Bring on 2012

I left New Zealand in late 2010, and I find it hard to believe a whole year has passed over here!

Amsterdam, photo taken in August

As I hinted at recently, more change is on the cards for me as the family I'm nannying for pack up and move to Amsterdam at the beginning of March. I took my time deciding whether or not to go with them, but in the end I've decided that I've seen and done most of Luxembourg and the surrounding countryside, and five months living in Amsterdam will give me the chance to explore a country I don't know so well.

I'm not one for New Years resolutions, I'm more for gradual change than making big declarations, and I don't think New Years has as much relevancy for making changes in my life as a new school semester or a new job is, but a Stuff.co.nz article asking 50 NZers what they were hopeful for in 2012 got me thinking about what I would like to get out of the year ahead.

I am hopeful that this year I really will learn to live within my means and get my finances into better shape. Anyone who knows me will know that I don't have many skills in the money department, and ever since I blew all my savings while trying to make Spain work out, I've been struggling to get my head back above water. I can but hope...not even two weeks into January, and my budget for this month is already a disaster!

Amsterdam, photo taken in August

I hope that I really make progress in learning German, and pick up a little more french and dutch. I came to Europe to learn a third language, but after a year here, I'm failing miserably! I have some basics in all three, but I couldn't have a conversation in any! The frustrating thing is I'm really really passionate about learning German, but I missed out on a german course last semester, and now I'm waiting for my bosses to sort out how things are going to work with the move.

I am optimistic that Amsterdam will be a positive move for me. Again, I've thrown all of my plans to the wind in leaving Luxembourg before my year is up, but Im viewing it as a chance to discover another corner of Europe. I've kind of seen and done most of Luxembourg and the surrounding countries, whereas I haven't spent much time in the Netherlands and it being so small and with cheap public transport, I should be able to travel around a lot, and hopefully even make it over to Hamburg or part of northern Germany. I'm also hoping that a change in location will see me settle down, make friends and feel at home in a way that I haven't in Luxembourg. I love Luxembourg, but its hard to live here as the Luxembourgers really stick to themselves, and the foreigners living here are all on short-term contracts, meaning its hard to make good friends with people and as soon as you do, they leave anyway.

Amsterdam, photo taken in August

I am also hopeful that I can evade immigration officials until I apply for a visa for Germany, and hopeful that Germany grants me one without any problems! I'm not going to make any wishes about what will happen once I'm inside Germany - I've learnt enough making plans while on an OE to do that now!

And finally, I am hopeful that I really make the most out of every opportunity that living in Europe in 2012 has to offer me. After my first three months of traveling around, I'm finding that now I tend to return to the same locations rather than discovering new ones. I can put this down party to wanting to catch up with my closest friends, and I guess that being able to do so easily is in fact one of the things that living in Europe has to offer, but also to me just not having the money or time to travel very far from where I'm based here in Western Europe. I would love to head over towards Eastern Europe, and also up to Scandinavia, so if I can sort out my finances a bit better, hopefully I can achieve one or the other by the end of the year.

Saarbrucken's Old Christmas Market - Germany

Saarbrucken Christmas Market

Two Saturdays ago I went to Saarbrucken, a German city of about 175 000 people and capital of the Saarland region, on the border with France. It takes just over an hour to get there by bus from Luxembourg. The Christmas market begins in mid November and runs until Christmas, but on one weekend every year they have an additional market set up on the other side of the bridge from the main market.

Stall selling Christmas wreathes

Christmas markets originated in Germany, the bordering Alsace region of France, and Austria, and were a street market and celebration during the four weeks of advent, usually set up in and around the market square. They have rides for children, the nativity scene, shops selling crafts and Christmas stuff, different types of food stalls, and boothes selling Gluhwein, hot mulled wine. Normally they put on some kind of nativity show at least once as well for children. The food I've seen sold includes a huge variety of sausages and grilled meat, waffles and crepes, gingerbread and candy, popcorn and roasted nuts, and usually there are regional specialities and the occasional asian or italian stall as well. I visited the Gottingen Christmas market last year but didn't write much about it on here.

