Greetings from: Luxembourg (again)

We end where we begin: in Luxembourg. Probably not a moment too soon: Matthew and I are now loaded down with at least fifty pounds worth of new purchases.

We have dinner in a Laotian restaurant -- an odd cuisine to find in Luxembourg. Even more odd: as we come in, a muscular man wearing an Armani t-shirt is singing Thai karaoke. He says that Thai is his sixth language, and that’s he’s working on a seventh: Japanese. He also says, essentially, that he’s learned these languages in order to impress the girls of those countries, which is honest enough, I suppose. His comrade-in-arms, if not in tongues, has the build of a fireman. The polyglot laughs and jokes with the owner of the restaurant. He’s brought his own bootleg karaoke CDs. He has sets of harmonicas that he plays, blues-style, to a few songs. We applaud when appropriate.

This song, he tells us, is about a guy who brings his girlfriend to a certain part of the city. The next time he sees his girlfriend, though, she’s with another guy. So it’s a very fast, very angry song. Too fast for him to sing along.

The owner speaks to us in French. He moved to Luxembourg from Paris, and finds the Grand Duchy somewhat dull.

Well, yes, I can see how that’s possible.

But Luxembourg is what it is. Our Armani-clad friend says that the country is too conservative. Luxembourg has the highest income per capita in Europe, he says, but many people don’t know anything beyond their own borders. He’s going back to Thailand and Laos in a few months.

What’s your line of work? we ask. He’s an electrical engineer.

The evening pulls forth -- we have a plane to catch tomorrow. And how is it, that we’re in a Laotian restaurant run by a former Parisian, speaking English to a man who can sing Thai karaoke. The screens now show hideously cheesy videos, replete with ruffle-clad dancers and a singer who stands with the dignity of a former Miss Universe winner. The two men speaking French next to us switch to English when they address the two blonde ladies at the far table. And for this meal, sipping our fresh coconut juice, it seems as if Luxembourg has become a microcosm of the larger world.

Greetings from: the train from Luxembourg to Amsterdam

There are a good number of cyclists on the train.  As they board, they struggle with their bikes, wrestling to get them into an upright position.  They’re dark-tanned (or perhaps just Spanish) and stride down the aisles with lean, muscular legs.  I’m also continually blinded by people wearing bright orange outfits.  I’m cheering on the Netherlands in the World Cup Finals too, but there’s a reason why hunters use that color to keep from getting shot. 

An elderly woman sits across from us.  She does things that seem inscrutable:  cutting advertisements with a pair of tiny scissors; making notations in a date book no larger than the size of her palm; scrutinizing a brochure for youth hostels, bringing the paper close to her face, even as her glasses lie on the table in front of her.  She wears pearls and a gold necklace with a cross, and her dress is the color of Delft tiles.  She continually busies herself as I nap. 

Meanwhile, the green parts of Belgium stream by; you could also be fooled into thinking the country were nothing but foliage.  Foliage and graffiti, actually.

***

A minor kerfuffle:  Matthew and I sit in a glassed-off compartment.  The first Brussels-Amsterdam train was canceled, and the one an hour later is packed.  We first share the compartment with a couple with a toddler daughter -- perfectly fine.  When the couple disembarked at Antwerp, however, we were then joined by a Frenchwoman, who did a suitcase-block of one of the seats.  

An African-American woman (Tanya) and her husband tried to enter, but there was a misunderstanding as to how many people were coming in, who had arrived first, and what the etiquette was for ‘saving seats.’ 
“We’re two people,” Tanya says.

“We’re two too,” the other woman replies. 

“I think you’re very ill-mannered,” Tanya says.

“I think you’re ill-mannered,” the other woman replies.

“Why are you still talking to me?”

“I’m going to ignore you now.”

Peace has been restored.  Tanya writes a book proposal on her laptop:  A Guide to Hating Your Government.  It’s a “satire” of some sort, with a surfeit of “scare quotes.” 

I preferred the toddler, drool and all. 

Greetings from: CLERVAUX

My troubles in Luxembourg begins with my inability to make simple metric calculations.  For instance, at the farmer's market in the Place d'Armes, I asked for 375g of German speck, expecting a handful of slices and ending up with a solid block of pig.  It smells delicious but the small butter knife which the hotel lent me is insufficient to but through the tough, cured deliciousness.  (I later compounded this problem when, for dinner, I ordered a 300g hamburger and watched Germany beat Uruguay for third-place in the World Cup.)

