After class, I went with my colleagues and all of the students to another great concert by the Solistes Européens Luxembourg. We will all be dragging tomorrow because classes being at 8:30, but it’s a great way to end a Monday.

I spent an enjoyable day in Luxembourg city, first at the Bric-a-Brac Fair and then at the 32e festival des migrations des cultures et de la citoyenneté. It was amazing how many cultures were represented at the festival. The Luxembourg Expo Center is huge. There were easily three dozen different cultural groups there, each with a booth selling food, books, and other items.

After class this morning, we drove to Brussels,  flew to Comiso Airport, and then drove to Siracusa, Sicily. Needless to say, it was a long day. By the time we got to the hotel, most places were closed. Some students picked an orange for me from a tree planted in the median. Oranges in February! After a late dinner, it was finally bedtime.  I was happy to see my hotel room.

It snowed heavily this morning, which slowed down our trip around Luxembourg. It also made Vianden Castle even more beautiful.

I had wanted to take my students to Athens, being the birthplace of philosophy and all. I changed my mind when I spoke with some of the students last semester who went to Athens on their own. It was the one trip they would not have taken if they knew then what they know now. So next month, we’re going to Sicily! More on that later. Today I discovered another reason to be glad we’re not going to Athens: cannibalism. If that doesn’t give some sense of how bad things must be there, I don’t know what would.

In other difficult-to-believe news, the last Victorian in Britain died on Friday. It’s difficult to imagine that someone who could have met Friedrich Nietzsche or Oscar Wilde among others just died. The cannibal thing is notably more difficult to imagine, however.

Ever since I decided that I wanted to take the train up north, I’ve been collecting the reasons that the CFL has given for the delay or cancelation of a train that I might have been on:

1. The “presence of unauthorized persons near the tracks” (6 January 2015).
2. “Catenary works” (7 January 2015).
3. “A police action” (7 January 2015).
4.  “Traffic problems” (multiple).
5.  “Failure of the signal box” (10 January 2015).
6. “An overload in Pétange station” (13 January 2015).
7. “Works for the construction of the Roud Bréck stop” (13 January 2015).
8. “Technical problems with the railway track” (14 January 2015).
9. “The cancellation of train” XXXX (multiple). To clarify, this is where one train is canceled because another train was also canceled.
10. “The presence of animals on tracks” (19 January 2015).
11. “Breakdown of a train” (multiple).
12. “Lack of equipment” (multiple).
13. “Lack of personnel” (multiple).
14. “Delay of previous train” (multiple).
15. “Disturbances” (multiple).
16. “An emergency operation” (19 January 2015).
17. “Incident caused by a third party at a railroad crossing” (21 January 2015).
18. “Operational problems” (26 January 2015)
19. “A last minute modification of the staff planning” (25 January 2015)

Just to be clear: I’m not making fun of CFL. I love riding their trains, and I appreciate all of the walking paths they’ve made. I’m sure they wish the trains were always on time. I am simply astonished at all that can go wrong with the trains.

Today as I left the Château to go for a walk, I noticed these banners on the Aalt Stadhaus and the Hotel de Ville. I’m not sure how long they have been up.

On the walk, I saw this interesting moss growing upward, which I had never seen before.

I also saw this cool art installation. It was in the middle of nowhere. There’s a set of five or so photographs of people from what looks like the 19th century. Some of the photographs have been mounted on mirrors. Others on opaque glass. Either way made them seem more ghostly than my photograph does.

Today I received what I think was a love letter from Delta Airlines. In between the salutation and the valediction was this (and only this):

Your question require verbal communication, please contact our International Reservations department of France at +33 (0)892 702 609.

It took Delta two days to write that one sentence, so I know they labored over it and that I should examine it carefully. What they have written has all the hallmarks of deep felt emotion: there’s the lack of subject-verb agreement, which can happen when your heart is all aflutter. Then there’s their desire to have me connect with an agent in France. Since I’m not currently in France, nor will I be flying to France on the flight in question, I can only imagine that Delta wants to woo me with the language of amour. But the best part is that Delta wants to communicate something to me that can be said, but cannot be written. Since we will be communicating  over the phone, I assume both parties will be using words (at least I plan to), so I am desperately anxious to learn what words can be spoken but cannot be written. This secret should come in handy if I’m ever threatened by a stenographer. I’ll just say Delta’s magic words, and the stenographer will become apoplectic.

In case you’re curious, the entire problem should have been easy to fix. On 3 January, Delta emailed me saying that my flight in May had been changed. They invited me to choose my seats, so I tried to do that. That’s when I discovered that I was no longer assigned to the “Economy Comfort” seat I had paid extra for in July. So I contacted Delta. Their response started off nicely enough:

Thank you for your email to Delta Air Lines regarding Economy Comfort seat for your upcoming travel to Cincinnati. We apologize that due to schedule change you did not get re-accommodated in your originally purchased seat.

At this point, I expected the next paragraph to say something like “I have corrected our mistake….” It would have been awesome if they recognized that I had to spend some of my time essentially supervising them. Instead, I got this:

Please know that we will try our best to provide you with a similar seat up to departure. However, if we cannot accommodate you in an Economy Comfort seat at the time of departure, we will automatically refund any money you paid for this product.

Then the email ended. I wrote back asking for clarification. Does the phrase “up to departure” mean that they will assign me the kind of seat I paid for, but if I’m late, they’ll give it away? That would be understandable, but I’d need to be assigned to an Economy Comfort seat first before I could lose it. What I was concerned it really meant was: we’re going to try to find someone else who will pay more for that seat. If we can, we’ll give you your money back. If we can’t, you can have it. And that does not seem fair to me.

I’ll let you know how it goes. In the meantime, can anyone explain why they began their response by thanking me for writing to Delta Air Lines? I mean, I know to whom I wrote, and even if I forgot, their email address (ContactUs.Delta@delta.com) serves as a helpful, if not redundant, reminder.

Today we had freezing fog. Since I didn’t have to leave the château this morning, I could enjoy its beauty.  I’m not sure if it was related, but the trains had an awful time today.  This is as good a time as any to put in a plug for the CFL iPhone app. Even easier to use than their web site, and it seems like the app gets the most recent info (CFL stands for Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Luxembourgeois, which is the national railway company of Luxembourg).

Out my 14th century widow:

Here’s a close up. It’s difficult to tell, but I’m on the third floor (if you count the ground floor as 1, not 0). You might be able to tell that there’s no actual snow on the ground. There’s just frozen fog on the trees and grass.