With a free weekend before the real work of study block four began Nakita (Sydney) and I decided to go to Luxembourg. It was close enough to do in a weekend and didn’t involve the rigmarole of having to go to the airport etc. Instead we got on a train about 9am in Maastricht and, after three changes, arrived in Luxembourg. The train trip took us through the three countries of the Benelux region – Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. I was expecting that things might start to look different out the window as we entered a new country but I have to report that this part of the world all kind of looks the same! Same landscape/scenery, same weather, same roads and cobblestones ... it was only when we got right into the heart of Luxembourg that we registered the most notable difference: the houses in Luxembourg are much more colourful. Whereas they’re grey or brown in Ned and Belg, in Lux they’re all sorts; yellow, red, lots of pink, some sky blue – still with the tiled rooves and cute little windows but just more colourful and therefore prettier to look at.
the intrepid travellers
The next surprise came on our public bus ‘tour’ from the central station to the hostel. The bus curved around a corner and all of a sudden – whoa! – the ground just dropped away straight after the road, into a deep valley! I’ve never seen anything like it. It was just this big hole in the middle of the city (which we realised later goes sort of all around the city, so the centre is kind of on one level and the surrounding area on another, with cliff faces and bridges everywhere). Our hostel happened to be at the bottom of the valley, which was really quite picturesque with manicured gardens around the buildings built there and a little river winding in and out.
to give an idea of the valley
After we’d checked in our first challenge was getting up out of the valley again (required holiday exercise? Check!). Needless to say we ‘felt the burn’ as we hauled ourselves up to “ground” level again. Walking along the bridge back into the centre of town was just lovely though – wide, spanning views of green grasses, round hills, the surrounding valley and the river running across everything. Luxembourg City (the capital of the country of the same name) is honestly just beautiful, and obviously very old. There are remnants of stone towers, ramparts and under-ground prisons. Throughout the old town (the town centre) are dotted castle-looking churches, wide open squares and even a palace where we saw fully uniformed guards with funny little hats :P
the way up from our hostel!
at the bottom of a bridge near our hostel at the bottom of the valley
After a satisfying but not at all Luxembourgish lunch (at a Chinese restaurant … don’t judge, there’s no Chinatown in Maastricht and we had a craving!) we bought dessert at a nearby patisserie – the most expensive and equally orgasmic macaroon’s I’ve ever tasted! The afternoon was spent wandering around the old town taking in the contrasts of old stone buildings next to glamorous boutiques like Louis Vitton. It’s true what they say about Luxembourg having one of the highest per capita incomes (and disposable incomes no doubt!). After a spot of tourist shopping (think magnets and postcards) we visited an odd little modern art museum before heading back to the hostel for a nap!
mmmm macaroons!
That night we walked in the opposite direction for dinner (may I just lament here that Luxembourg City did not offer up to us the culinary delights we were expecting, but I fear this was mostly because we didn’t know where was good to eat and were too hungry to look too far afield). After wandering through a cute little mall on the opposite side of a classically light bridge we settled in an American themed bar run by a British bloke who was so stressed by an influx of customers he almost refused to serve us. We told him to relax and we’d wait – but it probably wasn’t worth it, the food was pretty average :( Although we did get to satisfy another craving, this time for milkshakes (as we don’t have freezers for ice cream or blenders in Maas). After a mildly disappointing dinner (but with good conversation) we headed back to the hostel to do what all the cool kids do on a Saturday night … play Monopoly! There was at least beer involved, and the added excitement of Monopoly in German lol
cracking night in!Day 203 (Sun) An early-ish start, an average breakfast at the hostel before a photo-taking walk along a different route back to the town centre. Most of the day though was spent on a little side excursion to the town of Vianden and its well-known (in this part of the world anyway) castle. The hour trip there by train and bus was really lovely, just to look out the window, following the stream that ran along the train route, the cute little colourful houses in the distance, and then the bus ride which actually drove through a bit of a forest and some pastoral areas before arriving at the bottom of a hill atop which the castle sat. It actually looked a bit spooky at first, perched atop a craggy hill, dark with leaf-less trees, and shrowded in the mild gloom of a cloudy day.
On closer inspection (at the top of yet another steep hill! May I remind you how flat Maastricht mostly is…) it was actually quite warm and welcoming inside. The stone building housed examples of armour and weapons and rooms set up as they would have been when the castle was in use. Many of the rooms were at least partly open to the elements though and I wonder how cold it must have been living there back in those medieval winters?!
Heading back down the hill, we stopped at a cute little creperie with the weirdest menu for lunch. While we had normal main meals (schnitzel and bruschetta) the desserts were another story. There was every type of crepe combination imaginable and also this weird thing called ice cream spaghetti (literally ice cream put through a spaghetti squeezer thingy so it comes out looking like stringy pasta – in all sorts of colours, with any form of topping, berries, chocolate or strawberry sauce, smarties… you name it). Nakita was brave enough to order the sweet ‘spaghetti’ which actually turned out to be pretty awesome, while I had the old favourite of Nutella crepes with strawberries (felt I had to have something Frenchy in the French-speaking country). Better late than never, we’d found somewhere nice to eat!
dessert spaghetti!
view from a castle window, complete with Luxembourg flag
We completed the return trip to Luxembourg City and then it was straight on to the next train, stopping only once on the way back to Maas this time and arriving home about 9.30pm, making it four border crossings and 3 countries in 36 hours :)
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