place in the fall, silly. and not küachle sunday, either. that was a few weeks ago. although i think my face still has some soot on it from that. though it's been pretty cold lately, so burning winter in effigy seemed to not work so well.

we had a wedding. and NO, meinjournal, not mine. the norde and i are well, but let's not jump ahead of ourselves, shall we? our land is too craggy and you might fall. and if you fall into a bottomless pit, you die of starvation. or so a wise woman once told me.

it was the wedding of gisela and fritz. gisela is quite possibly the loveliest girl in our village. she was born here, to the tailor's wife, and others have told me that from when she could first take a step, she carried herself with an ancient germannic grace. i wouldn't know since she is a few years older than i. there were rumors that her family's line is decendent of frederich the great's mistress. but gisela's family would never admit to such a skandal. i didn't know gisela until far later. i was wrapped up in my barley fields and my jungen and my sheep. gisela was also very quiet, very observant and used to stay up in her mother's room most of the time, writing. you could see her sitting in the window, just writing the day away. there were all sorts of theories about what she was writing: some people thought spells, others poetry, someone thought she was a great scientist. i liked to think she was writing great theses on the alchemy of love. a way to combine every theory at once.

after my heart was gebrochen from ekling and frettchen, going into the village became hard. i felt that everyone was staring at me, talking about me. i do not know if they were, but the mind does these things to itself and the heart believes and what can a mädchen do? i had run behind the tailor's store to cry and cry one day when i saw gerda and ekling walking together hand in hand, and she winked at me. i had to hide because i was sure everyone else saw it, and my heart was filled with shame. when i look up, gisela's sharp green eyes are looking right at me. i was gekränkten. after my experience with gerda, i did not trust girls too much. but her eyes were devoid of judgement, there only appeared a certain old wisdom. i could see what everyone talked about so much. she was breath-taking. after a moment of looking at me, she said,

"you are above them. and one day you will see it, and then you will only cry for the girl so foolish to think she could be hurt by such people."

she kissed me on my cheek and with that, vanished back into her house.

i didn't get to be the great friend of gisela that i thought would happen after that day. her words really did help heal my foolish heart, and i felt with her kiss, some of her strength and wisdom transferred to me. but, as it turns out, she was spending all that time reading and writing about ancient battles. of all our theories, no one thought beautiful gisela was so fond of the military. shortly after our encounter, she was offered a position on an archaeological dig somewhere in germany. i don't know much about history, but it had something to do with vandals or pirates or one of those ancient groups that are big fans of the raping and pillaging.

but we stayed in touch with wonderful letters that kept me sane for a while, and then just made me happy. it was hard because still all i had in my actual world were my sheep, but it was nice to know that somewhere out there, i had someone on my side.

while she was there, she fell in love with a boy named fritz. fritz was hoping to become a professor of history. he was ultimately hoping for a position at the university of aberdeen, which was his alma mater. gisela would tell me he was quite besessen with the university of aberdeen. i am consistently amused by people who are so enraptured of schools they used to attend. but all the same, she fell in love, and he, being a smart man himself, fell in love with her. she told me she was bringing him back to gamprin for the wedding. and, much to my delight, "to see my young milkmaid with her new paramour." she always had an interesting way of writing. most likely from all those years of practice.

we prepared. these are great events in liechtenstein. we always hope to make them an occasion that will be remembered through all the ages. gisela looked positively radiant. fritz looked quite dashing. right before the ceremony, gisela pulled me aside and said,

"looking at you now, this beautiful woman before me, i can tell you believe it, now. do you believe it?"

"i believe it. my heart is sad for the girl who did not. and my heart is overjoyed that i can be here with you."

"then let's go."

