It’s difficult to imagine that I’ve been here for a week. In many good ways it seems longer than that; in other ways, it’s as if I just arrived.

After the last part of the integration lectures in the morning, we had 10 hours of traveling.

First we went to Muellerthal for a quick 1km hike to the Schiessentümpel water falls.  Then on to see the castle in  Beaufort.  This photo doesn’t do it justice, but it’s the only one I took:

This part of Luxembourg is nicknamed Echternach or Little Switzerland. Then off to the St. Martin winery where they store the wine in man-made caves, where learned about Luxembourg, especially their sparkling white wine known as Crémant de Luxembourg. The night ended with dinner at the  Schueberfouer or Fun Fest in Luxembourg City. The carnival was packed with people. Not one for crowds (or rides that hold you upside-down), I went back to the Château exhausted.

The day started with the third of the four integration presentations. For me, this one was about IT. Unfortunately, last night’s outage had played havoc with everything electronic in the Château. Fortunately, Carlo is a very affable person and the group ended up talking about life in Luxembourg and the study tours’ destinations.

After lunch, we went to Luxembourg City where we toured in smaller groups of a dozen or so. It’s exhausting being a tourist, and many fell asleep on the bus ride home. I’ll admit to dozing off myself.

The evening ended with a “white party” or a party where everyone is supposed to wear all white. As you can see, I didn’t quite do that (in my defense, there were some people who wore no white at all). But, yes, I concede that my colleagues did a better job at this.

(photo from MUDEC’s Instagram site)

One interesting feature of the party is that it was more of a bring your own picnic, although you could purchase hotdogs, hamburgers, drinks, and a Luxembourgish “pizza” that looked like a crêpe with sauerkraut, bacon, and cheese on it. You can see how Luxembourg has both French and German influences. Some people went all out and brought china and flatware and even candelabras for their tables. By the time the party was winding down, we were all tired. I went straight to bed, which is why this posting is late.

I was about to start blogging last night at 22h when the power went out. Fortunately, power outage lights had been installed just last year so I was able to walk around the Château. The power was restored several hours later. Since it was just the Château that was affected, I’ll be curious to learn what happened.

So let’s pretend that I’m writing this last night, as I had intended…

This morning began the “integration” programs for the students. First the Dean gave an opening welcome. After that, the students were divided into four groups. Each group stayed in the same classroom while the speakers moved from room to room. There are a total of four people talking about various aspects of life in Luxembourg. Since this is my first trip, I stayed with one group to learn what was said. I heard presentations by both the Dean and the Assistant Dean. They both did remarkably good jobs of telling the students some not so fun rules (like, do not get drunk, you are a student first and foremost, this is not your country).

In his opening speech, the Dean helped me understand something that had been puzzling me. Almost every day that I’ve been here, I’ve gone to the same market and same mini-store. And almost every time I’ve been there, I was served (is that the best word?) by the same cashiers. At least in my head, my French was getting better every day (it could not have gotten worse); yet, the cashiers seemed even less friendly—not that I expected them to be deliriously happy that some American was trying to learn French. It turns out that while Americans and Chinese smile at cashiers and other people they don’t know, the French reserve that facial expression for making a sexual overture. So while I meant something like “I’m sorry in advance for my horrible French, please help me improve if you can” by my smile, it was likely interpreted very differently. C’est la vie.

After lunch, the students were sent out to complete treasure hunts in Differdange. I decided to head over to the hypermarket Cactus, a short 20 minute bus ride away. One great thing about Luxembourg public transportation is that the same tickets work on trains and on buses. In my case, this was neat because it allowed me to buy a ticket from the machine in the train stop (Differdange doesn’t have a proper station) rather than potentially holding up the bus while I tried to figure out what the driver was telling me. Like ticket machines in other European countries that I’ve visited, the machines in Luxembourg do not take non-chip and pin credit cards or debit cards, and they do not take banknotes. Until American banks catch up with the rest of the world, Americans will have to use coins to buy train tickets. No big deal, you say. Maybe I’ve missed them, but I have never seen a change machine in Europe.

One interesting feature of the Luxembourg public transportation system is that you can buy two kinds of tickets (aside from passes). The first kind cost 2€ and is good for two hours (if you buy it from a machine, the two hours starts immediately). The other kind of ticket is 4€ and is good until 4am the next day. Even though the Cactus market is only 20 minutes away from the Château, I bought the all day ticket (Dagesbilljee) to be safe. I’m sure there’s some way to pay a little more if your 2 hours end mid-route, but I wasn’t sure how that worked.

