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.

Today was spent grading papers and preparing for classes. I did go out for a coffee with a colleague after class, which was nice. I have discovered that Mondays tend to be extra busy for me, primarily because most of my students travel over the weekend and so send me their homework late Sunday night or early Monday morning, which means that I spend most of Monday grading.

Today was spent grading and preparing for classes. I didn’t leave my apartment until after 17h when I decided that I should take a walk. I had forgotten that Differdange holds a market on Sunday afternoons. It’s like a flea market (or what we called a swap meet when I was a child) except it’s on sidewalks and plazas. There was also a carousel, a band, and some people selling food. People we selling the same sorts of stuff they sell in the states with two exceptions. First, they apparently don’t sell furniture, which makes sense since most people walked to the sale, and I have yet to see a pickup. Second, I didn’t see any mens clothes, which isn’t surprising since they don’t sell mens clothes in Luxembourg.

I did see this neat old building on my walk:

I suspect that this is going to be a quiet week, but stay tuned.

I woke up early so that I could get to Metz by 8am. To judge by the CFL’s website, I should have been able to get a train ticket from Differdange to Metz for 21,60 €. The ticket agent at the Luxembourg station—the main station for the country—told me that the best he could do was a ticket from Belval to Metz for that amount. I’d have to pay for the 7 minute trip between Belval and Differdange. I didn’t think this was correct, but I didn’t argue. I was tempted to take that short ride without a ticket, but I didn’t. Good thing, too. Shortly after we left Differdange, the conductor went around looking at our tickets. So I had to show my 4€ all day pass, but I never had to show the ticket I bought in Luxembourg Gare to get to France.

As was the case with Trier, there’s no sign along the tracks indicating that you’re now in France.  I had hoped to go to the botanical gardens but I never could get the online maps to match reality. I never saw a sign for it, either. The city has very cool but very hard to read signs that are like reverse stencils. I did make it to Saint-Etienne cathedral and the Marché Couvert that surrounds it. The cathedral is one of the tallest in Europe, so it was difficult to get far enough away from the cathedral to get it all in:

As soon as I saw it, I was reminded of David Macaulay’s Cathedral: The Story of Its Construction, a book I had read as a boy. One of the other MUDEC faculty members is an architect and he reminded me that Macaulay’s book is about a fictitious cathedral and not this one.

The market is around the cathedral, as well as in its own building. I realized shortly after looking around that my French sorely lacked two important elements: numbers and fractions. This limited me to items that either I wanted an entire kilo of (like apples) or that were sold by the piece. I did find one vendor who had customers choose their own produce, which was helpful to me.

Among other items, I bought these great looking (and fortunately, great tasting), fraises:

On my way back to the train station, I saw the Temple Neuf.

Again, I’m going to blame the crookedness on needing to back up to get the entire building in.

Across the street from the train station is this Metropole Hotel:

The name of the first stop on the way back to Luxembourg struck me as funny:

When I returned to Differdange, I noticed for the first time a building that looks abandoned. I’ve passed it at least twice a day since I’ve been here. I don’t know how I missed it.

And so ends a very long day.

Today was not particularly exciting. I spent the morning teaching, and the afternoon and evening cleaning, eating, and preparing for my trip to Metz tomorrow. I learned from my trip to Trier not to expect the city to be as well signed as Luxembourg City is, at least as far as finding the train station goes. As I was preparing, I noticed that Google maps think that the French suddenly lost all creativity and named every road with the same name (you’ll need to click on the image):

Bing maps does a better job (I assume):

The last place to visit on my itinerary is the Marché Couvert de Metz  (The Covered Market of Metz), which reminds me of Findlay Market in Cincinnati. The trip takes nearly an hour and half. The market opens at 7h and stays open until 19h but every thing I’ve read recommends getting there before 13h. So…I suspect that a lot of coffee and a nap will also be on tomorrow’s agenda.

I decided to go to Trier, Germany today. It’s about an hour away by train. When I got there, I could feel the linguistic gears in my head grinding as I tried to switch from French to German. I was pleasantly surprised that I could communicate rather well considering that my knowledge of German was limited to reading.

Without knowing where I was going, I found the Porta Nigra:

From there, I wanted to find Marx’s birth house. It wasn’t that easy, partly because there are not many signs directing you to it, and partly because ironically enough, Trier is now a giant open air mall. Fittingly, even the Marx Haus sells trinkets, including this must have:

Notice how the price plaque (aka capitalism) has risen above Marx, who is doing his best Napoleon impersonation. As you might imagine, there are many stores that trade on the Marx name. What was totally unexpected, by me at any rate, was the number of men who took Marx’s hairdo as their model coiffure. You’d think there was a Marx look-alike contest going on.

I saw this shop and assumed that it was either some kind of philosophy shop going out of business or the cosmetics company of the same name going in:

I was wrong on both counts. It’s a gadget kind of store. I’m not really sure how to describe it. Take a look for your self.

And now for the obligatory Arizona photo:

I’ll conclude with another Domino photograph, albeit a bit more ominous than the previous ones. From a distance, it looks innocent enough:

But then you get close enough to read the motto above the clock:

I’ll leave you with that thought while I go prepare for my classes tomorrow.

I went down to Luxembourg City (hmm, that’s almost how the Republic and Thus Spoke Zarathustra begin) in the hopes of getting a data SIM card. Alas, the prices I saw on the internet are for established customers who commit to a year. I’ll have to keep looking.

I also went to the hypermarket Auchan. To say that it anchors the eponymous mall doesn’t do justice to just how big it is. The ground level floor has electronics, clothes, more school supplies than I knew existed, and so on. The upper floor has food; the two floors are connected by escalators. At least in this mall, the escalators are flat like conveyor belts rather than having steps as they do in the States, which allows carts to easily change floors.

The three most frequent complaints I heard online were that Auchan is expensive, has poor produce in the store, and has produce that doesn’t last very long at home. One reviewer claimed that produce goes bad on the way home. That wasn’t my experience, but I did just get home.

The quality of the produce in the store seemed just fine to me. Everything looked great and the selection was greater than in other stores. Maybe Auchan upped their game. There is a small produce section by the coffee, and that produce does not look too great (but not bad either). I suppose it’s possible that some reviewers missed the main produce section.

I don’t have much data about prices. In fact, I have only two data points. On the one hand, they have the Nespresso Inissia for 10€ below MSRP. On the other hand, my beloved bitter lemon soda was 2.70€, substantially more than the 1.85€ I pay at Delhaize.

They do have Domino coffee:

But the real reason to shop at Auchan is this:

Yes! Colored toilet paper! How great is that?!