This video was made possible by CuriosityStream.
When you sign up at curiositysteam.com/HAI, you’ll also get access to Nebula—the streaming
service that HAI is a part of.
Welcome to Liechtenstein.
It’s a rather unusual country: it’s pretty old, it’s very weird, and even though it
seems quite nice, it often doesn’t make a lot of sense—much like Joe Biden.
Lichtenstein is located here, between Austria and Switzerland, and it is one of the smallest
countries in the world, with an area of only 60 square miles or 160 square kilometers.
That’s about sixty times bigger than one square mile of land, or about 160 times bigger
than one square kilometer of land.
That land is home to 38,557 people which is enough that, if you were to make a tower stacking
all of them on top of each other, it wouldn’t stretch very close to the moon at all because
it would fall over and a lot of the people would die.
There are a lot of things that make Liechtenstein weird: it’s the world’s number one manufacturer
of false teeth, it only started letting women vote in 1984, it was once accidentally invaded
by Switzerland, and its national anthem is just a lazy rip-off of God Save The Queen.
Oh, and did I mention: In 2011, for the low, low price of $70,000 a night, Liechtenstein
began offering people the opportunity to rent out the entire country… on Airbnb.
Now I want to be clear: even though it may sound like the type of weird made-up kingdom
that would be featured in a hastily-written Netflix Christmas rom-com, Liechtenstein is
a very real country, I’m told.
It’s a member of the United Nations, it has a written constitution, and it even has
a rather impressive economy given its small population, with $5.3 billion in annual GDP,
which breaks down to $98,432 per capita, which is among the highest per-capita GDPs of any
nation in the world.
For context, that’s nearly $98,433 per person.
So you may be wondering, why is an actual, honest-to-goodness country, you know, rent-able?
Normally renting is for cars, tuxedos, and bowling shoes—not sovereign nations.
Well, it isn’t completely clear what the impetus was behind the idea, but it seems
as though the inspiration may have come in 2010, when rapper, actor, and jazz grass enthusiast
Snoop Dogg attempted to rent out Liechtenstein to shoot a music video.
Surprisingly, Liechtenstein said they were open to it, but in the end, Snoop’s request
was denied because he didn’t give them enough notice—turns out, with so much drama in
the LIE it really was hard being Snoop D-O-double-G.
A year after Snoop’s failure, though, the internet was graced something that soon joined
the likes of History of Japan, the launch of Windows 95, and Eel Slap as one of the
most bizarrely magnificent things ever to be posted on the World Wide Web: this very
real Airbnb listing that reads simply, “Rent the country of Liechtenstein!”
The rental program was a collaboration between Airbnb and a Liechtenstein-based marketing
company called Xnet which runs a program called Rent-a-Village that lets rich people rent
towns—because why spend your money to help the poor when you could use it to temporarily
take over entire municipalities, like some sort of bizarre sharing-economy version of
Alexander the Great.
Now, the Liechtenstein rental did come with a few caveats.
First of all, the 38,557 people who actually live there would get to stay in their homes,
and as the renter, you’d still have to, like, follow laws and stuff—you don’t
get to run a small-scale, European version of the Purge.
Plus, the minimum stay would be three days, and you’d be subject to a very strict cancellation
policy—if you cancel 30 days or more before your stay, you can get half your money back,
but any later and you get nothing: all your hard-earned cash gets fed straight into Liechtenstein’s
creepy fake-teeth-based economy.
So, what would you get if you rented Liechtenstein?
Well, first off, there’s the obvious: accommodations, 500+ bedrooms and bathrooms, which the listing
says can hold between 450 and 900 people.
For check in, your point of contact would be the actual Prince of Liechtenstein—this
guy, Hans-Adam II—who the listing recommends meeting in his personal vineyard, where you
have the option of joining him for a wine tasting.
But, if old grapes aren’t your style, you can also meet him in the capital city of Vaduz,
at a medieval market near the Gutenberg Fortress, or in a, “Wild-West style town” on the
banks of the Rhine, which sounds like a super fun time that won’t in any way involve evil
murderous robots.
Afterwards, you’d be led to a kick-off celebration, and presented with a “symbolic key to the
state,” just in case you ever need to open the symbolic door to the state.
After that, you’ll be transported to your various Liechtensteinian activities—which
you can do in either vintage American cars or traditional horse-drawn carriages, in case
you prefer forms of transportation that stop in the road for bathroom breaks.
After that, the options are pretty wide open, seeing as you literally rented the entire
country, but to help get the ball rolling, the official listing mentions some ideas,
which include personalized fireworks displays, a range of museums and trails for hiking,
tobogganing, skiing, a “custom medieval festival” to be held in your honor, and
even options to print your own temporary currency, and rename city streets.
For check-out, it suggests a “regional jazz-brunch,” which it doesn’t define any further, but
which I imagine involves eating bacon egg and cheese saxophones, after which you would
finally return to your regular, miserable, non-country-owning life.
Now, sadly, nobody ever took Liechtenstein up on their offer.
One couple was reportedly going to book it for their wedding, but their marriage was
called off for non-Liechtenstein related reasons, and, now, it is with a heavy heart that I
must inform you that Liechtenstein is no longer listed on Airbnb—but the good news is, if
you’re still in the market to for a trip that screams, “I have far too much money,”
for no more than the cost to rent out Liechtenstein, I’m offering a trip where you get to rent
out the entirety of my apartment.
If, on the other hand, you’re looking for excitement but you don’t have Liechtenstein-renting
money, might I suggest an annual subscription to CuriosityStream, which costs only $20 for
the whole year, and which gives you access to thousands of top-quality documentaries
from people like Stephen Hawking, Jane Goodall, Chris Hadfield, and a bunch of others.
Plus, when you sign up, you’ll also get access to Nebula, the streaming service started
by myself and a bunch of other educational creators, which not only includes ad-free
versions of all our videos, but also has tons of awesome original content that you can only
find there, including one of my favorite things on the internet: Grand Test Auto, a car review
show by my friends Joseph from Real Life Lore and JT from Second Thought.
So get access to CuriosityStream and Nebula for only $20 a year by going to curiositystream.com/HAI.