The weather was perfect all day. Sunny, warm, blue sky. Here we are heading out for the day:

This is my class. The assistant dean is somewhere on the other side of the street leading the group, and I’m in the back pushing it forward.

We took a walk around Nice to visit some of the places where Nietzsche lived. One is marked with a plaque:

I had combed through Nietzsche’s letters looking for information about where he had lived (he moved at least every six months). Two of the places he mentioned I could not find over the summer when I went on a planning trip. One of the two I thought simply didn’t exist anymore as there was a large gap in the street numbers, with Nietzsche’s former residence unfortunately being in that gap. The other was even more mysterious as even the street apparently no longer existed. The weekend before we left, I discovered in that a letters to a friend, Nietzsche writes “P.S. Pet. rue St. Etienne is now renamed Rue Rossini.” A quick search on Google confirmed that Rue Rossini still exists. Nietzsche never gave a street number; just that he was living in the pension de Genève. Rue Rossini is about ten blocks long. I was excited that we might find another of Nietzsche’s former residences. My students and I walked about 20 minutes out of our way to get to it, and then walked down it, only to find nothing. Not one of them complained about being sent on a fool’s errand. I walked back later to see if we missed it. We hadn’t. Many of the buildings were Art Deco, so I’m guessing that Nietzsche’s former living quarters had been destroyed.

We also visited the Villa Masséna and the Cours Saleya. We ended the day (or at least I did) with a group dinner at La Pizza Cresci.

The days have become so short! It’s 7h15 and it’s still pitch black out. When did this happen?

Today I walked to France. It was about an hour each way. The route I took to France was not much fun for about twenty minutes—a narrow windy road with no shoulder and plenty of people enjoying driving along it and certainly not expecting a pedestrian. I found a better way on the way home. Next time I want to check out the little border town. This time, I didn’t do more than cross the boarder. In fact, if not for my phone letting me know that I had entered France and then that I had entered Luxembourg, I wouldn’t have noticed.

Even though it was Saturday, I had to get some work done. I thought a change of place might be good, so I went into one of the classrooms downstairs that I thought would be particularly sunny.

This is the a spot in the back of the classroom that pushes out. I was an enjoyable place to work. The classroom itself is the “Charles the Bold” classroom in honor of perhaps the most famous inhabitant of the Château.

All work and no play…plus it was a beautiful day, just perfect for walking to France. I followed the signs to an unusual restaurant, Bache Jang. The restaurant is supposed to be quite good. If the parking lot is any indication, it must be. Despite being in the middle of the forests and farmland between Differdange and France, the parking lot was full. Here’s the path I took home:

I took the long way home and stopped at the supermarket—and bought enough cookies to make up for whatever calories I burned on my walk across the border.

Classes in the morning followed by a full day of traveling to Nice via Barcelona. On board the flight to Spain, I discovered Mare Rosso. It tastes just like Campari but has neither alcohol nor calories. Unfortunately, it seems to be available in Spain only.

Before I mess the bed, here’s half of my room. Behind is a kitchenette, closet, and bathroom.

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.