The Gingerbread house

The Christmas festivities began right near the train station, so I walked down the big pedestrian street and shopping zone in the middle of the city, taking in all of the Christmas stuff and ducking into the occasional chain shop on the way past! I reached the main market in the square first and stopped to have a good look around. I really loved the Gingerbread House stand selling gingerbread hearts. They have things like "I love you" written on them, and you're meant to buy them and hang them around the neck of your sweetheart - the only person I saw wearing one was a middle aged man, quite funny!

People drinking Gluhwine outside a stall

Gluhwine is normally served in mugs that have a logo with the name and year of the Christmas market on the side, I took one from the Gottingen market last year and decided to keep the tradition going by stealing another one this year (they take a $5NZD deposit for the cup so it's not really stealing!). Last year I couldn't stomach the Gluhwine at all, and although I've been learning how to drink red wine while travelling around Europe and found the taste a little better this year, I still hid in an alleyway and tipped most of it out so that I could throw the mug into my bag.

Mistletoe, sold by the Lions club

I then followed the crowds over the river, to the additional part of the market. Here, the market winds from a church at the bottom, along a long inclining and curving road, up to the Saarbrucken Castle. The Castle isn't much of a castle, its just like a big administrative building. This part of the market was mostly dominiated by stalls selling crafts or wares, international foods, mistletoe, christmas wreathes, and charity organisations selling or doing various things as fundraisers. It was quite cool to see the mistletoe there for sale, as we don't have it in NZ. I'd spent months this year trying to work out what all those balls were in the trees until someone in France told me what it was.

Schnitzel on a stick

I tried rostwurst, one of the many varieties of German sausages (German sausages are one hundred times better than those back in NZ) and a massive schnitzel skewer thing, three pieces of fried crumbed schnitzel on a stick, handed to me in a piece of bread. There were also a lot of casseroled mushrooms, bread spread with what looked like herbed cream cheese, and deep fried balls of something that I saw a lot of, I think some might be regional specialities, and I saw a couple of stands selling the Schneeballen that I saw for the first time in Heidelberg. I quite liked going to the market alone, so that I could stop and look at whatever I wanted without feeling guilty, but it meant that I didn't have anyone to explain all of these foods to me!

View of the end of the market from the Castle

By now it was getting late and I'd spent enough money finishing off my Christmas shopping, so I headed back towards the train station, detouring past part of the river and the town hall and into a few more shops. Arriving back at the train station was scary, there were police cars everywhere (I counted 21 before too many were arriving and I couldn't keep track) and there were police all over the place, stationed in a ring outside and at the entrance to every platform, as well as those waiting in vehicles or just milling about. Police in Germany are a whole lot scarier than NZ police as well, they wear dark clothes and army boots and carry huge guns, and these guys had what looked like riot gear on, complete with different numbers on their backs to identify their squads. At first I thought there was a bomb in the station, and then I noticed what looked like drunk right-wing skinheads standing around or talking to the police, but then someone said it was just because there had been a football match and they were preventing riots (I guess drunk right-wing skinheads and German football fans look pretty much the same!). It was pretty intimidating though, and really reminds you that you're not enveloped in the safety of New Zealand anymore, these are countries in which bombs in train stations and riots or shootings by far-right terrorists occur every so often.

The bus ride back was uneventful, and then I spent several hours wrapping the Christmas presents that will cost me a fortune to ship back to NZ. I really feel in the Christmas spirit now and can't wait to visit Strasbourg in France and their huge Christmas market next weekend.

London take two

Lissa, me and Philippa at the bridge

Last year working as an advisor at Victoria University I had two coworkers, Lissa and Philippa. Lissa has spent the last six months living in Germany (I visited her in Erlangen in July) and Philippa has been in London all year (I visited her there in May). We'd talked about the three of us meeting up for awhile, and finally one weekend in November we did.

