91.5 Chapel Hill 88.9 Manteo 90.9 Rocky Mount 91.1 Welcome 91.9 Fayetteville 90.5 Buxton 94.1 Lumberton 99.9 Southern Pines 89.9 Chadbourn

Tiny Liechtenstein Loses A Precious Quarter-Acre

Your browser doesn’t support HTML5 audio

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

To a different foreign land now with its own point of pride. Not poetry, in this case, but size. Liechtenstein is that tiny principality in Europe with a population smaller than Hoboken, N.J. The country is a grand total of 62 square miles. And now it's getting even smaller.

Last month, when the government altered its official map, bits and pieces of land disappeared altogether, making it a quarter of an acre smaller. But as the Wall Street Journal reports, no one seemed to mind. In fact, Liechtensteiners pride themselves on their tiny homeland. Where else in the world could the head of state invite all the citizens up to the castle for a beer? Ah, Liechtenstein. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Email
Rachel Martin is a host of Morning Edition, as well as NPR's morning news podcast Up First.
Stories From This Author
  1. How to hold onto a sense of wonder
  2. It's weird to be a grown-up orphan. It forced my siblings and me to reckon with faith
  3. Picking out a Christmas tree for this mom and son is a literal race against the clock