There are at least three different chains of hypermarkets in Luxembourg. To generalize from my experience at Cactus, they are like Meijer, or the WalMarts and Targets that also sell groceries. They have more groceries than the latter two stores, but also fewer clothes for men. They do have appliances. I decided to buy a moka pot. My apartment came with a drip coffee maker, which I don’t like. To date, I’ve been drinking instant espresso (I know, I know). Interestingly, they don’t seem to make the stovetop variety. Anyway, I bought this one (the only other choice was the same model in white):

Notice the electric base, which replaces a stovetop burner.

Capsule coffee makers have really caught on here. There were at least 20 different ones for sale at Cactus. They are, however, substantially more expensive. The cheapest one at Cactus was about US$150.

Aside from buying groceries and a moka pot, my other accomplishment at Cactus was to get a Cactus Card (or a carte client). It took awhile because I didn’t know the proper French term and what I was saying apparently could also mean a Cactus gift card. Lesson here: if you read something online in English, be sure to look at the French version as well.

I got back to my apartment around 18:00 and was going to stay in when I recalled what the Assistant Dean had told the students: do not keep going to the same places; even if you have only an hour, you can go to a new-to-you town and have a coffee and come back in time for class. Since my bus/train ticket was still good, I decided to head off to Luxembourg City. Now the City has two major parts, the Gare and the Stad districts. The latter has the Grand-Rue where we had visited earlier in the week. As its name suggests, the Gare area includes the train station. The two areas are connected by two bridges. I wandered around the Gare area for about an hour before heading back to the train station. As I walked around, I stumbled across another Domino establishment:

You might be able to tell from the green sign that it’s for sale. Hmm…

This brings me back, more or less, to the beginning of the post. About two hours after I got home, the power went out.

As promised, we took a pre-dawn bus to Brussels to pick up nearly 100 students and their luggage. The buses were very nice, and seemed almost new. The boarders between countries were less noticeable than those between states in the US. Aside from a medium sized blue sign with the country’s name on it, you’d never know you had crossed a boarder.

This isn’t the sign we passed because, well, by the time I noticed it, we were well past it. And of course on the way to the airport, is was too dark to see much of anything.

Getting the students from inside the airport to aboard the buses was more involved than I had imagined. To begin with, we kept track of who got off the airplane, who got on the bus, and just to be sure, who was still on the bus when the doors closed. The MUDEC staff was in constant contact with their colleagues back at the Château, getting travel updates, and letting them know who had arrived so that appropriate host family could be notified that their student(s) would be in Differdange in 2.5 hours.

I didn’t get to see much of the Brussels’ airport, but I do remember being struck by the way the floors were numbered. The floor at grade was 0 (zero). As you might expect, the first subterranean floor was then -1. What you would not expect, and what I cannot explain, is why the first floor above 0 is 2. There is no first floor.

Because most of the students had quiet a bit of luggage (picture two very large checked bags and one large carry on plus a pillow), the buses each had trailers. When we arrived at the Château, the bus was of course too big to pull into the courtyard (we knew this already) and so it had to stay on the street, effectively blocking one of the two lanes. As we all scrambled to empty the bus and trailer as quickly as possible, not one driver honked or yelled at us.

At the Château, the students were matched with their host families. This was also impressive to see. The courtyard is not very big, and cannot accommodate many cars. The staff had orchestrated everything perfectly so that there was never a logjam.

I suspect it’s bad form to not have a photograph of the day’s activities, so let me shamelessly borrow of photo from the MUDEC Instagram account. That’s me on the right in the red (maroon?) shirt.

Let me leave you with a front page story from the Luxemburger Wort: “Man caught with his pants down.”  The gentleman in question had been observed urinating against the capital’s Grand Ducal palace at 3am on Sunday. When he saw the police, he fled. When they caught up with him he “denied any wrongdoing despite the fly of his trousers still being unzipped.” The story ends with this: “The man received a warning by police, who also filed a report of the misdemeanor.” I like this story for two reasons. First, how bad could things be in Luxembourg if that story is up front? Second, I think it says a lot about the country if someone urinating on what I imagine is one of its most important buildings is treated this way. I think the police did exactly the right thing. They didn’t ignore what he had done, but they didn’t make a federal case out of it either.