Poppy wreath outside Westminster Abbey

Lissa and I both flew from Frankfurt Hahn, my absolute favourite airport (or not, its a former army base in the middle of no where, turned into a trashy airport for low-budget airlines, I've flown in and out a couple of times). In theory it should have been an easy trip, as there's a direct bus there from Luxembourg and only a quick flight from Germany to London, but I'm amazed that I made it there! After a morning of all the errands I had to do here in Luxembourg going wrong, I left the house late and missed the bus I needed to take to catch the airport bus, got there by taxi with only seconds to spare, and then our bus to the airport got stuck in roadworks and Friday evening traffic and I barely made it through check-in!

Lissa outside Philippa's place

The next hurdle was getting in and out of the UK itself. Last time I was there I was placed on an alert list due to all of the fun and games I was having with my spanish visa, so I was scared that they wouldn't let me in this time, given all I have to prove that I have a visa is a laminated ID card. A surly looking German man studied this for a while, and then let me through and onto the plane. After we landed in London Stansted, we waited in the 'Non-European' queue watching two immigration officials rigorously interrogate everyone. Finally our turn came, and after several minutes spent swearing that I was studying Politics in Madrid on exchange and explaining who we were visiting, what job she did, and what her life plans and star sign and childhood pet's name were, we were in!

oldtimer band at the local pub

We managed to bus from the airport to Mile End station, and Philippa met us there and took us back to her flat. She's moved since the last time I was there, and is now living in a very Coronation-St-type two story, three bedroom place inhabited by five-and-a-half kiwis and with another on the couch - nine New Zealanders sleeping in a three-bedroom, one bathroom place in central London, true OE style! This house had once been inhabited by the Horror Handyman from Hell (fancy your light switches inside kitchen cupboards, anyone?) and the toilet had decided to stop working this weekend too, fun times. By this point, it was around 11pm UK time, so midnight our time, and we were quite shattered, but we did make it out for some food and a drink at their local, a crazy old-timer looking place with an amazing band made up of elderly men with what little grey hair they had left at a rock-star long length (check out the bassist in the photo).

our Yeoman tour guide

On Saturday morning Philippa and her fiance James took us out for breakfast and coffee at a wee cafe in a park somewhere near their place. The weather wasn't bad at all, after it being 3-8degrees most of the previous week in Luxembourg, having 18 degrees in London felt like heaven, and having a real Latte made by a kiwi barista was amazing! We then went to the Tower of London and did the tour inside. These tours are run by the Yeomen Warders, who, I was surprized to learn, actually live with their families inside the Tower. Imagine being the teenage son or daughter of a Yeoman Warder and asking a taxi to take you home there after a night on the town! The one who did our tour was absolutely hilarious, and earned extra respect from us for referring to Australia as 'one of the islands in the New Zealand group'.

the 'White Tower' of the Tower of London

I learnt a few things that I didn't know about the place. The Tower has a reputation for being a prison, but was actually designed as a royal residence and usually only had high-profile prisoners kept there for very short periods of time, and actually the first prisoner ever held there escaped. It was built in 1078, but there was no purpose built prisoner accomodation until 1687. The Tower was last used to hold prisoners during WWII, with Hitler's deputy the final one. The Tower of London also has seven capitive ravens living in the grounds, legend has if the 'six ravens' are lost or fly away, the Tower and the Crown will fall. The seventh bird is the reserve. There is even a 'Ravenmaster' Yeoman that looks after them and feeds them meat every day.

Spanish food at Borough Market

So, we did the tour, looked at the Crown Jewels, saw some old armour (that King Henry VIII had some serious allusions about the size of his own crown jewels!) and then wandered down to the Tower Bridge, where James left us. We went to the Borough Market for lunch, that place is amazing! It has foods from all around the world, both cooked meals and things like specialist cheeses and bread to buy. As much as I love markets here in continental Europe, its cool to have fifty different types of food in one place, rather than just fifty stands selling the same cheese and olives. Lissa and I had paella and Philippa chowed down on some German sausage.

