Luxembourg!
After landing in Frankfurt on Sunday, I caught the first train I could and then changed trains, and changed trains again, and changed trains a 3rd time and after just over 3 hours of changing trains - found myself in Luxembourg City.
Luxembourg City is situated astride a river valley/canyon thing and as such is rather picturesque as it looks down on the low lying areas from defensive city walls high on the walls of the small canyon type thing. Most all of the city is in the upper elevations of the area...aside from the abbey (because...who cares about protecting monks? nobody is going to hurt them in a war anyways) and a beautiful park with lots of running trails.
It's a country/city that exists as poly-lingual. Not just tri-lingual...but poly-lingual. Because of the borders it shares and the wars over time the area has been switched back and forth between French and German influence multiple times. As such it is possible to sit in one restaurant and have the dominant language be German, and right next door the servers are all speaking French as their default language. Add to this that Luxembourgish is the official language of the country...and then the tourists needing English...and just by being born there, a kid will grow up and speak more languages than you ever will.
So what's to do in Luxembourg?
Well...it's pretty country. There are lots of bike trails in the rural areas to tour the whole country (which isn't very big).
I spent my 22 hours there in the city though. I went and had some wonderful steak tartare on a patio overlooking the city walls and canyon park. The next morning I went for a run through the canyon and ended up running around on some city walls that are almost a thousand years old and eventually ran my way out of the city through a tower built in 1390.
After my run I caught a bus and walked a ways to the American Memorial Cemetery just outside of town. Over 5500 soldiers who died in WW2 (most of which in the Battle of the Bulge) are buried there, including General George S. Patton Jr and several of the Band of Brothers (Easy Company from the 101st Airborne) and 2 Medal of Honor recipients. It was incredibly moving to visit the memorial. It was a beautiful design and what was incredibly striking to me was how clean and perfect it all was. There was a guy scrubbing the stones on the walkway. The stones were already clean...but he was making sure they were perfectly clean. The grass was immaculate. There was no litter anywhere. No leaves out of place. Not even any dust on the crosses or stars of David. It was also huge...which is amazing considering there are a couple more foreign sites that are larger. 5500 graves is a lot...Normandy has almost 3 times that many.
There was an amazing story in the info booth about a guy from Luxembourg who grew up during the German occupation and when the Americans came through to liberate the area, he and some of his friends watched in awe while these "heroes" (his word) took bucket showers in the river and blew off some steam. Later in his life he visited the memorial and found a soldier who shared his last name of Schroeder. He took it upon himself to adopt the grave site and bring it flowers every now and again. He wanted to learn more about this soldier and eventually he found a cousin of the guy in Texas. They talked and shared stories. Eventually the cousin got very old and she wanted to send some of Pvt. Schroeder's effects to the Luxembourgian Schroeder. In the box of things was an unopened letter. Dated 3 days before the Private was killed in battle. When he opened the letter (which was probably too painful to consider for the family), he read a story of a soldier taking notice of the boys in Luxembourg watching he and his fellow troops taking bucket showers in the river.
A couple miles down the road there is a German memorial cemetery as well. I didn't go to this (it was not a very pedestrian friendly path) but it would have been interesting because the crosses are not white like the American cemetery...but black/grey.
Other fun items from the day...
- Beef carpaccio can be ordered in many varieties. Traditional Luxembourg style...with arugula and parmesan. American style with "American sauce" and "condiments." Italian style with balsamic and fresh mozzarella. And probably most troubling...Mexican style with guac and nachos?!?
- I actually didn't eat a single bit of cooked meat while in Luxembourg. Steak tartare for dinner and beef carpaccio for lunch. ALL OF THE RAW RED MEATS!!!
- I ended up randomly sitting next to a first date at lunch on Monday. He was British. She was Luxembourgian. It was hilariously awkward and wonderful to half listen to while I ate. I lost interest after my 3rd glass of wine though (I asked for a glass...my server brought me 3/4 of a bottle) (and of course I had to drink it all...there are sober people somewhere who would have been sad if I didn't!).
- Post-lunch I went to a cafe specializing in hot chocolate. You picked your chocolate variety (85% dark chocolate for the win!) and you decided if you wanted booze added (I passed...figured I had enough with the wine) and they brought you a solid hunk of chocolate on a wooden spoon with a mug of steamed milk. It was damn good...but nothing touches Guatemala for hot chocolate still.
- The ingredients on the chocolate packaging was in German and French, but the allergy warning (gluten, nuts, soy) was in giant ENGLISH capital letters. I feel like that isn't a coincidence.
- The main Catholic church in town was stunning. It also had flat screen TV's mounted on some of the columns so that people in the back can see. An older church was not as high tech...they had a small dry erase board mounted on a column.
Pictures below of Luxembourg, the American Memorial Cemetery, tv's in churches and some other random stuff.
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