Xtreme Luxembourg, Round Two

SANY1317
Originally uploaded by sarahkatina

Luxembourg was lovely again, and legitimately more extreme this time. It was snowing there (as it has been in Amsterdam) when we arrived, but intrepid souls that we were we wandered the city anyway.

Alex and I had been unable to book rooms in the sole youth hostel in the city, so we left Bri to her own devices at around 9 (when the public transport stops running) and stayed in a hotel out by the airport. There were distinct advantages and disadvantages to this experience. Advantages included: British MTV, including a bizarre game show that takes place in silence in a library. It is called Fist of Zen. The best complimentary continental breakfast I have ever had (pain au chocolat! cold cuts! douwe egberts coffee! fresh-squeezed orange juice!). Having a private bathroom was also an advantage. Why did I need a private bathroom? That comes later. Disadvantages were mostly our distance from the city (not so bad, once we discovered how smooth the bus system is) and the hours we spent being hassled by a ghost. I'm not kidding. It was terrifying.

Saturday we hitched the bus to Echternach, a little town by the German border in a region that calls itself "Little Switzerland." Here we ate the glorious ice cream you see above, bought things fer cheap (the whole town was on sale, for some reason), and spent the two hours of beautiful sunshine hiking through woods and gorges. It was amazing to be in nature - I didn't even realize I had been missing it. Amsterdam is beautiful, but it's not a very green city. I almost died numerous times on our hike. This was partly because everything was slick and I was wearing virtually tractionless shoes, and partly because something funky and painful happened to my left hip and knee. By the end of the day, I could barely hobble down inclines. Echternach, though, was splendid.

I was the only one who hadn't been able to book a hostel room the second night, so we embarked on a clandestine operation to sneak me into Alex's bed. This worked out ok, but it was A LOT of stress. Turns out I am not a law-breaker. There was an old woman sleeping below us and she freaked out and started mumbling in French in the middle of the night, I hoped not about my presence.

Easter Sunday was gloriously beautiful. My leg was better and we did lots of roaming of the teeny city - through the Parc Petrusses, which is basically in a gorge, and then through the Petrusses Casements. It was really cool to be inside the walls of such an intense fortress. Luxembourg takes a lot of pride in its military history. There was also a festival going on in the main square - "New Orleans Meets Luxembourg." It was a lot of jazz and blues and gospel musicians from the US, and it was free, and we spent some time happily perching and listening and eating one-euro gelato. I decided that I didn't want to deal with the stress of sneaking into the hostel again, so I went back out to the Campanile and booked a room for that night. And conducted the entire transaction in French! On my way back into the city my tummy started to feel a little funny. "Oh," I thought, "I must be getting a little bus-sick." Wrong. What I was getting was food poisoning. I've never thrown up in so many public places before. They include buses, trash cans on the street, trash cans in lobbies, restaurant restrooms and public restrooms. Alex and Bri came back out to the hotel with me and I curled up and watched TV and was sick for a long time. Alex, kindly, stayed with me through the night and fetched me glasses of coke and ice periodically. I was really worried that I wouldn't be better by the next morning, when we were going to take the (10 hour) bus back to Amsterdam. Stranded alone in Luxembourg, and ill, did not sound like what I wanted to be doing. Thankfully I was mostly better by the morning, although standing up initially made me sick again, and I got sick the first time the bus stopped. I just curled up and conked out for most of the ride, though, so I was mostly ok. It has never felt so nice to be home.

Snow is coming down hard in Amsterdam. They rarely get any at all, let alone scads in late March. It makes me a little homesick, and it's pretty funny to see all the cylists continue their rush hour as usual - stillettos, cell phones, and all.