"let's."

many interesting and beautiful traditions have formed around weddings, which is another reason why is was so amazing she brought fritz to liechtenstein. he laughed fondly through "kranzna" (crowning with a garland), the bride and groom are wished luck and blessings.

i personally brought the garland of pine brushwood that is fastened to the front door of the bride’s home, decorated with white or colored paper flowers. my love for gisela started at the modest tailor's home, i wanted to be the one to decorate it in celebration of her love.

fritz was a little more concerned after the marriage ceremony, when usually during the wedding meal, a fake kidnapping of the bride is staged, in which the man who gives away the bride must find her and ransom her by footing the bill of the inn. i leaned into fritz and told him not to worry, gisela was just fine.

i do not know how long they plan to stay in gamprin, but i hope it is for some time, so i can spend more time with my lovely friend and new bride, gisela.

möge dir dein Weg leicht werden
möge dir der Wind immer von hinten kommen
möge dir die Sonne warm ins Gesicht scheinen
möge dir ein sanfter Regen auf die Felder fallen
und bis wir uns wiedersehen
möge Gott dich in seiner Hand halten.

now i must retreive my poor vater, who drank a little too much mead at the wedding and i believed passed out in someone's stable. last word had him heading toward the cobbler's house.

things are progressing swiftly with my nordic man, as swiftly as the rhein carries away the run-off from our barley fields. as any young maid would, i am often surprised at this creature, junge. vater is a bit upset because i am 19 and he is 23, which i find strange. to most places in europe, age is a very silly thing to take into account in matters of liebe, but vater is probably more protective of me since the edwald/gebhard scandal. i hear in america you can get arrested for certain age differences, but we'll just add that to the list of why america is sillier than napoleon trying to invade russia in the winter.

his name is fridvall, and when i asked him the story behind his name, he told me something that i found odd. apparently, norway can be quite the fremd country as well. perhaps even giving iceland a run for its money (though i still contend that america still takes the strudal on weird customs). norway has an official government list of acceptable names. and there are fines if you deviate from it. apparently there was some fight back a year or two ago with a family that wanted to name their son gesher, which wasn't on the approved list of names. norway's strict names law dates from the 1800s, and is intended to protect children from names that sound or look strange. i suppose it sounds nice in theory, since i know in our village, we have a boy named wanker, which is an old german surname. but most of us eventually have to learn english, and discovered very quickly that in english, "wanker" means something entirely different, and not quite as noble. all the same, norway mandating names seems a little verrückt.

i suppose i am digressing a bit. but aren't people strange? the things we find worth regulating astounds me. we spend most of our time trying to keep our sheep within the grounds and the tourists on our slopes.

vater is also displeased because i have spent a night or two with fridvall at the apartment the firm has set up for him during his time here before he goes back to sweden. i'm sure the riksbank cannot spare him forever. which means our time together is going to be somewhat limited--another one of vater's concerns. but a vater has to let his freulin grow up a bit at some point. and while i am scared to care after my young heart has been wounded before, he looks at me in a way gebhard and edwald never did. so i spend the night in his arms and he is gentle with me. i cannot stay a maid forever, i suppose. i wake up and he is propped up on one arm.

i blush. in many ways i am an outspoken girl, but in these new ways of liebe, i am very...bescheiden. a boy staring at me makes me nervous. i look away. he tucks my newly-darkened hair behind my ear and says, "i've been awake for awhile. i just wanted to watch you breathe sleepily." [his german is still a bit awkward]

i giggle.

"you're beautiful."

"stop it."

he lets me duck under the blankets until i feel it is safe.

i know this is maybe too personal to share in you, meinjournal, but i skip home and i tell my sheep these things and they just stare blankly at me. it's definitely a tough audience. and previously, my girl friend had been gerda, the cobbler's daughter, but since she has been with edwald/eklig, i have not really spoken with her or care to. my mother is clearly not the person to go to. and vater might actually kill him, not only for being with his daughter in such a way, but to be with his daughter and not to be from liechtenstein. i mean, he knows what is happening, but it's best not to discuss it and then he can pretend that it's not.

and so i come here, meinjournal, and i trust you won't tell anyone.



this picture makes me laugh and sigh at the same time. ah, the strange things that go on in the heart and mind!

the people in the village next to us were very poor, so none of the children had any toys. but this one little boy aldemar had gotten an old enema bag and filled it with rocks. he would go around and whap the other children across the face with it. gott, my heart almost broke. later the boy came up and offered to give me the toy. this was too much! i reached out my hand, but then he ran away. i chased him down and took the enema bag. he cried a little, but that's the way of these people.