View from the London Eye with Westminster in the bottom right

We went up the London Eye, something I'd wanted to do since the last time I visited. It's like a giant slow-moving ferris wheel, you go into a pod with about 15 other people and it does a thirty-minute circuit up and down again. It was quite cloudy but still very cool, and a nice change from walking up the windy stairs to reach the top of church bell towers! We walked over past Big Ben and Westminster, where they had war Remembrance Day memorials going on, and took a quick look at Buckingham before going back to the river bank for the Lord Mayor's Parade fireworks. They were quite cool fireworks, but from where we were sitting the Eye completely dwarfed them, and made it all kinda underwhelming.

Fireworks beside the London Eye

We met up with James again, and their former Aussie flatmates, and went for a drink and then to Brick Lane for curry. Brick Lane is full of curry shops, and the waiters stand outside the doors and make deals with you like free wine and 20% off if you come to their place. We went to what these guys consider to be the best, and it was really good (I tucked into some especially spicy stuff!) but what made the place was the decor - the walls were covered in huge paintings of erotic mythological scenes, apart from one wall that had a big painting of Diana instead. Weird. We left this place extremely full and not feeling capable of heading out, so we went back to the flat and hung out there with some flatmates and some of their friends for a bit.

Xmas lights on Oxford Street

Sunday was shopping day! We had coffee at another kiwi-barista place and then took the bus through town to Oxford Street, the road that almost bankrupted me last time I visited London. This time I was a bit more savvy, and didn't buy anything until we got to Primark, where I splashed out as one only can in a place where pants cost no more than five quid. A couple of hours later we managed to free ourselves from the grasp of Primani goodness and stumbled out to find darkness had fallen and the street full of Christmas lights. We headed up to Piccadilly to take a quick look, and then spent our final evening in London having an amazing chicken roast with all of the trimmings thanks to Philippa's awesome cooking. It felt quite weird to be sitting around with so many kiwis, eating something so kiwi, with english-speaking TV playing in the background after over ten months here in Europe!

Roast chicken dinner

Monday morning we flew back to Frankfurt. Thanks to Lissa's much more sound planning skills we managed to get a bus out to the airport without being stressed when we got stuck in early-morning traffic, but most on the bus didn't seem to be in the same boat and one man got really aggressive. I was looking forward to landing back in the immigration-slack EU, and sure enough I had no problems walking in with my flimsy Spanish ID card, but Lissa got held up a bit - her German visa was granted on the basis of her husband being here for work, and the woman demanded to know where he was (at work...can't a girl take a trip without her man to hold her hand?) and then we were back in the 2degree cold of Europe, and I was back to Luxembourg and small children once again.

More photos of London in November are here.

Highlights from Autumn in Luxembourg

View in Grund in Lux Ville

Ok so I suck at keeping this blog updated, I guess because life is pretty routine now and I don't want to talk about a lot of things that are happening (my love life for example, I won't write about who I'm dating anymore because I decided it's not really fair on them). But, Christmas is coming up and there should be some exciting stuff to talk about. So, here's the highlights of the last two months in Luxembourg, and I'll also write separate posts about my trips back to Liege and London.

Jags, Steve and Anna at castle number four

In early October the weather was still pretty good, so Anna, Steve, Jags and I went for another roadtrip. We attempted to do the Vallée des Sept Châteaux, or Valley of Seven Castles route, a hour's drive through Luxembourg that takes you past seven old castles. But, we attempted this without a map and spent a lot of time lost and saw castles number two, four and three, in that order. Castle number four was particularly spectacular, full of posh people picnicing who looked at bit shocked at the four of us dressed rather shabbily strolling through with beers in hand making fun of the classical statues.

