The Luxembourish Orgy (April 3rd)

Well.... woke up at 11am today... still tired... but must be awake and do everything, at once! Although, it would have been nice to have some peanut butter for breakfast, but nooooo.

It was stolen from me... well.. stolen by the terrorist police (peanut butter is a gel? that explodes? Maybe they thought I'd pour it onto a food processing plant's conveyor belt) and apparently, peanut butter is "weird" and the jar I bought was probably about 15-20 Euro in the local French grocery (~23-30 dollars).

Day trip ideas...Decisions decisions... "more France... or Luxembourg?" Lux? isn't that the size of my backyard? Yes, yes it is. ok not quite, just 30x50 miles or so. Lux it is! So, once again we enjoyed the luxury of the lovely trains (with plugs! and tables for laptops. drink holders. bathrooms.vending machines. these things are VASTLY superior to planes). Stopped for about an hour in Metz, saw some scenery... got back on the train...

Several hours later, we arrived in the lovely city of..... Luxembourg city! These guys are more linguistic than babelfish, fluent in: German, french, English and luxembourgish (the bastard child of German and french). To be fair, they're quite friendly people.... the tour guide was more than helpful, it was most unfortunate that we were on quite the time constraint, decisions resulted to just hang in the city and bypass a great deal of rural sites, since we'd be rocking it throughout the trip anyways.

This city is an orgy, not the sweet sweet loving everywhere orgy, but a literal fraking (lul) melting pot orgy (USA don't got nothing, we so arrogant) German, french, luxembourgish, English, Arabic, Japanese + more were all heard down the streets of this business Country as i rocked my USA accent... Which reminds me, apparently NO ONE can tell the difference between a british accent and an american one, so people think I'm British, which is great (mind games!).

The city itself is quite interesting. In the middle is a giant ravine, or the "moat" as ted calls it. At the center of the gorge there is an additional "moat"; a man made stream... that I could walk over....so, no real defense there.

The Ravine in action, and me contemplating a swift death.. or just hanging out


<-- A cool church in the wall of the ravine









<-- The grand duke's lone guard, he must know really good ju-jitsu



Like other European cities I've seen so far, there were packed streets, huge sidewalks, big squares and old architecture aplenty. There was the Grand Duke's (the only one in the world, zomg) palace (The DUCAL Palace), which has a whole whopping 1 guard on each side, but the people love him, and so there's no worries. Once in a while a man gets hungry. For me it's a constant exercise of my stomach muscle and I demanded substance! So of course, Ted brought me to the most luxembourgish restaurant in the entire city! What a pal! Wait a minute......this looks like a ENCHILADA!!!... CHI-CHIs??!?! Well... ok I guess.. just this once ( Ted needed his Mexican fix) apparently Mexican food is the rarest thing ever here, and Tex-Mex is just an exquisite, decadent treat ( THE PLACE WAS PACKED. Over 50 people sitting outside). There isn't a single one in Nancy, and they're quite hard to find elsewhere in Europe. Which brings me to another interesting point, apparently there's a Tex-Mex place called "Indiana Tex-Mex Café" Indiana? Pardon moi? hahaha. A few hours after being in the Lux, it was time to depart, such is the life of the day trip. Upon arriving in Nancy, we headed back to Ted's to get ready for the long voyage ahead (15 days of just travel and hotels). On the way we managed to see a fair going on. So we decided to waltz through the masses and see what there was to offer. I'll tell you what it had to offer, a bunch of stoic french folk refusing to do anything other than stare at the pretty lights. There wasn't even LINES for the rides hardly. They just watched, and watched, and watched, and then ate a churro (they love those too, <3s for tex mex)

The french love dem churros








Even their wine has corks!




Several 40s (or 75cl "En Français") later, the bars seemed like quite the plan and we decided it would be fun to meet up with some more of Ted's buddies, in the highschool division (teaching highschool, not highschoolers, ew)... and it's only 12:30 right? We're good to go. OOps. Bars close at 1. Good Game. QQ. Instead, I just stood tired as can be for several more hours while everyone talked french talk.... but then we finally headed back and promptly collapsed at about 3, having to wake up at 7.....

Note: I can't upload images,the Swiss internet is not being friendly, at some point they'll be there, in all of their glory/shame.