Welcome to "nice, cute, beautiful, mega and super" Luxembourg
Unfortunately, constant rain ruined my plans for most of my three days in the capital of the country of the same name.
After having spent weeks in the sunny, sunny climes southern Spain, I was back on the road for the final legs of my European excursion, this time heading to the northern edges of la francophonie in Europe: Luxembourg and Belgium.
Rainy, rainy, Luxembourg and Belgium.
In fact, of the roughly 60 hours I spent in Luxembourg, it rained for about 45 hours. And I’m not talking the piddling, misty rain of Ireland. We’re talking, “I’m not walking the dog in that” rain that started the afternoon of my second day and kept up pretty much until I was ready to leave, my plans for walking tours and museums and parks washed away in the miniature mid-May monsoon.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Arriving from Toulouse, two train transfers and 10 hours later, I decided to spoil myself and take a taxi from the central train station to my Airbnb, a little over 2 km away. “Spoil” turned out to be the operative word here, when the driver told me the fare for the 5-minute ride was €21 (about $30 Canadian). The same ride in Montréal would be about €8, tip included.
If I’d have taken public transit, my usual mode, it would have cost me nothing. Yes, you heard right, all public transit in the country, including intercity buses, is FREE! And the vehicles I saw—trams, buses and trains—were spacious and immaculate.
I can’t tell you how weird it is to hop on a city bus without flashing a pass or reaching for your wallet. Or how shocking it is to be charged €10 a kilometre for a cab ride!
Anyway, enough cab kvetching.
When the skies cleared the next morning, I jumped on a bus that took me to the heart of old Luxembourg, once one of Europe’s most fortified cities, so formidable that it was nicknamed “Gibraltar of the North.” Its strategic location between France and Germany allowed for control of the left bank of the Rhine River and was thus a focal point in many wider European wars. Although considered “impregnable,” it changed hands many times (without its walls having been breached), with each new occupier adding to its defences.
Most notably, France’s famed military engineer Vauban, the architect of Louis XIV’s Iron Belt of fortresses, completely redesigned the city defences after the French took it by siege in 1684. If the name is familiar, maybe you remember me telling you about how he solved several engineering problems with the Canal du Midi. Vauban, an avid traveller, wasn’t just good at building fortresses, he was also adept at urban planning, helped rebuild numerous ports, and he was an advocate for civilian populations left bereft by wars and of tax reform to spread more of the load to the upper classes, who often paid no taxes. It’s perhaps appropriate, then, that a former French military base in Germany named after him was converted into “the most sustainable city in Europe.”
Anyway, after Vauban’s improvements, the city had become so formidable that the 1867 Treaty of London took it off the table completely, declaring the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg a “perpetually neutral state,” and the fortifications protecting the core city’s 23 hectares were ordered to be dismantled.
It turns out that the walls that kept invaders out had also, in a sense, imprisoned those inside, thus the city experienced a renaissance as urban planners repurposed the land freed up by the disappearing fortifications with greenspaces and development that took advantage of the natural beauty of city, nestled on three sides by the deep valleys of the Alzette and Petrusse rivers.
Not all of the defences were dismantled, either, and today the Bock Casemate is one of Luxembourg’s most popular attractions, offering a glimpse into why the city was so unassailable. Considering that the 23 km of tunnels in the casemate (the term for a fortified artillery emplacement) were literally tunnelled into the rock of the Bock cliff, it would have been impractical to destroy it all, which is good news for tourism. I visited a small section of the casemate just below the old city and and was stunned by how much work must have gone into excavating even the few hundred metres on my tour. (Entry fee, €10, or the equivalent of 1 km in a taxi.)
I spent the next few hours wandering the old city and mentally narrowing down the sites I was hoping to explore the next day. Sitting down on a terrasse for lunch, I was a little irritated that the server kept speaking to me in English (the official languages here are Luxembourgish, French and German), and I thought it was because she had detected some French gender errors. I kept speaking French to signal that was my preference, but she kept answering in English. When I overheard her speaking English to her boss, tho, I understood that she didn’t speak much French.
I actually heard English spoken by service staff quite often here, which surprised me, but is no doubt a reflection of the fact that 60 per cent of residents here are from other countries.
Anyway, my next language challenge came as I enjoyed my veggie burger. I was approached by a group of young girls who addressed me in Luxembourgish. When I responded in French, they glanced at each other, unsure of which of them should take on the task of talking to the man with the strangely accented French. The bravest stepped forward and explained that their school was on an outing where the students greeted strangers and offered complements to cheer them up. Then she handed me this card. From what I’m told, it means “nice, cute, beautiful, mega and super.”
Aw, shucks. I smiled and told them they were wonderful young women and should be proud of what they were doing. What a great way to teach kids about validation and self-esteem! Of course, if Trump was running the country, these “DEI” programs would be eliminated and the kids would be competing to find the meanest nicknames.
But I digress.
I wrapped up the afternoon with a walk along the Chemin de la Corniche, which offers a stunning view of the lower city and the Alzette River valley that one local writer dubbed “the most beautiful balcony in Europe.” From there I could see many of the places that I was hoping to visit, and I could appreciate how writers like Victor Hugo and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe had fallen in love with its stark beauty.
If I had known that most of the next 36 hours would be raining chats et chiens, I’d have stayed later and explored some more, but I unfortunately chose to hop on a free bus and head back to my Airbnb to write that week’s Sixty-something Solo. Little did I know that I’d have plenty of quiet time to write the next day as I was marooned in my room.
So I’m truly sorry I can’t tell you a lot more about this charming city aside from things I read online. However, I’m grateful you’ve decided to keep exploring with me, even though I’ve been back in Canada for six week now. So get out your umbrellas, our next destination is Brussels, Belgium, which, like Luxembourg, is one of the four seats of the European Union.