BBQ at Châteaux Hollenfels

Before we'd left we'd brought a whole lot of barbeque food, and then realised en route that we had everything but a BBQ, but at castle number three, Châteaux Hollenfels, we found a BBQ pit in the castle grounds, so we sat there in the sun for the rest of the afternoon drinking beer and BBQing a few metres away from a heritage castle with a view over forested valleys - Luxembourg is really awesome sometimes!

Me playing at being a band groupie

October also saw the re-launch of Devnull, Steve and Mark's band, as Alex joined them on drums. Jags and I established ourselves as their groupies, attending the first couple of their practices to further prove ourselves as BBQ gods and to keep the generator running. We may not be so cut out for the whole groupie thing though, as we've since been banned from coming!

Trier

One Saturday Jags, Steve and I took a short trip to Trier, just over the border in Germany. Trier is the oldest city in Germany, from before the 16th century, and although the population is only 100 000 there is much better shopping (more variety and cheaper) there than in Luxembourg, so everyone goes there on the weekends to buy stuff. We had Thai for lunch with their work collegue and his wife, and then she took me shopping while the boys spent a couple of hours in an electronics shop only to find that it wouldn't take their credit cards once thet had amassed a big pile to buy. We had dinner at some typical German restaurant, but it was a pretty terrible meal. We didn't see very much of Trier itself but the main square and old streets around it it look quite pretty so I'll try to have a better look around next time.

Lena in Grund, Luxembourg Ville

In late October Lena came to stay for the weekend. We had quiet drinks with Jags and Steve on the Friday night, and spent Saturday walking around Luxembourg Ville. I had planned on us having a BBQ with everyone out at a Devnull band practice, and then going for a roadtrip with the boys on Sunday, but Jags' car decided not to come to the party so the weekend kind of fell apart and ended up being pretty relaxed. Saturday night was a big one, we went out with Alex and some of his Italian flatmates. I wanted to go check out a dance club I'd heard of but we might have had a little too much to drink and didn't make it further than Ikki in Clausen again.

Our view of the RWC final

The following morning was the France vs All Blacks RWC final, which thanks to the time difference was on at 10am here. I have no idea how we got up (ok Lena got up and wouldn't shut up until I got up too) but we were suffering dreadfully and missed the first ten minutes. There were only two bars open to show the game in Lux, and both were packed, so we squished into one where we could only see a tiny sliver of the screen by craning our necks, it was absolutely crazy. I'm glad we won because we were a couple of the only kiwi supporters there! We spent the rest of the day sleeping (Pepi couldn't understand why we were sleeping when the sun was out!) and went to a movie, and then after we spent the next morning with the kids, she went home.

A factory in Esch-sur-Alzette

Early November I went down to the south of Luxembourg. I met a guy from here who is currently just killing time before he goes traveling to NZ, so he took me down south one day to take photographs. We went to Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg's biggest city with a population of 28 000. It's only 15km away from Luxembourg Ville (but then pretty much everything in Luxembourg is 15km away from Luxembourg Ville!) and is to be the centre of the steel mining industry. There are a lot of old factories and train lines left in the city, while new modern buildings are being built all around them, its really quite cool and the day we went down there it was really foggy and magical.

At a factory in Dudelange

After Esch we went to Dudelange, Luxembourg's third biggest city with 17 000 people and only 12km down the road. It's also a steel mining city, and as mum informed me, home to the most successful Luxembourg football club in recent history. We had lunch here, and a few beers, as well as checking out a huge abandoned factory.

Pepi playing with the leaves

Over the last couple of months here the weather has really turned to custard. Back at the beginning of October it was still sunny, but now its constantly grey and foggy, and we're now lucky to get a high of 8degrees (its 2degrees as I write this, and it's been several degrees colder than this the last couple of weeks!). This is already colder than Wellington during winter, so I'm not looking forward to the next couple of months, although the first snowfall will be exciting. Autumn was really beautiful, I think in NZ you don't notice autumn so much as there's so many trees that keep their leaves, but here everything turned red and orange and I had a lot of fun playing in the fallen leaves with the kids.

