Our first stop on our grand Luxembourgish tour was to be at ALDI, located quite conveniently right on the border. According to my GPS, the car park was actually Belgian territory while the store itself was in Luxembourg. And it showed, just over the border and already an entire section of the store stacked with cheap cigarettes and alcohol.
We stocked up on groceries, cooked some lunch and hit the road again.
Luxembourg left a great first impression – beautiful scenery and signposted bike paths everywhere. Until the rain hit. When it rains in Luxembourg, it pours.
On the bright side, that did make for some great photos.
A few hours later we’d almost made it to Diekirch, our planned destination for the night. Since we’d be camping out yet again, getting too close to the town wasn’t the best of ideas. We stayed a few kilometres away and set up camp.
The next morning, we headed down to Diekirch and stopped to have a quick look around. Nothing too special going on, but it’s a nice enough place. What really caught our attention was the language. With place names like Diekirch and Ingeldorf sitting aside Larochette, and street names like Rue Tschiderer, we weren’t too sure whether to go with Bonjour or Guten Morgen when entering a café. There’s of course also Luxembourgish, an entire story of its own. It definitely sounds Germanic with lots of French influence – if I had to compare it to something else, I’d probably go with Limburgs or some really corrupted form of Swiss German. Some of my favourite signs in (what I’ve at least assumed to be) Luxembourgish below.
We’d meanwhile sent out some emergency couch requests and received two ‘maybe’s’ from hosts in Luxembourg City for that same night, so things were looking good. We’d camped out for three nights in a row and were quite looking forward to a couch and a warm shower.
As we headed down to the southern part of Luxembourg, the terrain started to level out. We were able to follow a river most of the way from Diekirch to Luxembourg City, which made for a nice break from the hills of the previous few days. We stopped for another quick lunch break at LIDL, and then continued onwards to the city.
Our first Couchsurfing host had meanwhile confirmed that we’d have a place to stay for the night – on one condition. She was planning to go out to a Couchsurfing pub crawl that evening, and since we couldn’t stay at her place alone we’d have to join. Couch for pub crawl. Not too bad a deal, I’d say. And it wasn’t at all – our host, Daria, was great, as was the night out too. We had a really good time meeting some other Couchsurfers and locals while discovering some of the city’s few affordable bars (it’s actually possible to have a cheap night out in Luxembourg City – confirmed).
The next day we left Daria’s place and met up with Keith, who had agreed to host us for our second night in town. Little did he know what he’d be getting himself into, because before long that turned into an extended three-night stay. I’d needed some time to get plans sorted for the days to come and get this site up and running, and so thought it would be better to stay put for a while.
Keith was nice enough to agree to host me for a while longer, and besides the time spent getting everything sorted we managed to fit in a few walks round the city to discover its several districts.
The unplanned pit-stop in Luxembourg City unfortunately meant that I’d have to part ways with Jack a bit earlier than we’d wanted to. He was on a tighter schedule and had to be back in Maastricht by early August for work, so couldn’t really afford to spend more days off the bike. It was a decision we’d come to together, and in any case we’d have had to split up a few day later in Nancy if not in Luxembourg anyway.
The three-day break turned out to be a good idea. With a desk to work at and some stable internet access, I was able to set up my SPOT GPS tracker (you can see the results of that here), get SMS donations and a PayPal page up and running, and order a replacement set of panniers which would be shipped to my next host in Nancy. Meanwhile I’d heard that an old friend was back in town, and we met up one afternoon for a BBQ at his place.
The day to hit the road again finally came. There was still a whole lot left on my to-do list, but at least I was starting to work my way through it. There was still a whole lot of distance to cover, too, and I wanted to start working on that by upping the pace a bit and making it to Nancy by that same evening. I had just had three and a half days to recover, after all!
I had made it a point to get an early start, but with 150 km to cover (a good third of which was on muddy paths full of potholes) and non-stop rainfall, it proved quite challenging to make it to Nancy before sunset. Still, I’d at least made it over the border in good time, and by that noon my five days in Luxembourg had come to an end.
My final take on Luxembourg – nice place with not-so-nice prices. On the positive side, I loved the scenery especially in the north. Hilly with lots of quiet back roads, save the occasional BMW. Luxembourg City was also great. The city centre up on the hill’s beautiful in its own right, and then there’s also the Grund in the valley below and a few other districts such as Kirchberg.
It’s also sweet how everything was a scaled-down version of what you’d expect in other countries, from the national library and the House of Parliament, to the €6 day ticket covering public transportation in all of Luxembourg. Felt kind-of like home. The country’s also linguistically intriguing – locals seem to use French while doing their groceries, German at university, and Luxembourgish at home. Oh, and almost everyone speaks fluent English too. I’ve really only got one complaint, and that’d be about how damn expensive everything is. I was spared the worst of it by Couchsurfing and camping out, but even when it comes to groceries everything is at least double the price it would be back in The Netherlands. Where’s AH Basic when you need it?
Anyway, Luxembourg – it’s been great meeting you. France awaits for now, so till next time!
