Blogs from Vianden, Luxembourg, Europe - page 2

Wednesday 24.2.2010 day 134 The enchanted forest Luxembourg is Europe 3rd smallest country. We drove to the centre of the city of Luxembourg and then to Echternach were Mullerthal’s fairy tale enchanting forest is. We then drove to Vianden and saw it’s very impressive castle. We then did lots of shopping as taxes are very low in Luxembourg. Luxembourg is so small that while driving around it we acedntaly drove into Germany and then when we used our sat nav to go from Echternach to Vianden in Luxembourg it took us via Germany. There were lots of children everywhere and the houses all had big yards. When we when shopping there was lots of family size packs and there where children size shopping trolleys. It seems like due to the high standard of living here they ... read more

Moien, The weekend had finally arrived for me to visit southern Belgium. I had seen much of Flanders so far, but very little of Wallonia. That would all change as my friend Louis, someone who Gabrielle had put me in contact with before I left Vancouver, said he would drive me around southern Belgium I woke up early on Saturday (so what else is new), packed my stuff and hopped on the train at Schuman. There were a large amount of south-eastern Europeans on the train, I did not recognize the language at all but I thought that it might have been either Bulgarian or Macedonian, who thought it was a good idea to yell from one carriage to their friends in another carriage. This went on for about an hour until I arrived in Jambes, ... read more

From Heli’s place we drove back up towards Salzburg then turned left into Germany, unfortunately we did not fill up before crossing the border because petrol was 10c dearer here. Our route was to take us all the way along the A8 through Munich, past Stuttgart and through Karlsruhe along the southern part of Germany and into The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. The traffic on the autobahn was quite heavy and the number of trucks was incredible. Dobby cruised along at a steady 110 quite happily passing the trucks, and it was impossible for anyone to do more than around 130 in bursts due to the traffic anyway. It was worse going east as the slow lane for a large part of the time was bumper to bumper trucks crawling along at no more than 30, ... read more

Tired and homesick after the freak storm in Blois, with both of Zak's hands now suffering from Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, plus tennis-elbow, golf-elbow, and now even claw-hand and trigger-finger in the mornings, we had decided to head home as fast as we could. We drove from Blois through to Luxembourg, hoping to make it into Germany, through ever changing weather, rain-sunshine-rain-sunshine... We had picked up a hitchhiker, a grasshopper from Blois, and Zak named him KwaiChang Caine, after the TV series of the 70s called Kung Fu, which starred David Carradine as a character who was known as "grasshopper" as a child. We were literally meters away from Germany, when we arrived in Vianden late at night, driving through misty, foggy, icy roads through winding mountain passes. It seems all the drivers there were a**-holes acting ... read more

Our next stop in Luxembourg was Vianden, a short bus ride from Ettelbruck. Vianden’s claim to fame is a huge castle perched way up on a hill…something I had to see. Once we got to Vianden we didn’t have much trouble finding the castle since it was the most prominent feature in the town and was visible from just about anywhere, but we did make a few wrong turns before finding the correct road. At one point we sent Daniel into a bar to ask directions. He got directions, but they were all in German, and thus were useless to three Americans and a Spaniard. But the town was small, and we found our way. After a long uphill walk we finally made it to the castle. The climb wasn’t too bad, but the cobblestones and ... read more