Where I left off from my last message, I found my hotel, after I eventually correlated the map I printed out from google to what I was seeing around me. For a neighborhood surrounding a train station, it looked very nice.
The person at the Hotel who checked me in spoke English, but when she noticed that I was making an effort to learn to ask for what I wanted in French, she good-naturedly insisted on hearing me try in French first, correcting my pronunciation and then switching to English. She gave me one of those "hotel maps" that they have on a pad at the front desk. She wrote on it where I could find an internet cafe and the visitor's information center. What little I had seen of food here indicated that I desperately needed to see the Happy Cows listing of vegetarian restaurants in Luxembourg or I would get very hungry very soon. As I walked across a bridge over the gorge, heading for the visitor information center, I saw a huge splash of fall colors in the trees below. I had my camera with me but the light was fading fast and I knew that any picture I might take would definitely not come out. I made a mental note to come this way again and hoped that no rain would knock the leaves down. I had not seen a full color autumn in many years.
I found the visitor's center. The layout of the "Centre" district in Luxembourg contains several large square plazas. I had limited success trying to find a way to Niederanven. But the info person did direct me to an internet cafe a few storefronts away. The internet cafe stank of cigarettes, despite the no smoking sign. Maybe the no smoking sign was new? I had a little trouble with the keyboard (again). It was different from the standard American qwerty but not different in the same way as the ones in France. Finding the '@' was an adventure in both countries. Without crying out in dismay this time I found the '@' after about 5 minutes of patient searching and trial and error with the shift and alt keys. Happy Cows came through (again) with a listing of vegetarian and "vegetarian friendly" restaurants.
On the way to the restaurant called "Mesa Verde" I walked past the Luxembourg Parliament Building without realizing what it was (I found out later). Right after I crossed another one of these plaza squares that encountered my first of what I called "medieval pockets." Luxembourg City has a very modern feel to it. Unlike Paris, many of the buildings very obviously belong to the 20th century. They have a vague resemblance to much of San Francisco in that many family homes' have brightly colored exteriors but one does not see many (or any?) mansard roofs in San Francisco.
Luxembourg City also has a "downtown" area that resembles the downtown/business parts of other cities. But it also has pockets of old buildings, narrow winding cobblestone streets that, although mostly dating from the Renaissance, has that sort of story-book appearance that many (like me) associate with the medieval period. And you can just turn a corner on a perfectly modern street, and find yourself transported back in time a few centuries. The city enjoyed some good fortune during the wars. At the beginning of WWII the Germans raced across Luxembourg so fast the invasion force had mostly left before anyone noticed they had been invaded in the first place. At the end of the war the Germans were too busy running from Patton to slow down. Only the Northern-most tip of the country was affected during the Battle of the Bulge. That means that Luxembourg City was never bombed nor shelled or otherwise trashed. I'm not sure that a picture will do justice to the experience. But I doubled back in daylight anyway to take a picture of the "medieval pocket" where I had dinner my first night in Luxembourg.
No sidewalks and if a car comes you find a doorway to jump into. Fun!
"Mesa Verde" has a heavily dairy menu, but I did not mind. Spinach, feta and ricotta crepes with a variety of vegetables artistically arranged in a circle around the crepes. The bean sprouts had this incredible flavor to them. Just like bean sprouts in America, only more so. I also wanted to take a picture of the food the way I did the lunch at the D'Orsey but the restaurant's lighting was dark and moody and the disposable camera had a flash. I did not want to disrupt the place.
Mesa Verde was in the central part of the city. As I walked back to my hotel I suddenly realized that I forgot to leave a tip. The tipping conventions in Europe confused me a bit, as they calculate it in the bill in France. I was not sure if they do that in Luxembourg and my exhaustion along with the stress of being in a very unfamiliar place at night combined to make me space out. But I have no excuse for not turning around once I realized my mistake. I was almost back at the hotel and it started to rain again. Oh well.
My plans on Friday started with a train trip to Munsbach. I needed to go to a town called Niederanven. I did not ask the right questions at the train/bus station. I looked at a map I bought in the station's convenience store, then looked at the train schedules. It took me 10 minutes to look over all the routes. No Niederanven. But a town called Munsbach looked to be only 3-4 kilometers (about a mile) away. I walk a mile easily at home. The train ticket only cost 3 Euros RT, so it was not a big deal if things did not work out. Things did not work out. I found that a U.S. style highway divided Munsbach from Niederanven. I could not find a way across it at all. A bit cross, I walked back into town, passed the train station and up toward the church. I wanted to see if it were worth photographing. It wasn't.
On the way back to the station I stopped in a bakery. I had another apple tort. But this one was the best of all. I am sure there's a person with an apple coring machine of some kind working in the back. The apples were fresh, not twice baked as are the ones out of the can. I could feel apples had a very delicate crispness as my teeth sank into the tort. It was worth the train trip and the fruitless walk in the rain for the apple tort alone. And besides, the conductor on the train told me that they run busses to Niederanven. I was just looking at the wrong schedule in the train station.