i'm in love with a nordic boy. he's träumerisch. we talk of sweet things. you know, because we're so neutral. he works for the riksbank, which is the central bank in sweden. he's been over in liechtenstein doing some work for our firm. something about our tax-free status or something. i don't know. i get distracted by his oddly-accented german and social faux pas (he once asked for spanferkel--suckling pig--on our holiday for the birthday of prince franz-josef II--can you believe it?! we were schockiert. only since he was a foreigner did he not have to leave the table in disgrace).

i finally got the nerve to tell my vater about him. i describe all the wonderful things about him--his kind gentle eyes, his gentleman-like manner (which prompted vater to once again to go on a rant about edwald and gebhard and how we would make bratwurst out of them). i calmed him down with a bier, proving once again, that alcohol is the nectar of the gods, and continued on. his approval means a lot to me. he's not from liechtenstein, though.

vater: "where's he from then, klein ein [vater's nickname for me]?"

"norway"

"well, at least he's not swiss."

and that's all he said. i was dumbfounded. completely verblüfft. if you're wondering why he hates the swiss so much, he was one of the tragic victims swept up in the ricola riots of '97. he lost the tip of his thumb. there are still pieces of lozenge stuck in his liver. if anyone even mentions the riots, he starts coughing and won't stop until someone brings him a scotch. he actually cries when he sees an alpenhorn.



still makes my blood boil.

well, i don't know if you know this, but in iceland today is beer day. i swear, if any culture confuses me more than the americans, it's the icelandic. apparently, beer had been prohibited and today marks the day that beer was allowed to flow as freely as wine again. wie albern! the one thing i think europe can claim as a marker of their superiority is that we have never in our history been so foolish as to abolish the consumption of something as lovely as bier. we've been around a long time, us euros, and we know that through our long and bloody and at times, heinous, history that sometimes the only comfort at the end of it all is the comfort that comes from any substance that lessons the burden of it. and beer is at the top of the list. we've learned that. that, and never trust a goth with a puppy. trust me, that's one you don't want to learn the hard way.

it looks beautiful, but you'd be surprised by how many things die out there.

i got a chance to go to the liechtenstein museum--it's tax free weekend in liechtenstein (but wait, you say, liechtenstein is ALWAYS tax-free--yes, this is true, but someone decided we'd officially "declare" one weekend and that would bring in the tourists. what ends up happening is that most of the banks and law firms and such shut down and we try to milk any tourists for all they're worth. liechtenstein is nothing if not strebsam).

i never feel the need to bring out my old, worn wooden shoes and try to sell them to the swiss for 20 euros or anything so i like to go to museums and things. sadly, we only have one.

here it is:



but i like to go to it and look at my favorite paintings. we only switch them out every so often, and half the time we lend stuff to the french or the americans, but there are one or two staples that are always my favorites. this one is my favorite right now and i'll share why in a moment:



i decided to dye my hair that color. i was so sick of being a blonde. i think it's quite fetching. and since most of the girls in my village have golden hair as well, it's a nice change and makes me feel unique.

and oh so randomly on my day off, i went looking up some things to share here in mein journal, and i feel it should be noted that according to this site, we're doing alright for ourselves as far as religious freedom is concerned. what i find terribly amüsieren is that this site is dedicated to tracking religious freedom not only in america, but all over the world. apparently, they want to protect the first amendment. i find that commendable, except for the fact that we don't have a first amendment in liechtenstein. i would remind americans that america's bill of rights, while valid, is just america's. i find it even more amüsieren to think about how everyone would have a big wurst up their esel in america if any country did the same to them. can you even imagine?

i once saw a goat attack itself after looking at its reflection in a mirror that had been mistakenly put in a barn once. america reminds me of that a bit.

i wanted to continue my tales of my liechtenstein love because there is a rechsan here that i cannot figure out what's happening there. but gott verdammen es, national pride trumps the labor of love every time.

but we'll get to my sweet cute rechsans sometime.