Mining buildings in Esch-sur-Alzette

I've been taking french lessons. Long story short, I'm registered under Jacqueline's name for them, and I arrived at the first lesson to be handed a piece of paper by the teacher to confirm my details. He looked at it and noted "I" come from the Netherlands, and promptly informed me that he is from Belgium and speaks Dutch. I spent the next hour sitting there terrified of him realising I don't speak dutch and aren't in fact from the Netherlands, until I came up with the cover story of being a New Zealander here on a dutch passport via my dutch grandparents. Now I just have to remember to keep answering to Jacqueline and hope he doesn't realise I'm meant to be in my 30s and married with two kids! The French lessons aren't getting me very far, from day one everything is in french, and the two or three people in the class that actually speak french nod away and manage to form whole sentances in french to ask him questions. The rest of us sit there scratching our heads and understanding very little. I'm actually doing better than the guys I sit next too, because at least with my spanish I can read french pretty well, but then again they are from countries that don't even use the latin alphabet, so that doesn't count for much! I thought that one day I'd learnt how to call myself a duck, only to repeat the sentence to Rogier and find out that if you mispronounce 'duck' you can call yourself a dick. Neither sentance is particularly useful though, so I might have to start working on the french thing some more in my own time!

Me and Lena going out in Lux

And finally, work and the kids are good. Things have changed a little with Jacquie starting to work again back in the Netherlands, she heads there for about four nights a week two or three times a month, so I get to play housewife and keep the place clean and have dinner on the table at night time. It means I have to be more flexible, as the days that the kids stay home or go to creche change more often, and it also means I'm doing more work across more days per week, but at the moment I'm coping.

Photos from Luxembourg in October are here, and in November here.

Heidelberg with a Hangover - Germany

Back in September, I had crashed on the couch at Anna and Steve's after dinner and a few too many drinks. After far too little sleep, Anna woke me up at 7.30am and asked if I wanted to go to Heidelberg with her - she needed to go back to her university to return a library book and pick up a few others.

motorway out of Luxembourg

Of course I hate saying no to anything, and so I stumbled downstairs to the car. The German border is only 25km, or about 20 minutes drive, and that early in the morning the roads where clear and there was a beautiful view of the sun rising above the fog filled valleys. In typical German fashion, once we got over the border Anna accelerated from 130km p/h up to 170km - I checked the dashboard just out of curiosity, making her worried that I was scared at going so fast. Despite my best intentions to keep Anna company on the drive, tiredness and the remanents of alcohol in my system soon kicked in and I was out to it for most of the 240km journey, only waking up as we drove into the city.

Heidelberg castle above a square

Anna disappeared off to the library, and I went exploring. About 150 000 people live in Heidelberg, but it is pretty well known because of it's university, American army base, and as a tourist destination because of it's castle and old town. It has a ridiculously long main street, 2km long, with the river running parallel a couple of hundred metres away on one side, and tree-covered hills a couple of hundred metres away on the other side. A huge castle ruin dating back to the 1300s sits on the hills overlooking the town. The city is really quite pretty, there are a lot of beautiful old buildings, including the university - studying there would be awesome after Victoria's blah Kelburn Campus!

Heidelberg during the Heidelberger Herbst

I was really suffering from the effects of the preceeding night, so I spent a bit of time just wandering around finding decent coffee and a bretzel and trying to recover a little. I was a little bit of a mess wearing last night's makeup and a crumpled dress with fajita's spilt down the front, but I was determined to see a bit of the city so as a brilliant sun came out I set off down the main road, only to find that the Heidelberger Herbst, or Old Town Autumn Festival was on, so the street was full of stands selling crafts and produce and stages with performances going on.