Next, as Matthew and I bought our tickets for the northern town of Clervaux, I couldn't believe the ticket agent when he told me it would cost €3.  "How much?" I asked.  The clerk, clearly annoyed, held up three fingers.  If I were traveling on New Jersey Transit, €3 wouldn't have gotten me further than one stop, and Clervaux is nearly at the Luxembourg-Belgium border.  The town itself is rather sleepy -- when we arrived, the shops were closed for a two-hour siesta.  But I don't blame them:  the sun scorched everything in its path.  We sat under an awning for lunch and angled ourselves to avoid any contact whatsoever with sunlight.  When we couldn't bear it any longer, we each ordered a café glacé -- three scoops of ice cream, warm coffee, and whipped cream -- to stave off heatstroke.  It worked.

Our main purpose in going to Clervaux, though, was to hear the monks at the Benedictine Abbey of St. Maurice recite vespers.  Let your mind wander back to 1990:  the Berlin Wall falls; Margaret Thatcher resigns; Nelson Mandela is released from prison; and Iraq invades Kuwait.  Elsewhere in the world, a little-known German-Romanian band named Enigma releases their debut album MCMXC a.D, and their single, "Sadeness, Pt. 1," which mixes Gregorian chants with techno beats, becomes a worldwide smash and finds a special place in the heart of a certain high school sophomore Aurora, Colorado.

On our way to the abbey, however, we got lost.  We walked along a road up a hill and found, instead of an abbey, a daycare center.  A helpful young woman pointed out that the abbey was on the other hill, and that if we were going by foot, we had just missed the turn-off for the trail about a hundred yards back.  Thus, we began our walk through the woods -- pine needles underfoot, the smell of cow patties in the air.  Small markers indicated that this was a bike path of some sort; judging by the steep incline, it was the masochist's path.  Oh, it can't be that much further, I thought.  There's not that much hill left.  At best, it was another 100 meters of vertical ascent. 

Yeah, that conversion issue again.

Greetings from: the Old City

On the plane to Luxembourg, we met a young Luxembourgois named Chris, who advised us:  you can see all of the Old City in an hour and a half, if you don't stop in anywhere.  He also suggested a bar, Scott's, to which I nodded as if excited, but since I don't drink, it was mostly for show.  As it turns out, our tour of the Old City took significantly longer than and hour and a half, but that's not because we didn't stop anywhere.  Old City sounds better than "commercial shopping district"; it sounds more quaint.  More romantic.  And if there's any doubt to the romanticism of the city, I bore witness to these five examples: 

#1:  As I sat, sipping a chocolate milkshake at the Chocolate Company, right across from the Palais Grand-Ducal, I watched a young woman of about 14, chat up the Royal Guard, who looked to be maybe 18.  There's none of that British-style, Beefeater stone-face here; the guard stared straight ahead, but he was clearly speaking back to her.  As he did his formal march, a stately fifteen paces to his left, she followed along on the other side.  There's something about a man in uniform.  After that procession, however, he continued to march in the hot afternoon sun, beret poised sharply on his forehead, and the young lady, sensing a lost cause, moved on. 

#2:  Matthew and I went down into the Bock casemates, the cavernous underground military fortifications.  We traipsed up and down stone spiral staircases, with steps so narrow that my size 9½ sneaker threatened to slip right off.  As the story goes (from the casemate brochure), the first count of Luxembourg married a woman named Mélusine, who requested that he never see her on a certain night of the week.  He, of course, couldn't resist his curiosity, and when he peeked in on her one evening, he saw that she had a fish's tail.  She sensed him spying on her, and she dived into the Alzette River, never to return. 

#3:  Around the corner from the Palais, we ran into a bachelorette party.  The friends all wore pink t-shirts with the bride's face, and around her face, appliqué letters announced that she was the "star of the evening."  Her face, of course, was in a star.  The bride herself wore a chef's toque and wheeled a cart with a banner of (I assume) her fiancé's face.  She approached me:  I'm getting married, she said.  Will you buy something from me?  Her cart had bottles and baskets.  This might be a local tradition, I guessed.  How about a cookie? she suggested, and I asked, How much?  She replied, As much as you want to give.  Her fiancé's face, above the cart, grimaced, his tongue lolling out.  I gave her €1.5 for a cookie, and she said, They're special.  Indeed they were:  they were in the shape of a penis.  Would you like some sperm? one of her friends asked, and I said, Of course!  She sprayed whipped cream on the tip, but too much, and it splattered on the ground in a white blotch.  She controlled the amount better the second time, and one of her friends photographed me as I fellated the cookie.  The cart moved on, down the street, and I noticed the bride-to-be had a plastic ball-and-chain clamped around her ankle. 