but i have an odd sensation that liechtenstein is finally getting put on the map (i mean that as an english axiom, clearly liechtenstein is on every map. well, every map that contains europe, at least. though i wouldn't be surprised if some of those silly americans think that it might be somewhere in asia).

i do have a cousin who lives in america. she's a folk dancer. she started out here in liechtenstein and then made her way to austria, when her big break came with this dance group (sorry, no english). she got herself noticed and finally made it as part of the alpine dancers located in washington d.c. which i find odd since washington d.c. is the capital of the united states of america, yet it is not located in a state. how united is it, then? i don't know. these are some of the things i ask my sheep, but they don't have a good answer for me, either.

all the same, she likes to send me things about liechtenstein that she hears about in america. and she told me that on this american t.v. show, called the daily show, that they made some joke about liechtenstein because of the coverage of the olympic games. i was about to get my lederhosen in a twist, but she assures me that it was in good fun and that the show makes fun of a lot of different stuff, and mostly america. well, i'm okay with any show that's willing to make fun of america. we don't see that so much in our part of europe.

so there was that. and then she sends me this link to a very interesting story indeed. and while i found the tone the author used toward liechtenstein condescending, astrid (my cousin) assures me that in america, even bad publicity is good publicity.

honestly, those americans are a funny breed. to use a popular liechtenstein saying, es ist, wie sie hüttenkäse für gehirne haben. so true, so true. and grand duke henri may joke about the folks in liechtenstein and their sheep, but i'd take any of my herd over mr. vice president dick cheney.

would you rather wake up to:

this?
OR
this?

keine frage

also, here's a picture of my cousin astrid--she's asked me not to point out which one she is, because this was taken when she had her badener schneckensuepple weight then (a snail chowder flavored with herbs, for those of you unfortunate enough to not know what that is).



all of us in gamprin are very proud of our astrid.

i'm going to tell you little secrets, mein kleines journal. you won't tell. plus, most of the folks here in liechtenstein don't even have internet, much less an online journal. so i think it's safe that the elders won't see any of this.

our family sold our barley in the main town to this man dierk. he always gave us a good price for it and we knew him to be an honest man. he had two sons, edwald and gebhard. but no one ever called them that. gebhard was known as frettchen because he had a charming, but rodent-like nose. he was dierk's main hand, always responsible. edwald was known as eklig, which is german for icky. he was a drifting, artistic type, always known for having paint splatters on his lederhosen and ink deep under his fingernails. me, frettchen and eklig used to play while we were growing up, playing hide-and-seek in my family's barley fields (much to the chagrin of my vater, who thought we might mess up the crops). as we got older, we would still play, not as seriously and with the added complication of growing up.

edwald was known for being successful with other maids in gamprin. but i was young and inexperienced and when he asked me our village's wurstfest, i was more than flattered. a young girl cannot see the fjords for the fields, as they say. but edwald soon turned eklig, and it wasn't very long before his attentions were long since gone in my direction and had moved to the cobbler's daughter, gerda, who had wide eyes like a child's doll and a slight alemannic accent to her german.

i was fine after a little while. these things stich for a while, but it gets better. my vater was livid. he almost stopped doing business with dierk, but i told him to not be so foolish. no other vendor would give us that good of a price for our crop. but vater wanted to kill eklig and thought he was sleazy. i told him that we are young, and these things happen. he calmed down after a bit, and my life returned to normal. i even started playing in the barley fields again with edwald and gebhard. it was almost as if our brief folly had never happened.

i could never get used to calling gebhard frettchen. i always thought it was a mean-spirited nickname. and he was always so kind to me. when i was sad about eklig, he would let me cry and hold me and told me that eklig was foolish to let me go. he said he loved my hair, that it was the same golden color of my barley field and that would always make me smile. it was as if i had been born from the fields themeselves.

