La Vie en France: LUX/Trier

Some of you already know about this little misunderstanding, but last week when I got back to France, I went into the secretary's office asking for my schedule for second semester, since we were supposed to be starting on January 17th and it was just a few days before. Well, I was told that the schedules weren't ready, so we weren't going to start school until the 24th. Umm seriously guys? Would have been nice to know that before coming back from the States! I could have stay home another week! I really shouldn't be complaining because either way I didn't have to work and was still getting paid :) I had nothing to do all week, so I looked up some cheap train tickets and picked a place to go for a few days. I ended up in Luxembourg, which is a place that I'd never thought to go before, even though I've gone through the train station numerous times and have lived right next door for a few years now.

The first thing I noticed there was that it was very hilly and also very green! Luxembourgish people must have some crazy calf muscles, for reals. The other thing I thought was, what the heck is everyone saying? I heard a really weird mix of languages going around! A lot of people were speaking French, but then there was this other weird language that I couldn't get ANY words from. My whole "learning german" goal last year failed miserably, but I at least can understand some words here and there when people are speaking and I knew it wasn't that. So turns out, there is a "luxembourgish" language that only like 400,000 people in the world speak, obviously only in Luxembourg. They have three official languages there, French, German and Luxembourgish, and pretty much everyone speaks English perfectly. So yeah, everyone from Luxembourg grows up speaking at LEAST 4 languages like it's no big deal. Jerks!

I spent my day there just walking around and exploring the city, and of course eating a gourmet tex-mex meal at the local Chi-chi's. Luxembourg is fortified like I've never seen a city before, it's surrounded by a huge valley and walls are built up to make the natural fortification even taller! There was no getting in this city during war time. My favorite part of the city was actually the cute little village in the valley underneath, called Grund. There's actually an elevator that takes you up and down to the main city and the little one underneath, because if you don't have a car, that's a tough walk. After exploring the old part of the town and finding an old castle that was built in the 900's, I decided to go to the "history of Luxembourg" museum to learn a little bit more about the city. I won't bore you with the details, but I thought it was very interesting! I also met some really nice Frenchies who were staying in my hostel room (oh and my hostel was also in the valley, with no elevator provided. that was a fun hike). So I ended up going out for a few drinks with a really nice French girl, and then turned in early since I had a big day ahead in Trier, Germany.

Trier is somewhere I've wanted to go for a long time, I heard it was really picturesque and cute, and I realized that it was just a half hour train ride away from Lux. I did the same thing there, just kind of walked around, chilled out, ate some delicious German food, and visited a random toy museum (big let down). It turns out that I really loved Luxembourg, and was just kind of so-so about Trier! It definitely is very cute, but there wasn't enough to do there considering that I was traveling solo. The one cool thing is that there's a Roman monument there, that originally was a door to the city, and it was built around 200AD! It's hard to even fathom how old that is. Both towns really were my favorite kind of cities, really pretty, calm cities. Luxembourg was especially beautiful since it was overlooking the valley, there are some really nice views from the city onto the surrounding area. If I had a better camera I could have captured it but the pictures didn't justify it! Here's what I did get a chance to take: