Last week, some travel restrictions were lifted. Being on a two-week course for work in the west of Germany, I was perfectly positioned to launch into the newly opened (for military personnel) Benelux countries or France. Seeing the opportunity to visit a country I probably never otherwise would and in light of my golf game showing no improvement in spite of recent, rather fervent efforts, I made an Airbnb reservation and set Google Maps for Luxembourg City.
I was finished with work very early on Friday, arriving back to my hotel room around 2pm. Before I packed, though, I went for a quick run and upper body workout to allow myself to eat freely this weekend without too many feelings of guilt. Doing something physically active either immediately prior to or during a short trip is absolutely essential to my sanity and earns me a few extra carbs or a drink or two. I showered, threw everything necessary for a weekend into my Filson backpack, and scooted off in the Audi, my trusty 2001 A3 that I have driven mostly reliably for the past two years. Following an unfortunate trend in cars I own, this Audi dropped its exhaust in a road in the middle of Chemnitz about two months after I bought it, forcing me to drive loud for the ensuing months before getting it fixed. That’s another story altogether.
(a quick aside-for me, “everything necessary for a weekend” includes my laptop, Skyroam, various chargers, enough reading material for a month [including Crime and Punishment, my Kindle, and my most recent copy of The Economist], running shoes, and a journal. better to be prepared than caught at a cafe with a limited array of leisure activities, right??)
Traveling west for a little under two hours brought me to where I am now, Luxembourg City. This is certainly the smallest capital city I have seen-I am staying in what should be considered a suburb but is only a ten minute walk from the “bustling” downtown. Luxembourg is quite interesting, a country I know almost nothing about. More research is certainly due, but I am overjoyed to be back in a country where I can make attempts at practicing my French. In tourist centers like the middle of the city, it is a lost cause-I am addressed almost instantly in English. However, I was able to check into my Airbnb entirely in French with a lot of patience and understanding from the kind old lady who showed me the apartment. There are a few phrases I can speak with confidence and a terrible accent that seem sufficient enough to convince native speakers I know the language at least enough to be able to understand them. Combined with a certain earnestness I believe they see in my eyes, a true and pure desire to communicate, and occasionally they’ll consent to stumble along in French with me.
In any other context, I think this earnestness would be obnoxious. In all honesty, part of why I believe staying in shape and taking care of yourself is important is so that people will take you seriously in contexts such as this. When they are forming their initial impression of you and language is not doing you any favors, it is more important than ever your credibility be established through other means so they do not give up on you within the first ten seconds.
All checked in and settled, I went out in search of food and to form my first impressions of the city. This is around 7pm on a Friday in the time of COVID in a foreign city, I was unsure as to who would be out and about and how strict the rules would be. I found a decent amount of people, mostly young, surprisingly young, like high school age, going about your standard Friday night activities. The restaurants were mercifully almost all open and rules relatively lax (masks inside until you sit down, social distancing, pretty much it), finding an open table outside was easy, and I ate some delicious steak hache and drank the local beer (A L’Amitie!).
As with anywhere I travel, the question foremost on my mind is Why is this here, followed closely by What do these People do? After some very cursory research, it seems that Luxembourg has always (since before America, at least) been a strategic stronghold at the intersection of several Northern European Plain cultures, protected by its geography and fortifications. I also know that Amazon EU is headquartered here along with some other European institutions such as the Court of Justice of the European Union. It seems as though Luxembourg lured Amazon here with a since-declared-illegal tax advantage, but surely there are some other business-friendly schemes employed by such a small nation to keep those cash machines brrrrring. Not sure why international institutions like it here so much, probably has something to do with the strictly European intersectionality of the place, but nothing so far has changed my uneducated impression of Luxembourg as a wealthy little nation-state with a heavy governance aspect to its existence.
Let’s look at architecture. It reminds me, blissfully, of France, the European country in which I truly belong as opposed to Germany, but not entirely. The buildings seem old, but not that old, implying some postwar reconstruction, although history is written in such a boring manner as to preclude me from even trying to read up on it while on a mini vacation. The “suburb” where I am staying, BelAir, has many houses built in the French style, but which remind me a lot of brownstones in New York, two story single family homes with big windows overlooking the streets. I would love to be able to look inside one of these homes, for I am certain that native Luxemburgers (no clue if that is correct) are rather well off, but that is not possible for the time being.
The Amazon campus, which I visited this morning, was very nice, if rather small. Leading up to it was a series of converted traditional houses, now restaurants and “microbreweries” very much in the American style. It is as if a Texas street was fed through Google Translate, from American English to Luxembourgish (that actually is what one language here is called, I looked it up). I love the idea of Amazon shelling out contracts to various restaurateurs to move here and cater to their 9-to-5 crowd. In any case, that is where I will be going for dinner tonight to see if the Amazon crowd goes out on Saturdays (probably would have been better to go last night) and maybe get some networking in while I’m here.
Earlier today, I went to the Grand Duke Jean Museum of Modern Art. Skillfully integrated with the Vauban fortress upon whose foundation it stands, the beautifully designed building alone was worth seeing for the price of admission, five euro. After paying, you enter a massive atrium, the ceiling and upper walls of which are completely glass. It reminded me of modern structures in Oslo, where you felt classy and wealthy just by being privileged enough to be in such a space, which of course you are. I went downstairs to my first exhibit, Christian Marclay’s Video Quartet (2002). It is a 17-minute mash-up of four projected screens simultaneously playing scenes from old Hollywood movies, centered on music. Before walking in, I thought about how it would be terrible to be a docent working that floor of the museum for the terrible cacophony constantly emanating from this auditorium. After walking in about 4 minutes into the video and standing, transfixed, staring at the screens before me until it ended, I completely understood why this was something of quality that deserved its position. For starters, I cannot imagine poring through all that old footage to just find these clips, especially before having access to today’s internet. Then, to be able to synthesize four screens into loose, fractured harmony, one that shows and tells a story…I understand why artists are commissioned to do their work.
What struck me most at the end was the sense that music connects people to a vibration that runs through everything that is and how every culture connects with it in their own way, which I do not believe to be one of the main points of the piece. Throughout, though, I had hundreds of thoughts, impressions, and insights running through my head that would have been completely unavailable had I been experiencing this art in any other way. That auditorium with its size and volume level were essential to my understanding of the piece. It was unsettling and insightful. It was masterful.
The rest of the art was no less fascinating. Throughout the average day, we place an immense amount of implicit trust in semi-visible institutions to put in front of us things that are of quality. From TV stations selecting programming to newspapers filtering stories (problematic, I learned after reading Manufacturing Consent) to the food on our plates, pretty much everything we are unable to go out and obtain ourselves we are trusting somebody else to put together an at least decent version of for us. This trust is more explicit than usual in a museum, and I was not disappointed in the job done here. A friend once told me that you needed to look at a painting, really study it, for at least three minutes before you could so much as be able to pretend to be able to see it. I could easily get lost in a modern art museum and spend an entire day there. Once you approach it with the idea that it is entirely deliberate, you will easily get sucked in. Which I almost did. But I tore myself away at the entrance of a large exhibit showcasing a miniature airport constructed from “everyday materials” and featuring newspaper clippings posted throughout, for staring at art was not all that I came here to do.
I walked back to the city center, had lunch, and walked to my current cafe, where I have been comfortably typing for quite some time now. I have missed being able to sit in a cafe or on a patio and just observe those who pass me by. There is nothing I can do that will create an equivalent amount of complexity as these lives passing me by.
