All I Know of Liechtenstein

First, an apology: I was traveling last weekend and although I returned in time to prepare a poem, my poor dog was having serious tummy issues—way worse than the separation anxiety I assumed he was having (he’s doing much better now). So instead of publishing a poem here, I threw the following haiku on Facebook:

Busy traveling—

Then returned to a sick pup.

Time just for haikus.

Anyway, on to today’s poem. In eighth grade my family used our inheritance money from my grandpa to visit my uncle, who had a research grant in Switzerland at the time. It was a memorable trip for numerous reasons—first international trip excluding Canada, first airplane that I was old enough to remember, plus lots of family memories and in-jokes born there. I also remember lots of train rides through gorgeous scenery that I ignored in favor of Tetris on my uncle’s gameboy, but that’s a side issue.

One afternoon we hopped across the border into Liechtenstein, a small country between Switzerland and Austria. What I remember of the trip is recorded in today’s poem… but mostly I remember the pride of knowing that such a tiny place existed, and having been there.

Today’s poem was written during last year’s Poem a Day challenge. The prompt was to pick up a thread from another poet’s work. My friend Amelia Friedline had written a poem entitled “All I Know of Luxumbourg,” so I wrote mine in response to hers.

As a final note, the poem claims we tied the Liechtenstein trip to our visit to Appenzell, which is relatively close, but when I looked at my photos just now it turns out we visited Appenzell at the beginning of the trip and Liechtenstein was the last thing we did. Oops. Poetic license, I guess.