Heidelberg during the Heidelberger Herbst

Like any good German festival, beer tents were littered about the place and both young and old people were already holding steins of beer at that early hour in the morning - just looking at them worsened my hangover! I spent a couple of hours wandering through doing some Christmas shopping, and passed two traditional bands heading down the street, complete with costumes, brass instruments, drummers and big flag wavers.

Medieval fair in Heidelberg

Eventually I ended up finding the Medieval Fair in the middle of the festival. I remember once at primary school we studied the medieval times, and we re-enacted a medieval feast, with all of us dressing up and eating a roasted pig, it's head displayed with an apple in its mouth. This was like watching that scene come to life! The stands were made in the wooden framework style or old-fashioned tents, everyone was wearing real medieval clothes, kids were playing medieval games and running around with wooden swords, and you could buy pig off the spit or tea in a handmade clay mug.

Schneeballen

I finished my walk along the street, seeing several squares filled with people drinking to live bands playing traditional music, tourists eating 1/2m long bratwurst, and a huge church. I also discovered Schneeballen, balls made of pieces of dough that are deep fried. Traditionally they are just dusted with sugar, but you can also get them filled with, coated in and dipped in all sorts of things, like nougat, marzipan, caramel, pistachio and chocolate. I should have suggested the look into a speculoos filling! It took me forever to decide which one to try myself!

Pig on the spit, medieval fair

Finally, it was lunchtime, so I met Anna and we ate some Feuerwurst, spicy sausages in bread sitting in a square, and then we went to the local supermarket to load up on food (its much cheaper in Germany than Luxembourg) and then to another to get beer for Steve. Anna doesn't know much about beer, and I'm pretty useless and reading beer labels in German, so we made complete asses out of ourselves trying to work out what we were doing, but we ended up getting a huge crate full of different German beers for ridiculously cheap - another reason to love Germany! And then it was home time.

I quite liked Heidelberg, it would be good to go back with more time and check out the castle and take in the atmosphere when it's more relaxed, and when I'm not struggling to stay upright! Big thanks to Anna for taking me there!

More photos from Heidelberg are here.

September in Luxembourg, Part I

the Schueberfouer

The month of September has been absolutely crazy for me! After spending my first three weeks in Luxembourg mostly around the house and only popping out for the occasional drink or coffee to try and meet people, I came back to Lux after two weeks in the Netherlands and met so many cool people my first couple of weeks back that I've barely been home since, except to work of course.

Work has been good, things are much better now that Pepi doesn't hate me anymore, and getting into the routine of working Tuesday, Friday and a weekend day has meant I can plan what to do on other days. I've had coffee with Kerli quite a few times since we came back from the Netherlands, and I've also had drinks with Monica often, one of the first friends I made in Lux.

the Schueberfouer

We got back on Sunday, and on Monday night I joined some Couchsurfers for a Pub Quiz at one of the english bars here - we totally sucked, but it was a good night! That Wednesday I went to the Schueberfouer, the fun fair of Luxembourg City. It runs for 20 days, and has been held for the last 671 years - so it's older than New Zealand! The modern version is a mix of craft and food stalls, beer houses, and games and rides, with attractions and vendors coming from all around Europe.

Gebaakene Fesch

I went up the ferris wheel to get a bit of a look over Lux, and went on the bungy ball thing, something that I saw outside my office in Wellington everyday but never went on. I also seemed to eat non-stop there, trying Gromperkichelcher, a kind of potato fritter that is a traditional Luxembourgish dish, crispy Luxembourgish waffles with strawberries and cream piled on top, and chocolate dipped fruit kebabs, although I couldn't quite bring myself to try Gebaakene Fesch, a huge fish deepfried whole.

view from the ferris wheel at the Schueberfouer

On Thursday night I went to my second Internations meeting. Internations is a network targeted at expats who have moved cities for work. Because Luxembourg has a huge number of people coming here for work, often on contracts of anywhere between 3months and 4years, Internations is really big, they have a meeting every month attending by a couple of hundred people. I enjoyed this event more than the last one I went too, and near the end of the night I met Alex, a French IT engineer. We've been kind of casually seeing each other since, starting with drinks at a bar with live jazz and lunch in the park the following week.

