Today was probably the most boring day to blog about. I spent the whole day getting ready for the study tour that begins tomorrow after class. Well, that and the assignments for when we return. I will be taking one of my classes to Nice, Monaco, and Monte Carlo. Tomorrow afternoon and evening will be spent traveling. We fly to Barcelona and then on to Nice. We leave the Château at noon, and won’t be checking in to the hotel until after 22h30.

I won’t be bringing my computer, so there won’t be any new entries until Tuesday or Wednesday.  I’m going to backdate the entries, though. Good thing I’m not an accountant. Until then….

Oops. I almost forgot. I’m sure many of you were worried, but you can relax now. I’m am TB-free. Or in the words of the Ligue Médico-Sociale “Absence en particulier de lésion compatible avec une tuberculose évolutive.” Radiologists world-wide apparently are taught not to write in complete sentences.

In addition to teaching, I went to Meng Drogerie to get a travel sized can of shaving cream for my upcoming trip and laundry detergent, well, because I needed it. I’m not sure if “meng” means something in Luxembourgish or if it’s a surname or what. “Drogerie” is German (and perhaps Luxembourgish) for drugstore. This is an interesting class of stores that I don’t think we have in the states. If you didn’t know better, you might think that they sold liquids that come in plastic bottles. Most of the store is shampoo, detergents, and so on. They also have toilet paper, razors, and that kind of thing, but they do not carry any drugs, not even over-the-counter. Supermarkets carry some of these items but the selection is bigger at the drogerie.

Later that evening, I went out to dinner with my colleagues. One of the most delightful traditions in Differdange is getting food on the house. In nearly every restaurant that I’ve been to, something free—from drinks to an entire bag of cookies—was given away.

Oh yes, in between those adventures, I taught class, graded papers, and so on.

Like many of my students, I was dragging a bit today because of the concert last night. Six hours of sleep is not enough! I’m sure some of my students somehow got by on less. In the early afternoon, I decided to go for a walk rather than drink more coffee. I thought that I would take about a thirty minute walk. Well, I missed a turn (or it didn’t exist) and it turned out to be a two hour walk.

About one third of Differdange is ringed by woods. Although I had not intended to walk through them, that’s what I ended up doing. In my defense, there are not many street signs once you leave town. The ones that are there are often not all that helpful, like this one:

Given a choice between a town (?) that I had never heard of and amateur dog races, I went with the dogs. I’m still not sure what Kannerbongert is.  Google maps can’t find it. If I’m understanding this site correctly, it’s the name of an orchard.

My walk started out on sidewalks, which is nice. But once the sidewalk ended, I found myself walking along a country road with no shoulder. It was not all that relaxing to be walking along while having cars zooming toward you. Finally, I reached a hiking trail and so could enjoy the walk.

Eventually the trail ended in Differdange. I still find it wonderful that I can walk 10 minutes in one direction and be on a train to Luxembourg City, and 10 minutes in another directions and be in the woods.

I went out this morning to buy my breakfast pastries. Normally I buy them the day before, but since I didn’t go out yesterday (and since most stores are either closed on Sundays or open until 13h only) I had to go out this morning. I should have done that much earlier! The selection is so much bigger at 7h!

A little later in the morning I had a meeting with Carlo (who is in charge of the study tours) and Raymond (who is going along on the trip) concerning the upcoming trip. It was impressive to see that they had planned everything out and even had contingency plans. Carlo had described the meeting as a “road book” discussion. Originally I thought this was an Italian expression that lost something in translation. I learned that Carlo had indeed compiled a book of tickets, reservations, phone numbers, maps and so on. If only he did taxes….

