The Little Country that Could

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I don't even know how to say hello in Luxembourgerish so I'm not going to try,

I should have probably added some of this on the last one but we did some stuff in Strasbourg in the morning before we left for Luxembourg.

We visited the Council of Europe, which is an independent body from the EU and still has some role, I don't know how to explain it really because it's ridiculously complicated and no one wants to hear me drone on and on about the inner workings and compositions of EU institutions and their competencies. With it's extravagant wood interior and green furnishings (think lime green and hunter green had a kid), it looked like it lurched right out of the 1970s! The tour of the hemi-cycle was cool as well, but the building was excessively hard to navigate. However, the twists and turns in the hallways did make for an interesting game of Marco Polo. After the Council, we walked to the European Court of Human Rights, which looks a little like the space ship that ET left earth on. The interior was pretty cool, and they let us lose in one of the courtrooms, which probably wasn't the best of ideas as we almost interrupted a trial that was in progress. We found the empty courtroom, and then we proceeded to all be judges and sit on the panel that they would sit on during a trial. I don't really think we were supposed to do that but our building guide had abandoned us so really, if anything had happened, it would have been their fault.

Afterwards, we hopped on the bus that would whisk us away to Luxembourg. The ride was quite scenic as we passed through the Vosges mountains, and got to see a bridge over the highway that animals passed over rather than attempting to cross the highway with the cars. Alsace in general was quite attractive, and it was enjoyable looking at all the small villages and fields strewn across the rolling hills on either side of the highway. Eventually, the skies turned grey and the scenery began to lose its appeal so we decided the best option to maintain a certain level of entertainment was to sing. The term "sing" being used loosely; it could be exchanged for "howl". For whatever reason, the women chose to refrain while a few of the guys (me included, of course) belted out such stunners as "Under Pressure", "Wonderwall" and "Living on a Prayer". We did not receive any applause though. None whatsoever in fact. It's almost like people didn't appreciate our howl... I mean singing.

We arrived in Luxembourg late, but some people were determined to see the city so we ran and caught one of the public buses and headed into the city. It is small, but quite pretty, especially when some of the buildings were lit up. I had already been to the city so I played tour guide for Angelita, Viktoria, Ally, Christina and Alex. I took them past the city square, the church and then to the viewpoint to see the southern part of town. Even though I had been there before, it was still impressive to see the strategic importance of the city from standing astride the the edge precipous surrounding the city. We then wandered past the presidential palace, which had an oddly small door for some reason, and past the Moorish ducal palace before settling down for dinner at a nice restaurant on the main square. They restaurant was belting techno the whole time, which made it hard not to bounce a little during the meal. Alex and I had Luxembourgers (because we had too), and they were absolutely fantastic. We then had some ice cream and then went to the bus stop to wait fof the bus (fittingly). We ran into some Dutch tourists there, who were as hopelessly confused as we were and we joined them in running from stop to stop in order to catch the correct but. We finally caught the bus and made it back to the hotel.

The next morning we arrived at the European Court of Justice (ECJ) where we got to attend a hearing of a trial between Dr. Gasmeyer, an Austrian doctor, and the Austrian Government. She took them to court because she felt that she was entitled to have overtime pay, despite not working overtime after she had her child. The court grilled her lawyer quite a bit, and I believe that she will lose her case. It was really cool to sit in on a trial and listen to the arguments of both parties, especially since the stage was so grand. After the court we headed over to Eurostat. Stats on a sunny and hot afternoon do not make for a fun outing. We grabbed some food before madly rushing back to the bus and heading off to Brussels.

Bye for now,
Peter

Things I learned in Luxembourg:
-I am actually capable of turning down ice cream, seriously.
-Luxemburgers are great (the food, I haven't actually met any of the people.
-Doorways in Luxembourg are not Peter sized.

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