It was another typical Sunday: grading and preparing for classes. So let me give you my two European tips. I haven’t seen them anywhere else, so maybe they’ll even be new to you.

First, always carry at least one €0.50 and one €2 coin. The first you may need to use a public restroom, and will need if you want to use a shopping cart (you’ll get it back, just like at Aldi in the States). The second will buy you a Luxembourg train/bus ticket good for two hours. The ticket machines do not take bills or American credit cards (i.e., with a magnetic strip).

Second, if a web site gives you a choice of languages, do not choose English (unless the site is from an English-speaking country). The English pages tend to omit information (usually helpful information, like “we’re closed today”) and often reverse dates.

Well, it was another wild day for this philosopher. I went to…yes, the supermarket! I have been trying to learn French, partly by translating. I’m working on Mr Cédric Fioretti-Clet’s essay (you might remember that he’s the one who spoke to my class in Nice). It’s slow going. I translate a little less than a page an hour. The pages are not that big, alas. When Fioretti-Clet quotes from Nietzsche’s letters, I often have to look at the German to make any sense of them. As you might imagine, going from German to French to English  is a recipe for mangling what Nietzsche wrote.

Today I completed my tour of the big three hypermarchés by going to Cora. There are only two in Luxembourg. It was also my first time taking a trip first by train and then by bus. It was about a thirty minute trip, if that. I think I discovered where men in Luxembourg buy clothes! I was able to get a fall jacket. They even have suits. They also had, let’s leave it in the French, lapin in the meat section. On what started as a brighter note, they had Domino espresso ground instead of only in capsules.

Unfortunately, it was probably the worst coffee I’ve ever had. If I could sue for defamation of character, I would.

I also got scolded by the costermonger, if that’s her title. In the big grocery stores, you bring your produce to a person in the produce section who weighs it and puts a price sticker on the bag for you. (If you didn’t know this, I just saved you a lot of stink eyes. You’re welcome.) I put one pear in a bag. When I put the second one in, it ripped the bag. Not so badly that the pears came rolling out, but badly enough that the bag would no longer be serving its purpose. So I put the two pears still in the damaged bag into another bag and then put a third pear in and brought the whole sack to be weighed. Well, the produce woman wanted to know why I had two bags. Then she decided that I was trying to pull a fast one because it turns out that one of the pears was a different variety than the other two. Now they were all from the same bin and all were the same shade of green, and I think all were the same price. But she would have none of it. I got scolded and was huffily given two stickers on my bag of pears. So, let that be a lesson to you. Either learn French well, or be certain not to intermingle varieties of pears.

One last tip, I have seen older women ask the produce person to remove the inedible portions of whatever they were buying (like the leaves on cauliflower) before weighing them. In one case, I even saw the produce person cutting up the peppers for a customer. I’m not sure if you have to be an older woman to get this treatment or if it’s just something they all do but people rarely ask for.

Tuesdays are not particularly exciting from the outside (I’m having a good time). My class is early in the morning (8:30am, which is the earliest I’ve ever taught—and I think the earliest classes start). Usually I stay up late the night before preparing for class. Then I have a weekly meeting at noon with the Dean and my colleagues. Usually after that I end up taking a nap and then getting ready for Wednesday’s class. I also have a lot of homework to grade since I have my students submit something every class day. So not super exciting. No photos or funny stories. But a quiet day is good.

Today, I just discovered, is the fête des pères in Luxembourg. So happy fathers day!

I still smile when I see the “extended” hours advertisements for stores here. Stores, except supermarkets, will make a big deal that they are open until 20h. Esch recently announced its city-wide “grande nocturne” sale, which lasts until…19h. Sundays receive similar treatment, with stores touting that they will be open 14h00 à 18h00. Some stores do this once a month; others, less often. The stores that are normally open on Sundays tend to follow the opposite pattern that you find in the states, and close early. Sunday afternoons in Differdange are very quiet as most of the stores are closed and most restaurants haven’t opened yet.

You’ll never guess what happened this morning! yeah, same ol’ same ol’. So I went to Esch to check out their weekly market. Normally I’m teaching on Friday mornings and so I’d miss it. It was twice as big as the Differdange market, although it looked like the same people who were at Differdange where in Esch. What was surprising was the number of people speaking Italian. The customers and the vendors were all speaking Italian.

