coffee breaks: trier and luxembourg: through war, history and food

During the first week of February, I decided to visit my friend who was also my co-worker at Barnes and Noble way back in the days. She lives in Luxembourg but her boyfriend lives in Germany (almost a 10 min car ride).

My adventure started on the 3 of February 2011. School had just recommenced for about a week, so it wasn't too busy. My train from Lyon Perrache station left at an ungodly time of 6:30am (by the way, my roundtrip from Lyon to Luxembourg was 112 euros). While I was in the waiting section to wait for my train to come, a contrôler, which is one of the train conductor struck up a conversation with me. He told me that I was very gifted in languages and what not, and actually moved me to first class sitting. Total awesomeness. When the train came, he said, “Come with me, I’ll take you to first class.” At first I thought, wait, I have a second class ticket. But the conductor wrote on my ticket, authorizing for first class. So I thought, sweet, first class.

I ended up sleeping most of the time, but the guy who sat across from me wanted to talk to me. All the time, which I at first didn't mind because it was good practice. He told me he’s 58 years old, and that he likes to travel. And then he told me he wanted to take me out to a Chinese restaurant…. Hmmm. After that, I just told him I wanted to sleep. Thank goodness he got off at the Nancy station.

I transferred at the Metz station. The train conductor was kind enough to direct me to my next train so I won't be late for it. Metz is actually super close to Luxembourg, so this leg of journey only took about 45 mins. The entire trip from Lyon to Luxembourg took about 6 hours. Finally I saw Casandra! It was funny, because I still can't believe I was seeing her in Europe, but I was super excited :). The weather in Luxembourg was surprisingly not that cold in February, but maybe because I was just lucky. I felt quite warm in a pair of flats and something of a trench coat. Casandra took me to downtown Luxembourg where I was able to enjoy the downtown scenery as well as sitting in a cafe, drinking tea and eating a berliner.

So the Luxembourg people have their own language, I suppose called Luxembourgish, which I'm guessing is a combination of French and German, or maybe Dutch. So when you walk into any store, in France you'd just say "Bonjour," but in Luxembourg, you say "Moyen!" (I know it's probably spelled wrong, but that's how you'd pronounce it in French.)

After drinking tea at the fancy tea place which I don't remember the name for, we headed to the bus station to get to her boyfriend's parents' house on the outskirts of the city, about a 40 min bus ride. Unfortunately, I think after 6 hours of train ride and the 40 min windy bus ride made me nauseous. So when I got to the house, I passed out for an hour after taking a pill for the nausea. Later, Casandra and her boyfriend took me out to eat in Saasburg, Germany (which was only a few minutes from the Luxembourg border :D :D ) . I finally threw up a bit, but felt much better after. After 2 glasses of wine, I was definitely fine. Oh, did I mention I also had limoncello after that? Because it felt great and somehow I manage to climb stairs in old places among other things.

Finally, we drove to Trier, Germany to spend the weekend at her boyfriend's house. My first impression was that the apt came straight out of the Ikea catalogue. And here I was thinking oh my gosh, I want my future apt to be like that.

Saturday was spent wandering around in Trier. Casandra took me around the city, and downtown to check it out. Here's part of downtown. Totally love the structure of the houses and the sense of Bavaria there. Or at least to me, it felt that way.

Porta Nigra, the huge structure stands at the entrance of downtown, and is supposedly one of the oldest Roman gates in the Alps. The original Roman name is no longer known and local people just called it Porta. Nigra comes from the color of the stones. It was once the entrance into the city of Trier.

I don't remember how much it cost to go inside. Probably 5 euros? I just remember it wasn't that expensive. I found the Porta to be in remarkable condition despite the weather, pollution and from the wars. And a view from the top of Porta Nigra:

I also visited one of the ruins of the Roman bath houses:

There’s also a cathedral in Trier, that dates back as early as 250 AD. There’s a list of all the bishops who worked for the church and the earliest bishop started in 250 AD. Now, this church also claims to have Jesus’ robe that he wore. The exhibition was closed when I went but if you go another time, you can see the robe. In the courtyard of the church, there are tombstones of some of the bishops. Trier was mostly destroyed during World War II. The church was also bombed and half of it was destroyed and rebuilt after the war. I really like the architecture of the church and the design, although it was kind of creepy inside.

Inside, the Cloister

Oh and I found Eurovision! Last year, the winner was from Germany, Lena (Although this year 2012, the winner who will be hosting it is Azerbaijan). I’m not a fan, and I didn’t really like her song, but I enjoy watching Eurovision.

Sunday, we went back to Luxembourg, and walked around the city walls which were absolutely magnificent, not to mention old. The entire trip was very enjoyable, and it was nice to catch up after 2.5 years.