I am going to do a 4-part series about my trip over the past 10 days. As I said before, my friend Zach and I were doing a little traveling to Luxembourg, Brussels, Berlin and Munich. I will highlight all the things we saw and did. So, I will start with the first destination.
We left Freiburg on Wednesday, Feb. 2nd in the morning for Luxembourg City. We woke up extra early in order to book all of our later trains that required reservations. We got to the Freiburg Hauptbahnhof (Central Station) and talked to the booking office for 15 minutes. We reserved our two overnight trains and a third mandatory booking for a later date from Brussels to Köln (Cologne). Eventually we boarded our train to Mannheim, transferred to Saarbrucken and got stuck there….
We missed our bus from Saarbrucken to Luxembourg City because the bus number was 123. Unfortunately, the city of Saarbrucken’s bus system also has a local number 123. We got confused and ended up waiting for the wrong bus to arrive. We missed our actual bus just after we had realized what was going on. We had to wait two more hours in Saarbrucken, but we weren’t discouraged.
After a very comfortable hour-long bus ride, we arrived at Luxembourg Gare Central (Central Station in French). We Zach quickly figured out the bus system and we walked down to our hostel. Originally, we had no idea where it was. Orientation was the most important thing along the entire trip, and at this point (a few hours into the trip), work still needed to be done.
After checking in, we went to explore the city. Our daily schedule was packed full. The two-hour delay due to missing our bus hurt the plan. We moved a few things around to counteract this. Zach and I made our way up to the EU area of Luxembourg. The EU Justice Court and parliament are held there, as well as a very modern concert house and art museum. However, the main reason we hiked our way there was to see Fort Thüngen, an old fortification of Luxembourg. It was destroyed during World War II, but restored for historical relevance. We were able to go inside and look around, unlike anything else in the rest of the EU area.
Ghost town wouldn’t even come close to describing what the EU area looked like. Zach and I were walking around and we didn’t see anyone else in the entire complex. The guard station was far away, but we walked all the way there to see if we could see anything in there. Of course, you need a contact within the EU to get in…
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| EU Area and Symphony |
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| Fort Thüngen |
It was already getting dark at this point in the afternoon, so we decided to move the Bank Museum to the next day. We walked around the city and took plenty of pictures of the scenery. I know that Luxembourg is not the most desirable or known tourist destination, but it is definitely a beautiful city. It is a three tiered city with an under layer (where our hostel was), middle section (everything banking, stores, sites to see) and the Kirchberg plateau (EU and Fort Thüngen).
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| Office of the President of Luxembourg |
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| Hotel de Ville (City Hall) |
We saw the Hotel de Ville (City Hall), walked around the Corniche (cliff that separates the middle and bottom layers). At night, we went out to a bar and watched some English soccer, Newcastle against Fulham. Also, did some strolling around the city government area. The fortifications are really beautiful at night.
We eventually went back to the hostel for the night because we had to wake up early to get everything done the next day.
An aside: Luxembourg speaks 3 languages, primarily French, then German. The third is a combination of the two. Called Lëtzebuergesch, the local language is more prominent colloquially.
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| View of the Corniche (Upper City) |
We hit up two museums in the morning, the Spuerkeess (bank museum) and the city history museum. It was a really nasty day due to rain, but we managed to get to everything in a generally dry way. The bank museum was exceptional with its collection of old Luxembourgish money, as well as piggy banks and old bookkeeping records.
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| Banque Centrale du Luxembourg (and Bank Museum) |
But, the Luxembourg City history museum was even better. We only had time to see the standing exhibit (the history of Luxembourg). The artifacts were really cool and the wooden models of the growth and destruction of the city throughout time were excellent. Having walked around the city before seeing the exhibit was great because we knew the buildings and historical sites the models referred to.
Unfortunately, we had a train to catch to Brussels around noon. Luxembourg was a great place to visit. It only has 80,000 inhabitants, but tons of history and things to do while there. I highly recommend going to see a place that most of your friends and family couldn’t place on a map. I know I will go back there someday. But just in case not, I bought their country and city flags to hang up later on. Who else do you know that has a Luxembourg flag and has been to Luxembourg? Couldn’t be many.
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| Our Hostel from the Corniche (great location) |
This is the end of Part 1 of my trip. Part 2 covers our journey to Brussels, Belgium. Part 3 will be about our 4 days in Berlin, and finally, Part 4 covers our 3 days in Munich. I hope you will read more (once I post it)
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