Since I didn’t buy anything, I decided to walked from Esch to Belval, which turned out to be a 45 minute walk. I had wanted to walk along the road parallel to the train tracks to see up close what I see from the train, but I somehow missed about half of what I wanted to see. I did get to the see the Art Deco church, which is very cool. I also found a “Bio store” (which is roughly like Whole Foods) by the train station. I never would have found it had I not taken that walk. I wasn’t sure how far it was from the train station so I didn’t go in, but now that I know it’s close, I’ll visit soon!

After lunch, I continued by unplanned tour of supermarchés and went to Cactus. Last time I bought milk, it tasted like it was made from powdered milk. Maybe that’s what happens when the process the milk so that it can be stored without refrigeration. But I worked on the assumption that I just bought the wrong kind. Even though I was at a supermarché, there seemed to be only two choices: 1,0% and 3,5%. The first is obviously the same as 1% milk in the states, but I didn’t know what 3,5% was. Skim? By coincidence, there was an article about this very topic in the Washington Post. It turns out that 3.5% milk is whole milk. The point of the article is that “whole” doesn’t suggest 3.5% and it certainly doesn’t convey that it has less than twice the fat of 2% milk. The author suggested that Americans start calling whole milk 3.5% milk. He didn’t seem to realize that Europe does it that way. I didn’t either until today. After reading the article when I got home, I looked at the carton more closely and in smaller letters it does say “lait entier” or “whole milk.”

I also tried Rivella. It’s an interesting taste. I don’t know how to describe it. I do know that it’s not surprising that it never sold well in the United States. The company makes a big deal of the fact that one of the main ingredients is whey, or as the translation from the German puts it, milk serum. Yum! And it’s carbonated! If you’re now imagining a horrible love child produced by cottage cheese and sparkling water, fear not. Whey has no taste—which is why it’s in protein drinks. Although I plan on buying Rivella again, I don’t think I’ll miss it when I’m back in the States.

I started working on my classes after 17h when it was quiet at the Château again.

I was again kicked out of the castle by the workers (not literally but who wants to be around loud machines if you don’t have to). I took the train to Luxembourg City and then walked around for half an hour or so. Then I took the bus to the Auchan mall/hypermarché. They were having a sale on Italian foods, including several kinds of nonalcoholic bitters. A whole new world is opening up!

In the afternoon, I went to the Differdange weekly market. There were about half a dozen vendors there, each in a truck or trailer. It’s not a big market but I wanted to see it.

I went to my favorite patisserie this morning. Yesterday I discovered that they’re a chain. The brioche croissants that I buy are in the foreground of this photo. Try to ignore the bug zapper. I can’t believe that the chain is using that photograph. I had hoped to get some work done but they are still re-roofing above me and just started re-carpeting my hallway, so I’ve had to stay away most of the day. Maybe they do this in institutional settings and I’ve never noticed, but the carpet was glued to the floor, which meant that they had to use a very loud scrapping machine to get it up.

I left the Château and went to Esch to buy a SIM card for my phone. I brought my passport and was expecting to have to fill out some forms or something. Nope. I just asked for a “starter pack” (they use the English expression) and the clerk asked for 15€—and nothing more. The whole transaction took two minutes.

I’m sure that I did something else today but for the life of me I can’t remember. I know it wasn’t sleeping.

We wrapped up the study tour in the morning. I spent the rest of the day traveling back to the Château. I experienced all the major forms of transportation not involving water: Taxi > shuttle > airplane > bus > train. On the way home, I stopped at the supermarket since my cupboards at home were bare. I got off the train wearing my backpack while carrying a re-usable grocery bag in each hand. I’d like to think that I looked like a local.

In the morning, Mr Cédric Fioretti-Clet, Assistat Director of the Vence Mediathèque, talked to the class about Nietzsche, Nice, and music. He had recently contributed a chapter about that very topic to this book, which I bought later in a bookstore:

We then went to Eze, where the students got to look around for a while, and then we went down the Chemin de Nietzsche. The walk itself is tiring enough, but it seems that Nietzsche walked to Eze from Nice and then back. The bus ride alone is 30 minutes now each way.