eklig was sick and gebhard had come over and we were running around in the fields as we do (perhaps we were smoking some of that swiss drogen i've mentioned before). near the edge of the field, he grabbed my hand to stop me. i turn around, slightly paranoid that he was stopping me because vater had come out and he'd catch us. but instead, he kissed me. it had never occurred to me to kiss gebhard before, he was eklig's brother, but when he did it, it didn't feel wrong and i kissed him back. it was a blitzkrieg, and i surrendered willingly.

i always thought that since gebhard was the responsible, reliable one that this was the start of something wonderful. people might chatter, or klatsch about us since i had been with his brother, but i imagined they'd get over it because there was hardly a milkmaid in all of liechtenstein that eklig hadn't wooed with his dark eyes and epic paintings.

but something was wrong. we would kiss in my barley fields and everything would feel right, and then nothing was after. gebhard never asked me to wurstfest, or any of our local festivals. he seemed to not even know me, though the whole village knew how much time we spent together alone in my family's fields. the night we marched down to the liechtenstein capital to burn the luxembourg embassy, he barely even looked at me, and though my wooden shoe had splintered, he didn't help me. dolph had to help me up and brushed me off.

but i still let him kiss me in our barley fields, though clearly he didn't want me to be his geliebter, i let him because he was mine. i thought he'd remember my barley-hair beyond our fields and we could dance around the maypole in the daylight, proud to be with the young barley farmer's daughter. but he never did and i wondered when i'd be able to stop this compulsion.

it happened at a town meeting. someone thought that someone else was stealing their chickens, another thought that the new mill was too loud and was disturbing the sheep (though honestly, our sheep seemed to enjoy the white noise). eklig stood up in the middle of it and made a horrible comment about me. i don't recall completely what it was, such shock i was in, but it was something like trading me to another family for breeding and livestock. he offered 8 swiss francs for me. gebhard didn't do anything once again to protect me. he just sat there and went over figures with dierk and acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

i was herzzerreissend. my young heart had only known these two jungen and had felt we had shared a lot in our time together. and i let them kiss me and somehow i wasn't the milkmaid they cared for anymore, but another piece of livestock to be counted into our glorious liechtenstein g.n.p.

it's why i started working at this law firm. i couldn't work my fields anymore, bring our crops to dierk. even though the jungen hid themselves away when i came, i knew they were there and dierk would remind me of them anyway. they all have the same chin. i told my vater that i just didn't want to work in the barley fields anymore, or tend to the sheep. i made him believe that i hated it, though if things could have been different, i would have stayed in those fields forever. but it was too much. i was auch überwältigt to stay where i had.

and though i don't spend all my time on our homestead anymore, i still live at home and look longingly at my barley fields that i don't play in anymore. on my time off from the firm, i lie in the grass with my sheep and talk to them as if they were my jungen that i had spent so many lazy afternoons with. it's not the same, but what else can a young lass do but move into a new and scary world when the old one is painful and regressive?

this was not supposed to be all i was going to write today in you, mein lieblingjournal, but i so desperately needed you to understand so that you can help me in this new chapter that is developing. but i shall write again soon, and we will talk like fruende.



this is a picture of me, gebhard and edwald before the bad times, when our families took us all to the winter die feier in treisenberg. such innoncence in children, don't you think?

so i've been a busy little maid. i was in charge of training some of my fellow rechsans on this thingy. and yes, thingy is the closest it translates to in english.

and it took much more time than i originally anticipated. apparently, though treated like sheep on occasion, you cannot train rechsans like sheep.

security took my whip away.

well, gott verdammen es! if i could train them like i train my sheep, i can assure you that they'd learn the thingy real quick. in a more orderly fashion. and fluffier.

it was so much easier with my sheep, laying the grass and smoking my good swiss drogen, and singing folk songs at the top of my lungs.

it worked for sigur ros. only they're from iceland, and therefore, far weirder. everyone knows that the icelandic are unsinnig.





though my office protects me from the harsh liechtenstein winter, i am dreaming of my home.



that's a picture of my mom. isn't she awesome? that was before she married my father and they decided to start raising sheep and growing barley. it was a simpler time--dass viel, das ich weiß.

so i like to keep apprised of the goings-on outside my law firm and barley fields. and i read about all these riots and such over some cartoons and everyone's all, "those muslims have to be coocoo to be all burning and pillaging! what's wrong with them?!"

