Oh Luxembourg, Oh Luxembourg, Who even goes there?

Let's just start this post off by saying that I am an awesome friend. Not only did I go up north to visit Autumn in her town of Nancy, BUT I also satisfied her life long (since 9th grade) dream of visiting the tiny country of Luxembourg, lucky her.

So we leave Nancy at some godforsaken hour that I hopefully never will again see in my life. It was one of those times when the whole world is shut down, including public transportation and you have to take a taxi...

Once we get on the train, Autumn and I immediately fall asleep. Lucky for the both of us, this is the first time we get to experience the joys of the "couchette", chairs that look like chairs but actually recline so much that you can basically lay in them. One word for them is AWESOME.




Upon arriving in Luxembourg, the weather looks bleak and cold and the first sign I see is "HOT CITY"... This is propaganda and lies, Luxembourg is not a HOT city, in fact it is the antithesis of HOT in that it is freezing freaking cold.


So we had officially arrived in Luxembourg, the grand Duchy of Europe. I chose to pronounce Duchy as Douchey whereas Autumn claims it is a Dukey... But in the end, Luxembourg I would say was definitely more of the first then the second.

The first view of the city was down into the valley with the Cliffs of Insanity! How amazingly awesome was that!




After a quick view of the Eternal Flame, which I swore to God was not called that, we moved on to view what can only be deemed, the flag garden. Completely separate from the rest of the park in the valley of Luxembourg, sits a garden not full of people or flowers but full of 8 flags that just wave in the wind. Autumn and I decided then and there, that we would sometime in our 8 hours in Luxembourg conquer the flag garden for Jon Little.





After wandering around what turned out to be the "heart" of Luxembourg, Autumn headed over to a building that we called a castle, but turned out to be a bank, sad news right. Note to self, when you go to a foreign place try and at least do a bit of research on it.

Sadly for us, we were in Luxembourg on a Sunday and apparently the people of Luxembourg don't like to work on Sundays as everything was closed. EVERYTHING was closed, so our sole choice was to walk around and look at things and listen to bells. Seriously, every second we were in Luxembourg a bell was ringing. I don't know if it's just a Sunday thing but that amount of bells is unnecessary, there are people in the world who don't have bells, Luxembourg should donate some of theirs.

The Bell Playing Notre Dame, Grand Cathedrale of Luxembourg

I believe this was Grand Duchess Caroline

After more wandering we eventually discovered the palace of the Grand Duchy, where the Grand Duke William lives... It's actually quite quaint and attached to the Parliament building which is very convenient and it's only guarded by one large gun handling man, whom Autumn told me to go past and ring the doorbell... such a dumb idea. That's when we were arrested and put in a Luxembourgish jail....

Yea I wish that was true because that would be a much better story.


So we continued on. At this point, Autumn and I discovered a small shop with what appeared to be postcards that was actually open. We went inside and as Autumn began to flip through some postcards a CRAZY Luxembourgish (it's a funny word, right?) slaps Autumn's hand away and hits her in the arm, THEN she starts screaming at us in Luxembourgish (not French their Other official language) and we run out fearing for our lives.

At this point the two of us are quite grumpy with Luxembourg. It's cold, nothings open and its people are violent. The only good thing I can say at this point is that it knows how to take care of dog poop unlike Paris.



Luckily the weather turned sunny and Luxembourg started to get better and better as it had secret passageways carved into the Cliffs of Insanity! So Autumn and I attempted to “trouve” (find) the entrance to the secret passageways, but alas we couldn’t get all the way down to the valley where the monks gardens were…




BUT then we found the Wenchel Walk (it’s sorta like a penguin’s walk), you bobble back and forth as you walk down the side of the Cliffs of Insanity not too bad. At one point the sky opened up and began to poop hard balls of hail on us… Luxembourg was so confusing, seriously hail?




The scenery as we walked down the Cliffs of Insanity was gorgeous.. It was like we were in the middle of a fairy tale... Pretty incredible!



Here is a view of the old city which at its heart has an abbey where the monks grow different fruits and veggies on the sides of the river in the center of the valley (we really made up facts about Luxembourg)




After another walk around what turned out to be an abbey, Autumn and I were starving and it was a PERFECT time to eat some delicious bread, crackers, brie and Mirabelle jam before stupid Luxembourg decided to have a hurricane or a tornado or something. Possibly the most delicious picnic that’s ever been had.



Afterwards Autumn and I were kind enough to share some of our bread with the ducks, there was one tramp of a suck who kept leading 2 boy ducks on, so we tried to give her more as she obviously was going to have a baby, that’s how big a slag she was…

Here comes deathstorm one, this one had killer hailstones the size of tennis balls...

After a delicious picnic in the Luxembourg sun, the clouds turned dark and Autumn and I knew suddenly that the weather was not happy. It’s like the sky changed like in Independence Day and then all of a sudden a shower of death hail fell from the sky. I swear if we hadn’t found that cave we would’ve been knocked out by some of those pieces of hail…



I tried to knock on a big scary door for shelter but as we noticed earlier the Luxembourgish aren’t very nice (probably because they live in Luxembourg)



At this point, Autumn and I were just a bit ennervé (annoyed) by the Douchey of Luxembourg, BUT Luxembourg did have a chance to redeem itself, as it did lend itself perfectly to the recreation of the most awesomely awesome movie of our lives. Basically with the last 5 hours we spent in Luxembourg, Autumn and I remade the Princess Bride in a Series of Photographs… Possibly the only exciting-esque thing to happen. (See future blog entry)

After a difficult (and what we thought perilous) journey to the bottom of the valley, Autumn and I began the search for the illusive flag garden..






It took about an hour but we finally reached our destination and once there Autumn and I both realized the amazing thrill that comes with being in Luxembourg, come on who else do you know who has been to Luxembourg, yea no one. Not even Europeans. And now we know why.

This is the culmination of all 9th grade Autumn's hopes and dreams right here in this photo. Little did she know that she would need me to realize her dreams.



On the train out, in began to hail cats and dogs AGAIN for the THIRD time and we both said good riddance to Luxembourg.

On reflection the trip to Luxembourg was an excellent adventure, not because of the city itself but because of the time Autumn and I spent together. It seriously is one of those things you look back on, and laugh hysterically at…

Still I don’t think I will be heading back to Luxembourg for 20 years.

Not even for the backstreet boys