The dishwasher finally came back from the “hospital” today. Hopefully I’ll get to use it tomorrow. As they were leaving, one of the technicians gave me a mini-lecture. When he was done, he asked if I had understood him (he was speaking French). I told him that I didn’t think that I understood him because I thought he told me that a dishwasher is not a dog. Yes, that indeed was his point. It seems that whoever lived here before had put dishes with food still on them in the dishwasher (instead of giving them to the dog). This is the opposite advice that you get in the states, where you are told that pre-rinsing causes the detergent to eat away at the glasses etc. Oh well. I assured him that I was innocent of this crime against an appliance.

Tonight we were invited to attend the 25th anniversary performance of the Solistes Européens, Luxembourg. In attendance were His Royal Highness, Grand-Duc Henri, Luxembourg’s Prime Minister, his Excellency Mr. Xavier Bettel. The concert was held at Philharmonic Hall in Luxembourg City. The building itself is impressive (info here). If there was any additional security, it wasn’t obvious. There were no metal detectors or guard dogs. I saw two police officers the whole time I was there. I say all this because it was nice. Something is lost when public events require so much security.

I realized that I was close to the Grand-Duc than I have ever been to a US President, or even a member of Congress. Luxembourgers will tell you that one of the great things about their country is that the government is small and nimble. It’s apparently much easier to do business here because CEOs can meet with government officials without needing appointments months in advance.

I hope that last paragraph makes sense. It’s past my bed time.

I did not leave the Château today, partly because there were some heavy downpours and partly because I had too much to do inside. I attempted to play “Luxembourg, USA” only to discover that the DVD player in my apartment doesn’t work. I also tried out the adaptor that I bought on my last trip to Esch that allows me to connect my laptop to the projection system in my classroom. That worked. Otherwise, this was not a super exciting day, although to be sure it looses something in the telling.

I worked on my classes most of the day today. This coming week is going to be busy as we leave for Nice immediately after classes on Friday. The day was so beautiful that I couldn’t stay inside the entire time, so I went to Esch.

I had been to Esch before but was disappointed. I’m not sure why. I had an enjoyable and productive visit today. I saw the Église Saint Joseph, which was built in 1873. I did my best to get the entire church in the photographs, but because there are buildings all around, I could step back only so far.

One of my quotidian finds in Esch was a store that had sweatpants for a reasonable price (8€). Other inexpensive stores wanted twice that, and at clothing stores, they started at 30€. It wasn’t unusual to find that sweatpants cost more than khakis. I also found an inexpensive pair of “house shoes.” Europeans do not wear outside shoes around the house, which makes sense. So when in Rome….

Luxembourgians are generally about the size of Americans, although I’ve see far fewer morbidly obese people here. I was surprised to discover that it was difficult to find shoes big enough for me. One place finally had a pair that fit, which was lucky since it was the biggest size they had! I was also surprised about the clothing sizes. I had wanted to buy a medium pair of sweats but large was the smallest they had. Good thing, too. When I tried them on at home, they were the perfect size, if not a little too small.

I spent the rest of the evening working.

After my classes in the morning, I went across the street to get a library card at the city library. I discovered that they do not give cards. Not to anyone. Instead, they use a system that brought back childhood memories. It’s entirely on paper! Once you enroll, you can check something out simply by presenting it to a librarian and telling him or her your name. What you check out is recorded by hand.

The library has materials primarily in French or in German, although they do have some in Luxembourgish, in Portuguese, and in English. I checked out what I hope is a detective book for school children (the kind that is supposed to make learning fun). I also checked out 1001 secrets de la langue française. Pour apprivoiser ces affreux participes passés, pluriels malicieux, et petites liaisons farceuses.  I suspect that my French is nowhere near sophisticated enough to understand the book, but I couldn’t resist. Their collection of DVDs is rather small. Now that Netflix is coming to Luxembourg, that’s probably a good thing. Most of the movies they had were connected to WWII. I did find one that wasn’t: Luxembourg, USA, which I checked out.

