Malbun
Up the mountain 15 km from Vaduz, below the Three Sisters massif, Malbun is Liechtenstein’s outdoor playground. Popular in winter with families for its traffic-free center and easy, centralized ski runs – and popular in summer for its cool temperatures and good trail network – the quiet hamlet draws crowds from June through September and from December through March. Malbun grew up in the 1960s after completion of the tunnel and road from Steg. Today’s village includes several hotels, a handful of shops, and a cluster of privately owned holiday cabins, all centered on Malbun’s original hotel, the brightly painted Alpenhotel Malbuner. Worth a quick look is the Friedenskapelle just up the hill at the entrance to town – a stone chapel built in 1945 as a war memorial in pious gratitude for Liechtenstein’s non-participation in the war.
The Falknerei Hotel Garni Galina puts on a small falconry show that will delight kids and all those fascinated by wildlife. From the hotel’s dining terrace, visitors get an intimate look at aerial acrobatics by several of the falconry’s 19 birds of prey.
Winter-season adventurers enjoy a wide range of sports, including ice-skating, ski touring, winter hiking, snowshoeing, tobogganing, and downhill skiing, with six lifts and 21 km of mostly easy pistes. Snowboarders enjoy a funpark, bikers test their skills on snow-scoots, and skaters take to the ice on a natural rink. Cross-country skiers head for Steg, three km down the mountain.
In summer, lift-assisted hiking is popular – try the Fürstin-Gina-Weg, a view-blessed trail that hugs the Austrian border as far as the Bettlerjoch hut and then drops down through Gritsch for the return to Malbun. Need a more difficult challenge? Step out onto the Fürstensteig, a narrow, cliff-hugging trail cut into rock of the Three Sisters massif. Hold on tight – to the cableway and your soul. Local lore alleges that the mountains here steal human spirits.
Malbun can be reached by car or hourly bus from Vaduz, Treisenberg, and Steg.
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