Me and some couchsurfers, Steve, Anna and Seb

That week I organised a Couchsurfers meeting myself at a bar in the centre of the city. About 15 people turned up and we had a good time, just chilling and joking around. The night was notable because I met Steve, an Irish-born, Luxembourg-raised IT consultant who offered to solve my illegal resident status by marrying me! We seem to have pretty compatible senses of humour and get on well, and he had Anna, a German student spending September in Lux for an internship, staying at his place as well. I had met her previously and really liked her, so the three of us headed out for a roadtrip around Luxembourg on Sunday.

Larochette

They were both a bit under the weather when they picked me up on Sunday afternoon, Steve still wearing last night's suit, and we messed around for a little while trying to find petrol, food and beer (EVERYTHING in Luxembourg is closed on a Sunday) before we headed out to Echternach, a huge man-made lake close to the German border. The weather was quite bad at this point, so we jumped back in the car and headed to Larochette, a small town of less than 1500 people that has a wee castle. It's a really pretty place amongst some hills, with several bars where bikers stop in during their weekend trips. We stopped there for a beer and a quick look around, and then drove through Diekirch, home of of one of Luxembourg's beers.

Vianden

We then went to Vianden, another small town that has an even cooler castle, built between the 11th and 14th centuries by the Counts of Vianden. It turned into a ruin in the 17th and 18th centuries, was inhabited by Victor Hugo in 1871, and after the Duke of Luxembourg finally gave the castle to the state in 1977 they finally started restoring it. Its huge and really impressive, it really looks like something out of a fairytale. There's a chairlift up the hill to it from the village, but we were a bit late and it was already closed, so we just walked around the town a little bit, I think it's one of the most beautiful places I've been too in Europe and my photos don't do it justice!

Vianden

We kept on heading north, aiming for the top of Luxembourg and stopped in the middle of nowhere somewhere so that we could walk across a bridge to Germany - there was only a couple dozen houses on each side of the river, and you'd barely notice that you were in a different country. Both Steve and Anna were laughing at my excitement over this, but I still can't get used to the idea of simply being able to walk across a bridge to another country! By this point it was starting to get dark and we decided to stop for dinner. We found a small restaurant attached to a camping ground, again in the middle of no where, and headed inside to find a really fancy interior!

Anna, Steve and I in the middle of no where in Luxembourg

We had the set menu of smoked trout in mustard soup, some kind of pork with Kartoffel knoedel (German potato balls), and dessert. The food and wine were amazing, it was really awesome to go to what looked like a pretty dodgy restaurant but have such an amazing meal. I quite like Luxembourgish food, it seems to be a good mix of the German style of decent potions and a substantial amount of good meat, with the French style of nice sauces and better accompaniments. So by this point it was quite late and we headed back for one last drink at a bar near Steve's place before they dropped me home. It really was an epic day, I love when you do something completely unplanned but it works out so well, and both Steve and Anna are so funny, we were laughing all day!

dinner at Steve and Anna's

That week Alex took me "salsa dancing" on Tuesday (i.e. we spent ages driving around lost only to eventually find the bar and discover we had the wrong day. We ended up listing to a random old not-quite-jazz-but-I-can't-remember-the-right-word band back in town) and then real salsa dancing on Thursday. The cuban bar in the suburbs that we went to on Thursday night was really cool, I enjoyed the chance to practice my spanish and laugh at my terrible attempts to dance salsa!

Then on Friday I had dinner with Anna and Steve at their place. Steve cooked fajitas, I made speculoos cheesecake, and Anna picked up some wine. Again, we just had such an awesome time drinking and joking around, until suddenly it was 2am and I ended up crashing at their place, which led to the events of the following day...

More photos are here.