The first place we saw on the walk back into town was Restaurant Grüneck, which looked like it featured a "bar and grill". Like Adler, however, it wasn't open during the day, so we decided we'd visit it later on.
Meandering further along Lettstraße we found, appropriately enough, a bar called simply: Lett. Now if you're a German speaker, you might be forgiven for thinking that this would be a Latvian theme pub, but I remember it as being a cross between a delicatessen and a wild west saloon.
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We sat at the tables out the front in order to enjoy the warm weather, and the sight of a small child falling off her bike with wearisome predictability.
It's so long since we went to Liechtenstein that I can hardly remember much about the pubs themselves. However, the events which transpired at the next pub – the generically named Brau-Stube – were uncommonly memorable.
In Vaduz, all roads lead to Städtle, so having exhausted the delights of Lettstraße we found ourselves more or less back where we started, pretty much near to Adler (which was still shut). So we opted for Brau-Stube. It all looked innocent enough: a slightly fading concrete building with a spectacularly large umbrella outside.
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As soon as we went in, Tim decided that he needed to "rest" in the restroom, and left the ordering to everyone else. We'd learnt by now that to get a regular beer in these parts of the world, you have to ask for a "Lady". I'll refrain from making an ill-crafted pun about the complications of having twenty Ladies in one evening, but instead I can point out that we all agreed on the need for a larger quantity of beer. As the Brau-Stube entertained something of – as Time Out might put it – a traditional coterie, we thought that this would be as good a place as any to try to get a stein of beer.
The waiter was delighted to oblige. Although perhaps not technically steins as such, we did manage to get a litre of beer each, in a glass with a handle. Unfortunately, however, he only had five such glasses available, so one of us would have to go without. He was about to get a Lady for the sixth beer, when he realised that, being a bunch of English drunkards, we might be interested in a yet larger size. So imagine our awe when he produced a two-litre glass – not a super-sized version of the litre glass with a handle, but a gigantic Lady complete with stem. I think it'd be accurate to say that the sight "brought tears to our eyes".
When he asked "which one of you is having the big one?", there was only one choice: the absent Tim. On returning from his "resting", he suspected nothing, because the waiter was still pouring the beer (which took quite some time). But when the drinks were finally delivered, Tim was pretty surprised to be given a beer larger than his own head.
I'm sure that all readers will identify with his mirth:
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... which gradually turned into concern ...
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... and then stony-faced sickness:
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Eventually, he had to call on Al's help to finish it off, and this appears to have taken its toll on the latter as well:
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You probably won't be entirely surprised to learn that things became somewhat unruly from this point onwards.
Having made careful note of the opening hours, we reasoned that Restaurant Grüneck would now be open, so we headed back there. "Restaurant" turned out to be something of a misnomer, since it appeared to consist purely of a square-shaped bar in the centre of a room adorned with monstrously luminous wall-hangings. I have a feeling these were enhanced by the use of UV, or I may have had a Calandabräu too many. This would probably also account for my failure to correctly negotiate the spiral stairs to the toilet.
Here's a sort-of-picture of the outside:
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Now that the evening was in full swing, we could make our way to the legendary Adler, stopping en route for Simon to attempt to joyride some industrial machinery.
Adler was actually a pretty good bar, albeit with a vaguely jungle theme – the carved elephant clearly proved irresistible to me:
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By this point we were becoming a little sluggish, so we decided we needed a "sharpener" alongside the beers. One of our number evidently had the brainwave of ordering a round of Ramazzotti. I'm not sure if this "sharpened" us or "took the edge off", but it definitely didn't assist our glass-to-mouth coordination. Simon seems to have found it rather objectionable:
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The next bar we visited, Real, was within about five seconds' walk of all the other bars we'd visited that day, though for a bit of variety this one was in a hotel, next door to where we'd got the pizza in the night before. It had a kind of celebrity awning over the entrance – in which I had to be photographed, darkly:
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Once we got inside, we all decided that the place bore an uncanny resemblance to a Chinese restaurant. Looking back at the photographs, though, I think we reached this conclusion purely on the basis that it had red tablecloths.
After racking up a few beers, it would appear that Pad entered into an earnest conversation with Ian, while I eagerly reached for my glass. Judging from his expression, I suspect that Pad was trying to sell Ian some units in the Glengarry Highlands, Florida.
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However, Ian's expression testifies that Pad is not a Closer.
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As we all gradually drifted sleepwards, Al very kindly took time out to photograph Real's toilet facilities – which, as you can see, are pretty high-class:
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Indeed, this was the last photograph anyone remembered to take that evening, so I am unable to show you the magnificent bar called Crash, just round the corner from the Brau-Stube. (MEMO TO SELF: Open up a basement on Shoreditch High Street called "crash bar" selling overpriced bottled beer, with self-knowingly ironic brown sofas, and the name spelt out on the pavement by the entrance in lower-case Helvetica. It'll fleece millions out of the Hoxton new media sheep. Anyway, back to Liechtenstein.) Crash was where it was all happening, which may explain why we were too busy to take a photo. We played several rounds of pinball, with varying success, and unwittingly attempted to take the locals on at pool. A tableside confrontation with some Swiss, who thought we were partying a little too hard, was avoided by Al's quick-fire Italian skills. (MEMO TO SELF: Congratulate self on success in using the word "tableside" without the word "dancing".)
Eventually, of course, we all felt the need to, er, crash, so we made our way back to the Landhaus Prasch and to sleep. Except, of course, it wasn't that easy: shortly before getting back to the guesthouse (and fumbling LOUDLY with the keys whilst pretending to be very quiet), Simon managed to go for an unscheduled stroll. This required Al and myself to roam the mean streets of South Central Vaduz for about 20 minutes, shouting out Simon's name, which is Peter, until eventually he was found and escorted to bed.
All in all, a successful day's drinking. But deep down, we knew that we wouldn't be able to look each other in the eye until we'd visited Liechtenstein's famous postage stamp museum, which is what we had in store for Sunday morning.