(sorry about the delay. I forgot to press “publish.”)
 

Today was a full day of meetings and travel to Luxembourg City in preparation for taking the students there on Friday. Tomorrow morning, we need to get on a bus to Brussels at 5am to pick up the students who traveled en masse. Needless to say, this will be a short posting.

Luxembourg City is beautiful! I will take more photos later, but here’s the best of today’s shots:

As we were walking around the shopping district, I noticed this store down a side street:

Dean Leterre kindly offered to take my picture in front of the eponymous store:

À demain.

Today I began the process of getting a changement de résidence, which is official permission to stay in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. The first stop was at the Hôtel de Ville, which is no more than a block away from the Château. At times, the process seemed cliché: forms were created; others were asked for. Forms had to be photocopied; everyone required at least one stamping, if only the word “copy.” Occasionally, the person helping me would have to take some of my paperwork to the back room. Sometimes she would not know how to translate a particular French word into English for me; some of them I could understand anyway; others, she had to try in German or Italian until I understood. Near the end of the process, she laughed and said “I do not know what language to speak now!” and started laughing. I left with the next set of forms.

I also had a physical because it is required, and I had to wire 50€ to the ministry of foreign affairs. The doctor’s office is also very close to the Château, maybe two blocks away. I made the appointment this morning, and there was an opening in the afternoon. Amazingly, I did not have to wait to see the doctor. Just as I was about to sit down in the waiting room, the doctor came out to fetch me. (tip for anyone looking for the doctors’ offices: the entrance looks like you’re going into an apartment building—and I think you are—but the second floor is businesses including the doctors).

There are many clusters of multicolored rowhouses in Differdange. I really like the colors chosen.

At the supermarket, I discovered that capsule coffee is very popular here. Most of the coffee on the shelves was one brand or another of capsules. One caught my eye:

Curiously, the company seems to be based in Florida. The main web site doesn’t seem to mention the espresso version of the capsules. This one page site in Belgium does list the espressos; in fact, that’s all it mentions.

I need to sign off now. Tomorrow is going to be a full day of meetings, including a trip to Luxembourg city, where most of the students will live.

It was cold this morning. 45°F to be precise. I wasn’t fully prepared for that kind of weather. I thought I was being clever when I decided to buy winter wear here. I thought I would have at least a month before I would need much more than a long sleeved shirt and a thermal undershirt. Now it looks like I should have bought a warmed jacket yesterday.

After spending several hours working on one of my classes, I went to Gelateria La Gondola to have a cappuccino. This is what I see when I first step out of the château:

To get to La Gondola, I have to walk down this road, which borders the château:

Perhaps because I could pronounce “cappuccino” but not the French name of the pastry I wanted (it was what I would’ve called strudel aux pommes but they had jazzed up the name), the waitress asked if I was Italian. I must have been temporarily flattered to be taken as something other than an American, because I answered affirmatively. I thought this was a safe answer as I had heard nothing but French since I arrived in Luxembourg. Well, it wasn’t. Turns out that all of the employees speak Italian. As if to drive that point home, a nonna came in, speaking Italian with the staff, who obviously were very fond of her. Given the restaurant’s name, maybe I should have known better. Anyway, now that I’ve had coffee, it’s back to reading Montaigne’s Essays for class.

I left Ohio on August 22nd and arrived in Differdange the next day. It seems to be fact of life that you will spend almost as much time in airports as in the air, at least if you cannot do better than two stops.

There were a couple of surprises on my first day. My apartment was so clean that I wish housekeeping was included. Alas, it’s not. A better surprise was that I have my own office! I was expecting to share a common office with the other faculty members, but instead I have my own. I’ll need to move things around and clear off at least one of the desks, but here’s what it looked like today:

My apartment is called the President Suite because this is where the President of Miami University stays when he visits. The suite was renovated last year, so everything still looks new. Except the staircase I use to go from the courtyard to my apartment.

That’s a genuine 15th century staircase. The Dean tells me that my apartment is in the oldest part of the Château. I’m lucky to have this wonderful combination of the old and the new.

I had my first coffee and pastry today from the local Fischer boulangerie.

I also went to both of the local supermarkets. This one is closer and seems to have a greater variety. One happy find was Schweppes Bitter Lemon, which is difficult to find in the States.