Blogs from Luxembourg, Europe - page 22

Arrived in Brussels to a regional airport that was about an hour away from the city centre. Luckily they had a bus that ran to the city every hour. I hopped on it and made it to the centre at about 5pm. The first mission for me was to find a place to stay since i'd arrived without booking a room. Still as organised as ever. I visited the tourist office which i knew booked rooms for free, and they found a hostel for me quite easily. I found it and as luck would have it, it had its own bar. I went out for dinner and then headed for the bar. I met an American guy who was in the same room as me, so we had a few beers between us and stumbled to ... 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

Well, here we go - the High season is upon us and the madness has already begun. The site is set to go from a pretty meagre 250 people upto around 3000 within a week - that means a 1200% increase in workload for us! Pass op, mijne damen en heeren - de Nederlanders komen! I manage a bar on the campsite and, in general, the customers are pretty well behaved, save for the odd drunken scuffle or general rowdiness. That is normally the preserve of high season when we have DJs from 'the city' here and it all gets a bit mad - but two nights ago it began already when a young group (two of whom I recognised as having been thrown out of the bar by force by myself and 2 of the ... read more

Oioi! I ventured into town today with my mate Erik who is over from Holland for two days. His mother agreed to drive me to the Russian embassy. This became a bit of a mission, as the embassy is actually an old country manor hidden away in a wooded area right on the edge of town. When we got there it was closed. A brief conversation with the embassy staff in a sort of franco-russian via the gate-phone informed me that the embassy opened for an hour every day - if they felt like it. So, my first experience of Russian beaurocracy! While shopping in the city for shoes and some new jeans, I managed to put down the envelope containing my passport, student papers and "priglashenye" - an invitation required to visit Russia that can't ... read more

First we found that our booking was only for two nights and not three. It actually worked out because we had to take a night train down to Barcelona. So, our half day was spent searching for food. And lo...we broke down and had Pizza Hut. It counts as an eat in restaraunt doesn´t it?!? There were already festivities on the stages set up all around the city. We caught some of the Luxembourg Philiharmonic Orchestra and a gospel choir in seperate parts of town. The next day was the big celebration/all night party. Amie was feeling a little under the weather so no excessive drinking for anybody that night. The fireworks put our Canada Day ones to shame. I couldn´t believe the amount of explosive that had to be on that bridge to carry on ... read more