Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Le Ville de Luxembourg

If ever you are in Europe, go to Luxembourg.  If ever you have money to travel, go to Luxembourg.  If you have a deep appreciation for land, farms, trees, bluffs, valleys and tractors, go to Luxembourg.   If, in your mind, the best activity in the world is sitting in an outdoor café sipping on a coffee or locally brewed beer for a very cheap price and for as long as you want, go to Luxembourg.  If you have a natural aversion to large cities and noise, go to Luxembourg.  If your idea of fun is wandering the quiet streets of very small villages doing practically nothing, go to Luxembourg.  If, however, corn fields, tiny towns and trees don’t do it for you, then you should go to Luxembourg anyway.  One should learn to love these things.  They speak of a simple life with simple pleasures (i.e. life before the creation of the iworld).   

Luxembourg is my new favourite country.   Croatia, I will always love you, but you don’t have the rich earthiness that makes me feel all warm and cozy inside like Luxembourg.  Nor do you have a Prince. 

Luxembourg is as beautiful in sight as it is in sound… especially if you say it with a French accent – ‘Loox-em-boor’.  The landscape is primarily made of bluff lands rising up from deep valleys, and rolling acres of corn and hay providing a topographic picture of the farmer’s paradise.  Among the rows of corn chateaux’s stand scattered throughout the country and remain as a tribute to what once was.  Some chateaux’s speak of the wars and battles that have plagued Luxembourg from all sides since the 5th century when Rome first staked its claim.  Others stand glorious and pristine, as if having ever only known peace.   But the scene that most clearly depicts the hearts of Luxembourgers, as they are officially known, is that of a farmer tending his animals and crops.  The machinery may have changed over the centuries, but it was and remains the identifying image of the country.        

On my three day journey to the heartland, I spent one day in the region of Beaufort, one day in Luxembourg City, and one day in the region of Colpach-Haut.  I went for two reasons: 1) Luxembourg is the country from which my great-great grandparents came from in the mid-1800’s; and 2) I had been to every country in North-Western Europe except Luxembourg. (Now only Andorra, Spain and Portugal remain for continental Western Europe!)  And because I want to dedicate other posts to the towns of Beaufort and Colpach-Haut in order to show more adequately the nature of these places, I’ll dedicate this post entirely to pictures of Luxembourg City, Le Ville de Luxembourg.   Unfortunately, it was a rather rainy day that day, so it was hard to capture the beauty of the city by camera.

The city has been a hot spot for numerous battles throughout the century.  It was originally built at the top of a craggy bluff, with both natural and man-made rock wall fortress-like defenses.  In this picture below, taken from inside the old city, you can see how the valley (le Vallée de la Pétrusse) descends below.  There’s not much for perfectly manicured gardens in Luxembourg, or at least it seems that way compared to the seemingly hundreds scattered throughout Paris, but this one is of central attraction. 

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Below is a picture of St. John’s Abbey, sitting below the fortress walls of the Old City.

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And another view…

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Here is an old chapel literally built into the fortress walls.  While the Reformation made way for the rise of Protestant churches throughout Europe, Luxembourg never did see the light.  Still today, nearly 90% of the populace considers themselves Catholic. 

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Please forgive the window glare in this picture below.  I took it from inside the train on a return into the city, but thought that it better captured the beautiful landscape that makes Luxembourg what it is than most other pictures I took from outside the train.

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An early morning picture of the base of the fortress wall as I make my way to the train station.

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This is the Passerelle, or the Luxembourg Viaduct.  It was built as a bridge between 1859 and 1861 to connect the old city to the new train depot.

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I took a wonderful nap one afternoon at the base of it.

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For all of you Bartholome’s out there, stay tuned for another couple posts on where we come from!!  For those of you who have never met a Bartholome, feel free to skip the next couple of posts… unless you really like looking at other peoples’ pictures of corn fields in other countries.  Then, by all means…

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