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Published: April 17th 2006
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The Scouts
The train was full of these guys. Intro
There wasn’t much going on this weekend so Daniel, Christina, Laura, and I decided to take a trip to Luxembourg. We had a social event on Friday night so we opted to meet at Gent St. Pieter’s on Saturday morning at 8:30 AM. The meeting time was a bit early, but we all made it. We caught the train out of Gent just before 9:00 and were looking forward to a nice, peaceful ride across Belgium. Initially we got what we wanted, at least for the first half hour.
Scouts Everywhere
Apparently this weekend was “the” weekend for the Scouts to go to the Ardennes, because as soon as we hit Brussels, our nearly empty train car became packed with about a thousand highly energized Scouts. I should digress a little and describe Belgian Scouts. They are similar to the Boy Scouts from the U.S. They go camping, hiking, they wear woodsy clothes and scarves, all the good scout type stuff. The major differences being that
* The Belgian Scouts are co-ed (although in this case there were only boys on our train).
* There are no separate age groups. A group of Scouts can include boys
from ages 8-10, all the way up to the mid to early twenties.
* Probably the most major difference is that the Belgian Scouts don’t appear to have any direct adult supervision.
So imagine, it’s early, most of us have a hangover, we were planning on reading and sleeping for the three hour trip through Wallonia and into Luxembourg, when suddenly we are surrounded by a pack of frenzied kids and teenagers, with a few twenty-somethings thrown in for good measure. Say goodbye to our peaceful ride to the Lux. I make it sound bad, but it was actually kind of fun. One of their behemoth backpacks fell out of the overhead rack and almost crushed a girl who had been cornered by a bunch of Scouts in the 8-12 age range (I was the one who ended up cramming the pack back in the rack, without a snack or a tack, put my name on a plaque, I almost broke my back…sorry). Also, as they were boarding, one of them whacked a French guy in the face with his sleeping pad. I thought it was funny, the French guy did not. Fortunately Daniel and I ended up
sitting with a very nice couple who were also travelling to the Ardennes, and I think Laura and Christina got to sit with normal people too. All in all it was an interesting ride to Luxembourg. Daniel and I had a very pleasant conversation with the couple I mentioned earlier. The guy was French, the girl was from Sweden, and they were both living in Holland. They gave us a lot of suggestions for places to visit in Holland, other than Amsterdam and Rotterdam.
The Hostel
We arrived in Luxembourg at around noon or maybe a little after. We took the bus to our hostel and stashed our stuff so we could immediately start some touring. In Luxembourg they speak both French and German, and not as many people are as comfortable with English as they are in Flanders, but we managed (I love Belgium, now if we could just do something about the weather…). Our hostel was cheap, new, clean, and large. We got a 4 person room all to ourselves, which is preferable to the dorm option
Luxembourg City
The first thing we did after leaving the hostel was take a tour of the casements, which
are 23 km of underground tunnels and chambers built in the 17th century. Next we walked along the edge of the beautiful Petrusse Valley, and then we turned towards the city center. We walked along the streets and shops, buying a few postcards and taking note of decent restaurants. We found the tourist information center and got some info on good places to eat. I also got my city map destroyed by the very enthusiastic young lady working behind the counter. Apparently the map I possessed did not show the correct location of the tourist info center. This obviously required that my map be snatched from my hands, violently wadded up and thrown in the garbage. I was initially frightened by the woman’s display of strength, but she quickly gave me a new, correct map and turned out to be a gentle creature after all.
The weather on this day could be described as unpredictable at best. Sunny skies interrupted by periods of rain and sleet made for a somewhat sporadic tour of the city. After we left the tourist info center we continued walking and ended up facing a large, elaborate building. Without really knowing what it was,
we took photos and meandered around the small park that was across from it. That’s when the rain came, then harder rain, then sleet. We had no choice but to make a dash for the building that we had been admiring, hoping that it wasn’t some sort of political building with restricted access. It turned out that it was a retirement home, but not just any retirement home - it was the one that General George S. Patton Jr. used as his temporary headquarters during WWII. Neat place to wait out a rain storm, no? Once the rain eased up a bit we headed back for the center of the city, stopping at a little pub to drink coffee while we waited for the rain to stop completely, which it eventually did. Then it was on to the Grand Ducal Palace. The Palace was impressive, as palaces go, but the most interesting thing about it was that it was right in the middle of the city. We were able to walk all around it and get a good view. After that we went to have a very nice dinner, but I’ll talk about that in another blog.
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Teresa the Great
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HELLO BB!
SSSSOOOO very nice to see you again! Still missing you here in Arkansas - have I told you that lately? Take care...send us some horse to throw on the grill - yum, yum...POOORRRR TRIGGER! - TT