Walking. This seems to have been the theme of our weekend, and don't get me wrong, I enjoy wandering round and discovering places but I have a limit, and I think my legs have found it this weekend as they are no longer functioning at full capacity I must say....
The journey to Luxembourg city from here isn't too bad, just over 3 hours on the train. It all went swimmingly, until the little screen on the train started saying "Terminus Arlon" (a town in Belgium...) and we started worrying just a little! Luckily it must have meant that Arlon was the last stop in Belgium as the train soon continued onto Luxembourg. Phew! We arrived in a rather cold Luxembourg in the early afternoon and headed off to the hotel to dump our bags. After filling in a form that seemed to want to know everything but my inside leg measurement we got into our room. We decided that the best thing for us to do first would be to go to the tourist information centre to get ourselves a map (as you will later learn it obviously wasn't good enough...). Seeing as it was still mid-afternoon we wanted to wander over to the European area and see everything over there and it made sense to get it over and done with first as it was on the other side of the city. So off we went, in the direction that according to our map and the signposts would lead us to the area with all the EU institutions in it. After a while we were faced with a long path, leading uphill, through the trees. For some reason this didn't strike us as odd, I just remarked that they must send the tourists the scenic route as presumably all the people that work in the EU institutions don't walk this way! So up we went...it didn't take too much longer for us to realise that we clearly weren't going to get there that night. The problem was this being abound 4.30-5pm in November it was starting to get dark and we were on a rough path, through the woods and round an old fort, with no lights. Brilliant. The choice being either to turn back where we'd come- hardly a short distance, or continue we decided to march onwards. Eventually we ended up at what you could loosely term as civilization. I hesitate in calling it this as there seemed to be no people, shops or anything of the sort. By now it was too late to be heading for the EU stuff and about time to be searching for food. Problem. Luxembourg is basically on 2 levels, the high town and the low town. They aren't very well linked-other than by a great many stairs and you'll have a job locating them. So this is how we spent a large part of our first evening in Luxembourg, trying to "escape" the Ville Basse and get back where human life could be found. We managed this - via an epic flight of stairs and a series of rather steep hills. Nice relaxing welcome to Luxembourg.... Food was soon located, and you know you're in a posh expensive restaurant when they take your coats and give you some pea-mousse thing whilst you look at the menu. It was a fish restaurant and all the food looked (and tasted) very nice. We did feel a bit like (bad pun coming....) fish out of water though as we were most certainly the youngest people in there.
Saturday-
On Saturday we had to head to the European area, after all the mess of the night before we had worked out where we'd gone wrong and how we'd ended up underneath the bridge we'd actually wanted to be crossing. As it turns out it is probably for the best that we'd not made it there the previous night as there was a lot to see, it took us a good hour or so to walk round and wouldn't have been so good in the dark. The geek in me wants to go and see the rest of it in Strasbourg now seeing as I've seen the European Commission and all the other bits here and now (here comes the list...) the European Investment Bank, European Court of Justice, European Court of Auditors and the European Chamber of Commerce in Luxembourg. I'm pretty sure we also saw where the main translation centre is too. I've been looking into all the types of translation jobs they need in the EU, I'd love to translate for the Court of Justice but that would involve some form of Legal qualification which I don't have, well I can dream can't I?
After this we did a hell of a lot more walking! I've put some photos on Facebook but for those of you not on there I'm about to stick them on Flickr too so I'll give you the link, just give me a chance to get them up there.
2 observations about transport in Luxembourg- there are loads and loads of Audis, especially in the European area where at least I'd say 1 in 3 cars were Audis. Also Luxembourg, despite being tiny seems to be the European Capital of busses or something, there were hundreds of them, often with the very useful destination on the front of "Luxembourg".
After exhausting all the views and monuments of the city, writing postcards and drinking expensive (but very nice) coffee we went to the restaurant next to the one we'd been to the night before. Whilst we were looking at the menu outside the waiter from the other restaurant came past and said hi, 2 young female students were probably a rare occurrence for that place, must've been easily recognisable or something! When we were inside we were offered the English menu and caused some confusion when we asked for the French, and one of the waiters clearly wasn't sure as he insisted on speaking to us in English each time, although the others did at least stick to the French. When we ordered the waiter asked me if I was sure that was what I wanted, did I know what it was? I thought I did having read the English version of the menu outside but evidentially it was a different thing entirely. What I was ordering, the internet now tells me, was part of a pigs large intestine.... yuuummmmm :S I'm glad I didn't go for that in the end then... As the exciting, party-animal, Erasmus students we are, we then returned to the hotel, got into our PJs and watched Danse avec les Stars.....
Sunday- To round off our trip we headed to the Museum of the History of Luxembourg City, presuming that the museum would be some what relative to the size of the city itself, it was surprisingly big though but a nice way to spend our last morning before heading back to the station and returning to Brussels.
I know I've already told you how much we walked, but seriously, my legs really really ache now. I've had my exercise for the week. Maybe I don't need to climb the stairs every day?!
My Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bexnobes/