In the same building as the library (the Aalt Stadhaus) is the Brasserie «La Tartinière», which has outside seating. Even though I’ve been here for almost a month, this is the first time I’ve had a coffee outside. It’s not that there haven’t been opportunities. There are cafes and brasseries with outdoor seating all over Differdange, Luxembourg City, and every other place I’ve visited. Most of the cafes that I’ve seen, however, are on relatively busy streets, and the thought of sitting outside with traffic so close does not appeal to me. This café is on a not-so-busy street, and is on a patio high above the road.

Suitably caffeinated, I went to my office to find more quotations from Nietzsche about Nice, where I will be going with one of my classes next week (Friday-Tuesday). I made two happy discoveries. First, Nietzsche attended several concerts in Monaco, so now we can add that to our itinerary. Second, I had not been able to locate one of the boarding houses where Nietzsche lived in Nice. I couldn’t even find the street, either in person or online. Finally today I came across a letter that Nietzsche wrote while staying at this house. In a postscript, he tells his friend that the street has been renamed! Yea! I’ll be interested to see if that house is still there now that I know what street it’s on. It will still require some sleuthing since Nietzsche never recorded the house number.

The big day. All my paperwork was gathered into a protective plastic envelope and I was heading to Luxembourg City. I left Differdange a little after 8am, which turned out to be the rush hour. It was a 30 minute walk to the immigration office. At least it should have been. I made a few wrong turns, which added 15 minutes, or as I decided to think of it, additional exercise. The office is outside of the city, past a very long block of empty fields. Just when I thought I was in a suburb of Luxembourg City, there was the government building. After a 30 minute wait, I submitted my paperwork and was on my way.

I walked around Luxembourg City for another hour or so and then caught the bus to the Auchan shopping mall to run a few errands, then it was back to work.

I still have one last step to complete before I get my residency card. The final step is a bit of a letdown. Oh, it starts off well enough. The Immigration Directorate “vous invitera par courrier à vous présenter personnellement dans ses guichets.” Wow! I will be invited to come to the premises of the Directorate, by mail, no less! I was thinking that maybe they would offer me a glass of Crémant and welcome me to the Grand Duchy. Alas, the instructions continue “aux fins de la prise d’une photo et de vos empreintes digitales” which still sounds nice but means “for the purpose of taking a photograph and fingerprints.” Not the reception I had in mind.

Guess what I did today? Yep. Graded papers and taught class. BUT…I also got ready to go to the Ministère des Affaires Etrangères with all my paperwork for obtaining my Residency Permit (or as they call it my titre de séjour). I also walked to the nearby town of Niederkorn. I had seen this abandoned house from the bus and wanted a closer look.

This is their train station.

To judge by the railway company’s web site, they now use a platform somewhere else, which doesn’t look near as nice as this station.

I walked along the main road to Niederkorn but was able to get back to Differdange via backroads, which I had not anticipated—and I’m not sure I could do again intentionally. Once again the internet claimed their was a bakery where there was not. I have all but given up on using maps here.

While we’re on the subject of the CFL’s web site, here’s a pro tip. Do not use the English portion of the site, at least when looking up a particular itinerary. The site doesn’t convert English formatted dates into European formatted dates. Depending on what date you’re looking at, you could be shown, say, the schedule for October 9th when you entered September 10th. In most cases this won’t make a difference, but if you’re looking up the schedule for Sunday but are shown Wednesday’s schedule, you will be in for an unpleasant surprise when you get to the station.

Pro tip #2: get their iPhone app. Their web site is by no means difficult to use, but this is even quicker if you just want to catch a local train.

Another day spent teaching and grading. Fortunately, my colleagues decided to go out for moules, which I had never had. It’s the season now, so you get a big pot of them. Really an order would have been plenty for two, but I ate all of mine. Apparently, the supermarkets have very inexpensive mussels now, and even sell the special pot in which to cook them. I wouldn’t know as I avoid seafood departments. It’s difficult enough for me to see them in the states. In Europe the fish come with their heads still attached, which isn’t something I like to see.