When I returned to the city and decided against trying to go to Niederanven by bus: the station was a zoo (weekend getaways?). I bought a sandwich from a stand and then ate it while I walked around. The weather cleared, allowing me to take some of good pictures of the Alzette river gorge surrounding the city. I also took some pictures of houses and parts of the city I found interesting (such as the ones above). A visit to the internet cafe and I had some more restaurant listings. I had a "Sea Bream," a fish I had not had before, at a very nice (expensive but worth it) place called "La Lorraine" in the center Square of the center of town.
In a similar manner to Hong Kong, U.S. actors who would never sully their superstar reputations by appearing in crass advertisements in the U.S. stare out at you from huge posters in store windows. Here it was George Clooney slinging expresso (not literally, that would have looked more interesting). I also found the postcards amusing. At least half of them are of the Grand Duke of Luxembourg and his family. No one has any idea who these people are outside of this country. I don't blame them for having *some* postcards of him, but it was a challenge to find one that did not have this guy's face on it. Is there such a thing as borderline cult of personality? Look it up in the DSM-IV: "Borderline cult of personality" just like "Borderline personality disorder" but with postcards.
I did finally manage to visit "the ancestral homeland" on Saturday. I took the bus early in the morning. The English-speaking ticket seller thought I wanted to go to Holland (evidently there's a Niederanven that's bigger and more people in the Benelux countries have heard of it). Minor confusion - easily solved. I did not find any great revelations, no familiar names on any headstones. But then I did not have my heart set on finding any, so it was not a big loss. Like Munsbach, it was a beautiful small town, in a very green and hilly countryside with farms all around it. I took plenty of pictures (some even came out nicely, but none that will look any good on a small computer screen). As much as I enjoyed walking around the ancestral homeland, it was worth a morning, not a whole day.
A very nice young man drove the bus on the ride out of the city. He spoke very little English and my French still stunk. But I did manage to communicate to him where I wanted him to let me out and that I was working on my family history. He very kindly explained to me the other bus route numbers running back to the city so I knew which ones to choose from. On the walk back to the bus stop I considered trying to find a place to eat, but the one restaurant that looked good had so much cigarette smoke in it that as I walked past its ventilation exhaust vent I nearly gagged, staggering back from the vent like a cartoon character. Well, I *was* hungry and the restaurant fixed that, but not in a good way. I found myself walking toward the bus stop in the opposite direction from it's return path. I saw a bus leave the stop and started to run for it, but I was too far away. As the bus drew up closer to me I could see the driver and him me. It was the same guy who took me there. He obviously recognized me and gave me an inquiring look. I shook my head "yes" vigorously. He stopped the bus about 100 yards or so from the stop to let me in. I had met the nicest bus driver in the world.
Although I did not learn anything new about my family history, I'm glad it led me to such a beautiful place. I realized on Saturday afternoon as I explored Niederanven and the forested area of the Alzette River gorge, that except for the houses, Luxembourg looked almost exactly the same as Sullivan County New York, where my Niederanven ancestors settled. Whatever their reasons for leaving, it was not for a change of scenery.
The remainder of Saturday in Luxembourg turned out rather strangely. The guy in the internet cafe warned me the day before that it was a national holiday in Luxembourg. Maybe it was their founding day or something. [note: it was the Prince of Luxembourg's birthday]. I do not remember. The internet cafe guy said it would be "just like a Sunday." Remind me never to go to Luxembourg on a Sunday. And never visit on November 1st either. All the museums were closed. I was so bored that by the evening I took a bus to the one (count it one) multiplex theater in the city to see a movie (maybe an American one with Luxembourgish sub-titles?). What did I find but everyone else had the same idea. I could not deal with the crowd and could not find a movie I really wanted to see. On the bus on the way back, I sat amidst a gaggle of teenage girls, all chatting happily. This provided an opportunity to listen to Luxembourgish at length. I found that if you extract from German and from Dutch all of the harsh, guttural bits and leave the rest - that's what Luxembourgish sounds like. You wouldn't think it to hear them speak English (beats me why) but it does sound, if not pleasant, then a whole lot better than Dutch. But then gargling with thumbtacks sounds better than Dutch.
Lunch in Luxembourg. I do not remember the name of the restaurant. I have called it "the bestiary" in my recollections. Any kind of meat you can think of (and some you can't or may prefer not to) they have on the menu in Luxembourg. Antelope, venison, rabbit, wild board steaks, hind, and every manner of sausage. A guy sitting next to me ordered the variety plate: sausages, steaks of who knows what (Bambi?) and hardly a vegetable in sight. I enjoyed my trout. For dinner I ate at the Hotel Italia's restaurant. I had a minor communication failure with the waiter. The menu had a word for a larger portion (American sized, rather than European sized, I guess). I did not intend to order the huge portions, but that's what I received. No complaining. Having walked all day, it was probably good for me to eat more rather than less. It was also Italian food, and very good. I am reasonably sure I heard Italian spoken in the kitchen.
It was this day that I noticed that waiters in Europe do not chase you out the door when you are done eating. You always have to ask for your check and they never so much as look askance at you when you take your time or do something (like write in my travel journal) after the meal. I see that I wrote in my journal "I've been occupying my table for well over an hour. I'm not in America anymore."
Next: The South of France and the "Van Gogh" skyline.
