The last stop of our trip was in Luxembourg, where we were going to stay for two days, before heading to Frankfurt to visit some family friends. We got to Luxembourg in the afternoon, and quickly began a search for food. While walking around the area near the train station, we noticed that the outer parts of Luxembourg seemed to be a lot dirtier than the cities we had visited earlier. This was particularly interesting when we went into the center and found ourselves surrounded by luxury stores and incredibly expensive restaurants (Luxembourg is very small, so these two areas are about a ten minute walk apart). Luxembourg has the highest GDP per capita in the world, due to its tiny size and its focus on banking, and you can tell while walking around. I personally found this a little cold and intimidating, but maybe that was partly because we had been travelling for a while and I was tired. We walked around that evening, enjoying the city as the sun set, and coming across one of our last Christmas markets. This market was almost entirely focused on food and wine, and we walked through, briefly enjoying the atmosphere, before heading off for a delicious, but very expensive, dinner.
Here are some photos of Luxembourg at dusk:
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| The Royal Palace |
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| Attached to the palace: the office for state affairs/government dealings |
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| Christmas Market |
I think Luxembourg is interesting because it is a Grand Duchy, still ruled by a royal family. There were photographs of the family in every tourist shop, and I had a difficult time finding a postcard that did not have a photo of them on it. It is also interesting because the people there speak French, German, and Luxembourgish, which is a mixture of French and German dialects. Apparently Luxembourgish is the language most often used in spoken conversation, but it is not often written, German is the language of the church and the media (and the first one taught in school), and French is the language for official business and public interactions, and taught second in school (most store signs were written in French). Knowing German and having studied French for a little while, I found it really interesting to listen to what people were speaking when we encountered them. I liked trying to decipher Luxembourgish, and the few places it was written was delightful for someone like me who is so interested in languages. What was also interesting, however, was that the people in Luxembourg wanted to speak only English with us. Most of our time in Alsace we had spoken German, but suddenly we had crossed back into the area where English was the most useful. A trend which logically continued once we reached Belgium.
The next day we tried to explore the casements that run around the city, a series of underground defensive passageways that were used as recently as World War II. Unfortunately we found out that they were closed, but we got some beautiful photos looking down on the city nestled in the valley.
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| The Casements |
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| The view of Luxembourg |
We stopped by the casements in the morning, before heading briefly into Belgium. Knowing that we didn't have time to go all the way to Brussels, we chose a city called Namur about half an hour closer to Luxembourg than Brussels. I had read that it had a citadel to explore, and it was the largest city before Brussels, when coming from Luxembourg, that looked promising for an afternoon. As we only had an afternoon and evening in Belgium and wouldn't be seeing any particularly historic cities, my criteria for my few hours in Belgium was different than it usually is when visiting a city or country, although not entirely: I wanted to eat. My goal was to try Belgian waffles, beer, chocolate, and french fries. French fries were invented in Belgium, and are only called "french" fries because of the process used to make them. And as I knew the first fact, but not the second, I feel like I learned something in that Belgian afternoon. We accomplished the french fry goal by stopping at a "friterie" along the highway on the way to Namur. It seemed that every five minutes we passed another one of these, and eventually we felt it was close enough to lunch time and we were hungry enough after breakfast that we could stop. We stopped at one to get fries and take pictures, as well as spend a while talking to the very friendly couple we met inside, who were on their way to the coast and were intrigued to hear that we were headed to Namur (it is not a particularly touristy city). We got our fries with mayonaise, as is most common, and they were as delicious as I had hoped!
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| The friterie where we stopped |
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| With fries outside of the friterie |
Once we reached Namur we headed for the citadel we had read about. The history of the citadel is really interesting, as there are tunnels and buildings dating all the way back to medieval times, that have been expanded upon and used for different purposes throughout the city's history. We had to cut our walk short as it began to rain, but we got to walk through some creepy tunnels and see a beautiful view of Namur from the hill. After driving around a lot in the area near the citadel, we headed into the center of town to try to find some waffles, beer, and chocolate.
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| View of Namur from the Citadel |
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| Old walls and tunnels |
Beer and chocolate were achieved at the Christmas market we found. Unfortunately the stall selling the Brussels variety of waffles was out of waffles, so he gave us some sort of fried dough balls to try instead. While delicious, I was disappointed, as my friend Ivor had told me I had to try the Brussels variety of waffle. I did manage to try one of the Liège variety waffles, which I got dipped in dark chocolate. The waffle had sugar crystals inside, which made it extremely decadent. I really enjoyed it on such a cold, rainy day, but my dad and Lisa both found it too sweet. I think in a different circumstance I probably would have as well, but it did the trick that day. I also bought some amaretto dark chocolate from another stall, and thus my wish-list was fulfilled!
Christmas Market:
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| Waffle: Liège Variety |
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| The replacement given to me in the place of a Brussels waffle |
We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around downtown, buying chocolate and coffee, and eventually searching for a place to stop and have a beer. My dad spotted this place called Le College, where we stopped in. It turned out to be the perfect place to go. A local struck up a conversation with us, and told us how perfect it was that we had ended up in Le College, and told us a little bit about the beers we were drinking (some of which were actually dutch, whoops!). After this we headed back to Luxembourg, tired but satisfied.
The next morning we stopped at Vianden castle for a brief tour on our way back to Germany. Vianden is right on the border, and is where Victor Hugo stayed during his exile. It's a picturesque little town and the castle is beautifully restored, so we enjoyed our morning before a long drive to Frankfurt. After a lovely night there with old friends of my parents (old in time, not age :)), I headed back to Tübingen. My dad and Lisa stayed one more day, before flying back to the States. It had been a whirlwind ten days, but a wonderful trip full of new places and new experiences.
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| Vianden Castle |
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| The view of Vianden from the castle |
And along the line of new experiences, I had another one yesterday. I watched the Superbowl in another country. Actually, just having watched the entire superbowl was a new experience for me, but doing so from 12:00-4:00 am made it even more fun. I went with Catie and my friend Dee, and we sat surrounded by a shockingly large number of German fans (all the seats were taken and there was barely standing room at first) at the Deutsch-Amerikanisches Institut. A hard Patriots loss was made worse by the lack of fun commercials and the cohort of German Giants fans, many of whom were routing for New York just because it was New York, but we had a lot of fun anyway. Especially as the resident experts in our corner of the room. I never thought football would make me feel patriotic, but I guess there's a first for everything!
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| This is only half of the crowd, and at least two-thirds of the room |
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| Americans watching the Superbowl! |
And in one last bit of delicious news, I tried stroop syrup (also known as the syrup used in stroop waffles) the other day. My friend Ivor made us Dutch pancakes, which you cook and then top with cheese and/or bacon which cooks into the pancake. You top that with this sweet syrup that tastes sort of like molasses and maple syrup combined, and you end up with pure deliciousness.
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| The syrup (and my friend Sinéad) |
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| My cheesy pancake |
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| The meat version, which I must admit looks beautiful, even if I would not want to eat it |