#4:  For dinner, we ate at Chiggeri, on the curve of Rue du Nord.  The road had been blocked off, and as we ate, we watched car after car drive approach the barricade, then have to do a five-point turn to go back downhill.  One brave soul drove down in reverse.  The maitre d' looked like a football hooligan:  muscular, with a shaved head except for a center strip of black hair -- a cranial lane divider.  When a group of young ladies came to dine, all the male wait staff immediately stood up straight and lined up across the road, their hands behind their backs, ready to be of service at any moment. 

#5:  In the Place D'Armes, the 'Summer in the City' festival was in full swing.  The restaurant sidewalk tables were all full, including the ones serving McDonald's, Pizza Hut, and Chi-Chi's.  We'd seen a classical quartet play earlier, and now that the sun had set (9:30 again), the Harmonie Orchestra Hesperange had taken the stage.  They were a mixed aged orchestra; the flautists seemed particularly young, while the horn players and percussionists were older men.  We arrived just in time; they played a medley of ABBA hits, "Dancing Queen" leading into "Lay All Your Love on Me," and ending with "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)."  Matthew and I sat on a bench, next to a woman eating a nectarine.  She put a plastic bottle of San Pellegrino to demarcate her personal space.  At the table next to us, a couple shared a platter of fruits de mer on a bed of ice.  Children danced in the square; other children stood on stage and pretend to conduct.  Matthew and I were sticky from exertion -- summer clinging to our skin -- but he still put his arm around my shoulder. 

Greetings from: LUXEMBOURG CITY

The first day of travel is always rough going:  merry travelers suffer from cramped airline seats, creeping effects of jetlag, and, for those visiting northern climes, the sun not setting until almost 9 in the evening.  From the plane, sunset seemed to last forever, as if the plane were chasing the afterglow.  And, after it had lost the chase, sunrise broke over the horizon.  I, however, was too busy trying to cram myself into a comfortable position.  If I get some sleep, I told myself, I'll be awake and alert for Luxembourg.  Iceland Express, however, had other plans.  Its crew was scrupulously polite -- I hesitate to call them 'elfin' for fear of stereotyping -- but even the men were pale and waif-like.  It was a flight of Lord of the Rings extras:  Eymer, Gunner, Orli...

Tiny little Luxembourg and tiny little Luxembourg airport.  Several major carriers had landed there, but those planes were all twin-prop puddlejumpers.  I'd wager that the Grand Duke would bristle at hearing his fair airport being called 'regional,' but there you have it.  The bus from the airport took us through the banking district of Luxembourg -- modern glass-and-steel contraptions, men and women in gray suits having lunch in the warm afternoon sun. 

"We're the only ones wearing shorts," Matthew said.

"We're ugly Americans," I replied.  "It's sort of our uniform."

After checking into our hotel (just around the corner from the train station), we took a walk into the gorge that bisects the city.  As a matter of fact, we were not the only ones wearing shorts, but this perhaps speaks more to the monoculture of worldwide fashion:  if shorts could sag, they sagged, and if they could go beyond the knee, it might as well eat up most of the calf. 

After seven in the evening, even though the sun is still at 3/4 power, the city rolls down its shutters.  The 'ladies' of the cabarets stand outside their places of employment, smoke cigarettes, gossip, and make half-hearted efforts to lure in customers.  In the spirit of adventure, I ordered a random meal for dinner:  matjes served with an odd Dutch word that begins with g and has approximately 12 letters, 10 of them consonants.  As it turns out:  raw herring on pickled beets.

We walked the residential streets of the city until the sun set around 9, looking for a place that served glace.  There were plenty of bars open (cafes in the local parlance), and people sat at sidewalk tables or in walled-off terraces, which made the city seem almost awake.  But no ice cream.  Instead, there were snack bars, mostly of Mediterranean descent, and men who stood behind the register with gyro slicers in hand.  Cars were parked willy-nilly on the street, and we picked out the brands that don't exist in the US:  Opel, Daihatsu, Skoda, Peugeot.  National flags dangled from people's windows, especially those teams which have long since disappeared from competition.  It's an act of defiance against the Dutch, I believe, who go to the finals on Sunday.  We are here, they seem to say, and the sun rises and sets on our say-so; never mind what the clock may read.