L had to leave at 6:30 in the morning and I didn’t sleep in any later than that. I had a coffee from the Nespresso machine and read the news for a while before heading down to the hotel buffet breakfast. It was a very good spread and I filled up for the day so I could skip lunch. I didn’t get out the door until nearly 10 am and headed immediately to the Drei Eichlen, a castle shaped museum amidst the ruins of the forts on the outcropping. The museum had free admission to the permanent gallery, but as I tried to walk in, the rather testy guy at the front desk yelled at me “Stop, get back, where are you going.” “Isn’t it free?” “Yes”. I had to talk to that asshole for five minutes before I could just go take a quick loop of the permanent exhibit. The museum mostly covered the military history of Luxembourg.
I headed down the valley and went back up via a large, public, outdoor, glass elevator. The main museum I wanted to visit was the National Museum of Art and History, which occupies nine floors and a number of adjacent historical buildings. I was informed at the front desk, much to my delight, that the permanent exhibits were free. I headed into the underground sections to begin with neolithic artifacts and worked my way up. It went fast as all the displays were in French. (For the most part, signs are written in both French and German.) The history part of the museum is most ancient history, while the arts part is very nice. Unfortunately, the floor with the “old masters” was under renovation, but the contemporary art (e.g. 20th century) was excellent. The principle highlight of the museum is probably its coin collection. The museum owns 200,000 artifacts related to coins, medals, money, etc.
On my way out of the museum, I looked at a brochure for Luxembourg’s “Museum Mile” and noted that Casino Luxembourg (another modern art museum) had free admission, so I headed there next. The first floor was a series of installation projects operating under the theme of “I dreamed I was a house,” while the ground floor had a virtual reality experience and a cinema cycling through four art films from two Taiwanese artists. The VR was good and I enjoyed watching the one (of four) films with dialog in Chinese. It’s good to confirm that I haven’t pushed it out of my brain by trying to fit new languages in there.
I had already crammed in three museums so far, but there was one more that had caught my eye. In the Spuerkess (an old building taken over by the state bank), was a small banking museum–free, of course. It was interesting to realize that the building is still an active bank with full security procedures in place, meaning I had to be buzzed in by a security guard and both sign in and sign out. No photos were permitted. The whole area, consisting of dozens of old classical buildings is the heart of Luxembourg’s banking sector. The buildings are connected by underground passages, one floor of which is open to the public as photographic art gallery. To enter the underground passage, I had to walk around the block to a different building and go through a similar security procedure. It was a unique experience to be slowly walking along the hallway alone in the underground vault when a number of employees come along pushing something on a pallet or are otherwise going about their business by taking the underground passageways to avoid the rain.
As I was going to this fifth “museum” and stuck waiting at a light, the skies had opened up and started raining. I didn’t jaywalk because Luxembourg seems like the kind of place you cannot get away with it. There are too many cars and they are zipping around too fast to ignore the lights and exercise one’s best judgement. I dawdled in the underground tunnel hoping the rain would stop before I emerged. It had, but as I set off towards the Grund (the township in the valley), it started drizzling again. It was a little too wet to just ignore, so I did my best to hurry back to the hotel. I had done enough for the day and managed to do it all without spending a cent.
I had a coffee and a nap back in the hotel and in the later afternoon I went to the gym to run on the orbital machine for a while. I really wanted to visit the sauna as well, but it was turned off when I went to check on it. So, I settled for the light exercise and a shower. I was getting hungry again and there was nothing (affordable) near the hotel, so I walked twenty minutes across the bridge to find a supermarket, which confirmed to me that the food prices are higher in Luxembourg. Though, the ready to eat salad I bougth was really good. I think that might be the French influence (even though it was a Tuscan salad).
I hung out in the room flipping channels on the TV waiting for L to finish up for the day. The TV was a lot of fun, and I realized just how little local television I watch. There were channels in at least eight different languages, and my ears are getting better. For example, flipping between two adjacent channels I could hear the difference between European Spanish and South American Spanish. The local Luxembourg channels were speaking in Luxembourgian (?), which is basically impossible to hear or notice on the streets, but in its concentrated televised form I could listen to it and hear that it sounds like drunken German (subtitled in French). Flipping over to actual German channels, the difference was further clarified, and despite not reviewing German for some ten days, I could still understand about 50%. For my final push to learn German, I might just need to hole up somewhere and watch several hours of TV a day. They seriously take all the American television shows and dub them into German.
When L came back after a long, hard day (contrasted with my leisurely museum circuit), we walked over to the old town to grab a drink. Despite being past 10pm, the streets were still crowded and most of the bars were so loud as to make conversation impossible. We found a smallish bar that wasn’t too crowded and had a single round. The bartender was a real character, sloshing around as if he had a shot for every customer. In fact, he insisted I “get funky” and did a shot of (home infused) banana rum with me. I just ordered a beer, which turned out to be essentially the same price as a generous pour of Johnny Walker Black. I’ve barely wrapped my head around the +/- 5 euro prices for draft Belgian or craft beers in bars and Luxembourg introduces me to the 7 euro (unremarkable) beer.
| Charity | 1 |
| Flixbus | 12.99 |
| Bus | 2 |
| McDonalds | 5.45+2.85 |
| Cactus Marche (groceries) | 7.66 |
| Bar (incl. tip) | 15.8 |
| Total: | 47.75 EUR (372.45 RMB) (USD 54.13) |
Running Total: 13312.65 RMB (USD 1934.73)
Daily Average: 359.8 RMB (USD 52.29)
This might be as low as my daily average gets. 🙁