Word: vaduz
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...Liechtenstein, the Rhine River, Europe's mightiest waterway, is just a swift alpine stream. Above the spotless streets of the capital, Vaduz, looms Vaduz Castle, and above that nothing but snow-capped peaks. It is hard to imagine this idyllic mountain principality with 35,000 citizens as the heart of Europe's axis of evil. Yet secret agents, investigators and a growing chorus of politicians in Germany, the U.S., the U.K. and even Australia are convinced that this tiny enclave is up to no good. German lawmakers have barraged Liechtenstein with such epithets as "rogue state" and "den of thieves...
...going down at all well in Liechtenstein, a country so small you would drive past it if you missed the highway exit. Its people feel bullied. "It's just like the Germans," seethes Sandra Tinner, a 39-year-old storekeeper in the village of Triesenberg, just above Vaduz. "They ought to put their own house in order before they start attacking others." Crown Prince Alois, Liechtenstein's acting head of state, has himself denounced Germany's "unprovoked attack" on his country...
...most part, the still disenfranchised ladies accepted their fate stolidly. But some miniskirted militants demonstrated in Vaduz and smaller towns, booing male pedestrians and carrying placards inscribed: MEN OF LIECHTENSTEIN, WHERE'S YOUR VIRILITY...
...family estates in Czechoslovakia were expropriated, Liechtenstein's publicity-shy ruler has been discreetly selling off his $150 million art inheritance, consisting of more than 1,500 paintings. Some 30 to 40 Rembrandts, Rubenses and other old masters have disappeared from the vaults of the royal castle at Vaduz only to reappear, with a minimum of publicity, on museum walls from Ottawa to London. Unquestionably the most valuable painting in the Prince's collection was the Leonardo Ginevra...
...called the Ginevra dei Benci, as well as 27 Rubens paintings that are valued at $11 million, and paintings by Van Dyck, Brueghel, Rembrandt and Botticelli. The public is allowed to see only 75 of Franz Josef's lesser pictures, which are sandwiched into a modest building in Vaduz along with the tourist office and the national postage-stamp museum. The closest the Liechtenstein family comes to sharing its greatest paintings with the world is allowing them to appear occasionally on one of the nation's famed postage stamps...