well, i have to say, i side with the muslims on this one. i understand their zorn. zorn, of course, being the word for fury. but i hate the word fury in english. zorn is so much better. it's like fury plus 5 bratwurst. now, that's zorn. i understand because of a little occurence that happened in my normally-pleasant liechtenstein that could have caused quite the stir in world politics.

anyone who knows anything knows that there is a long-standing feud between liechtenstein and luxembourg. because people are ALWAYS confusing us. which is just so weird because it's so obvious that luxembourg is western europe, between france and germany; whereas our fine liechtenstein is central europe, between austria and switzerland. i mean, come on. what are you, trottel? i think people find multi-syllabic countries that start with the same letter difficult to keep straight.

anyway, grand duke henri of luxembourg was quoted at a state dinner here at the local molkereienkönigin (their oreo blizzards are to die for) by our national newspaper, the daily yodeler saying "well, you know what they say about liechtenstein--liechtenstein: where the women are lonely and the sheep are nervous."

it was printed the next day, and let me tell you, there hadn't been such outrage in liechtenstein since the great ricola riots of '97. we were fed up. this was the last straw. luxembourg had exploited us too many times, taken too many of our tourists, acting all big and fancy just because it's almost the size of rhode island.

so we rounded up everyone in my village and we decided we would march all the way to the capital to burn the luxembourg embassy down. the march was long and hard, almost twenty minutes. there's, like, hills and stuff. not to mention we all wear wooden shoes, which i know you're thinking is a dutch thing, but don't even get me started on our rivalry with the dutch.

we carried the luxembourg flag



but we weren't taking any shit, or scheiße. we took sharpies to the flag and wrote, "what, are you trying to be FRENCH?!" ha. still makes me laugh.

so after our long and arduous journey, we arrived at the luxembourg embassy. this was our moment. fuck you, luxembourg. time to meet the zorn of liechtenstein.

unfortunately, dolph, who was supposed to bring the lighter, left it on top of his butter churn. he swore he had put it in his good lederhosen that he wore on our trek. so we made the long journey back and sat around and read fairy tales until we had calmed down enough to go to bed. they were brothers' grimm tales, in case you were wondering.

to this day, i wonder if dolph had brought his lighter, if liechtenstein would finally make cnn.com.

liechtenstein ewig! tod nach luxemburg!

also, here's a picture of some of my sheep:



if that sheep's nervous, then i'm the duke of hazzard

man.

it's a good thing i'm in liechtenstein. because i'd probably be pretty pissed if i had to deal with religious freaks getting in the way of actual health care.



here's my little schatz. her name is cäcilie. she can cure anything.

so i'm a paralegal (in liechtenstein, obviously--in german: rechtsanwaltsgehilfe--whew. that's a mouthful).

most of the other rechtsans (for short) plan to go to law school. they need recs from their rechtsanwälte (lawyers). my boss gave one to one of my rechsans and refused to give one to another, saying it'd "chip away at her integrity" to do so. i'm pretty sure in german there isn't a word for integrity. especially coming from her. i think it consists of grunting and donuts.

my personal opinion is, if you hate a certain rechtsan so much, you should write a glowing reccommendation and get them the hell out of there.

i laugh. i'm just a sweet little milkmaid trying to make it in the big principality. all i need a reccommendation for is a good barley recipe.



that's my barley field at home. looks like it needs some tending.

i'm pretty sure i'm still stoned.

there's a pop artist by the name of roy liechtenstein. and it is fun to look at when stoned.



that's right, honey. don't call brad. he's no good for you.

it's lonely here in liechtenstein.

i have the hiccups. i have been pre-approved for hiccups. i hate hiccups.

i got a raise at work. sadly, the raise will be given out as barley.

what do you even use barley for?

oh. right.

hey, did you know:

International disputes
Liechtenstein's royal family claims restitution for 1,600 sq km of land in the Czech Republic confiscated in 1918.

man. best be keeping them "in czech." oh, i slay me. oh, i am slain!