'New' Apartment + Luxembourg!

Guten Tag!

Sadly we had to move out of our cute housing (see first post). The apartment is a short stay type place, we had been there for 2 months which is much longer than most people stay for. There has been much drama trying to line up a new place. We had something worked out that fell through at the last minute which meant we had to move to the University Guest Housing which we had lined up months ago. It took us 2 bus trips and one taxi ride to get all our stuff to the new place. Luckily we were not moving any furniture but it still made for a long day. Here are a few snapshots of the 'new' apartment. I put new in quotations because I think it was built in the 70's, Eric says 60's.

It is not too bad but definitely not as nice as the place we moved from. Also... they only have dial up internet!!! Our computers don't even have place to plug in a dial up connection. The other big drawback is the location. On the outskirts of town and in a very residential area. The bottom line is Eric and I are searching for a place that is newer and has a better location. If we wait until January or February we might be able to move back to the place we just left. However, we are not sure we want to wait that long. I know you are thinking that the apartment doesn't look that bad (I had the same thought as well- this was my first look at the apartment). But it is really dark, there is linoleum flooring, and it just kind of has an overall grimy feeling. There are lots of rusty components, the fridge has a funk and I can't seem to get the heaters to work. It may be (barely) functional but it is not pleasant to come home too. And coming from someone who works from home I want to spend the majority of my day in a place I enjoy being at. (Side note: we went to an art show in Luxembourg that had pictures of poor people's apartments. Their apartments were way nicer than ours.) To be continued...

Luxembourg!

October 3 was a German holiday (also a Thursday) so we decided to capitalize on this opportunity to take a long weekend somewhere a little farther away. Eric has a friend studying in Luxembourg so we decided to make a visit. It is about 5 hours by train to get to Luxembourg. Definitely doable in a day but you need a little extra time to make it worth it. We had just moved into the 'new' apartment on Tuesday so leaving for 4 days on Thursday sounded like a great idea. This was our hotel we booked online. A welcome relief from apartment woes.

It turned out to be a good stay, they also had a really delicious breakfast buffet.

The very first thing we ended up doing was get Eric a haircut. He really needed one and haircuts in Marburg are really expensive!! So he had been avoiding it. We walked past a coiffure covered in French writing and Eric was anxious to give it a try.

Success! The guy didn't speak any English but that was not an issue. Also, the haircut ended up being more expensive than it would have been in Marburg because Eric accidentally agreed in French to get it styled. But that was okay- it was still fun. Our first full day in Luxembourg we spent a large part walking around this huge park. The park is situated in this huge valley that runs through Luxembourg. There are lots of cool ruins of the old fortress wall and windy staircases in and out of the park.

All the greenery in the last photo is the park. Also, this is me standing on the bridge that is also in the picture.

Now here are wandering park pictures:

The park eventually led us to the famous Luxembourg Bock Casemates. The Casemates are ruins of the fortress / city wall that you can walk through. Building began on the casemates somewhere in the 15th century and continued on for hundreds of years. Napolean visted them at one point and they are part of a world heritage site. Best part, they were only 3 Euros!

 
The casemates were very cool but also a lawsuit waiting to happen. Tons of really narrow, dark, slick staircases that take you up 4 stories and dump you off in a dark cave. I am sure a ton of people have gotten lost in them (we even found a dinner plate at the end of one of the tunnels- no joke!). It was really cool but we were done by the end. There is another casemate nearby that we were planning on going to but one casemate seemed to be enough. You start to get a combination claustrophobic / vertigo after a while.

The next day we decided to go to this abbey. It was raining and an inside activity sounded good.

Turns out it is not an abbey anymore but actually a multicultural / event center (there was a cancer fundraiser run just ending when we arrived). It also used to be a prison. It was free and they had free bathrooms and free wifi (a very rare combination) so we went in. There were some nice art exhibits and interesting photos of the place when it was a prison in the 80's. After our short stay we found a nice farmer's market. There was lots of produce to buy (which we did not want to haul back to Germany) but we did end up buying some spices from this cart.

We also spent a little more time in the park and made it to this ruin destination Eric really wanted to go. This is his victory pose for having gotten there.

 The outlook is circled here in the picture. More fortress ruins.

A big motivation for coming to Luxembourg was to visit a friend of Eric's who is studying here. Sadly I don't have any pictures of Sarah but she treated us to a very nice fondue dinner (food is really expensive in Luxembourg) and we went to the history of Luxembourg museum together. I don't have any pictures of this either because no cameras were allowed. Also, I caught a cold at the end of the trip so I became less enthusiastic about taking pictures and more focused on blowing my nose :(

Sarah did take us to a famous Luxembourg bakery where I bought this delicious chocolate thing.

Overall it was a really nice trip. We enjoyed the city a lot and would reccomend it to anyone. Here is a final picture of the city that somehow did not make it into the post earlier.

Auf Wiedersehen!