September 17, 2019

Hello everyone!  Or in Luxembourgish, Moien!  This last week has been so amazingly busy that I forgot to post on Sunday.  There was a lot of sightseeing last week, and this week, I started my job.  I have lots of pictures and stories to share, so I will break it down by day what we did.

Tuesday-
I arrived!  I made it to all of my flights and all of my luggage arrived with me.  The family met me at the airport with this amazing sign.

They also baked me a cake:)  They felt right.  The kids like me (I gave them presents, so for now, at least:), and the parents too, I think.  I accidentally introduced them to Cards Against Humanity (the parents not the kids), and they loved it!  

Anyway, we drove home and pointed out important parts of the city.  We walked around the Bertrange commune and had dinner in a French restaurant.  The mom (M) had to translate the menu, and I got a mushroom and black olive pizza.  Fun fact, the olives come whole, not sliced!  While walking through the neighborhoods, I realized every house is very, very different than the houses around it.  It was the exact opposite of a suburb.  The styles were all different and it was so cool to look at.  When I was in the US, I was used to looking at houses and appreciating their differences.  After getting here, however, I can see that the houses in Billings are all the same, or made up of the same features.  They have the angled roof and square corners, with the same size door and windows on the front.  In Luxembourg, who knows what the roof will look like?  None of the rooms are square or follow a floor plan I am familiar with.  There is one thing in common, however.  All the garages are part of the house.  I haven't seen one detached garage.  I think of the houses like the streets.  In the US, towns are built on a grid pattern, with easy-to-distinguish blocks.  In Luxembourg, the streets are curvy and don't rely on blocks.  They even plant trees and flowers IN THE ROAD so that a two lane road becomes a one lane road for a couple meters.  This is to stop speeding in the town.  There are little pathways between houses because otherwise you would have to walk pretty far before getting to the next street if you were following the roads.  Whimsical is the way I would describe it.  I don't think I took any pictures of the neighborhood, but I will for next week.  Anyway, I love it all!  

Wednesday-

I became an official resident of Bertrange!  After completing that paperwork, we went in to the city to finish the next part of my residence permit process and do some more sightseeing.  While on our way to our first errand, I almost ran into the prime minister, literally!  Fortunately, I caught myself before I fell into him, and afterwards, M told me who it was.  I heard Luxembourg was like a small town, but I didn't think it was run-into-the-leader-of-the-country small.   

                                                

From there, the first stop was the SNJ, which is the National Youth Service.  I have a meeting in October with other au pairs, so that'll be fun!  We then went to a clinic to get me tested for tuberculosis (I don't have it by the way).  After the legal stuff, we started our sightseeing.  We walked around the train station area, then looked over the valley.  It is absolutely gorgeous.  The country was founded in 963, and the city was built around a Roman fort, the walls of which are still visible today.  Some buildings can be dated back to the 1300s.  There is also the modern skyscrapers in the financial and judiciary areas as well, making for quite the range of architecture and history in this city and country.  

While walking around the city center, we had a mid afternoon snack of cake and coffee at a cafe/chocolate shop.  Outside the building, there were large poles with faces carved in the top.  Wherever you moved, the eyes in each pole followed you.  Here is the first one I noticed: 

 Next stop was the library.  I have a library card now, which makes me feel like more of an official resident than my residence permit.  Finally, we went to the last night of the fun fair that was taking place nearby.  I went on two rides, the second a huge Ferris wheel, so I got some great pictures of the city. 

 Because it was the last night, everyone was there.  I am usually very anxious in large crowds of people, but for whatever reason I was totally fine.  Maybe it was the exhaustion from jet lag and seeing so many things that day, but I think it was because no one was speaking English.  I could tune them all out because I knew they weren't talking to me.  It was quite the experience.  In the pictures, you can just how many people were there, but I was completely fine AND enjoying myself.
Thursday-
Today, I had a doctor appointment for immigration.  I think it was the quickest appointment I'd ever been in.  What was weird was when I checked in, I had to state my full name, my Luxembourgish social security number, my height, and my weight.  I am used to keeping most of those things completely private and to have to give this information to a complete stranger in front of other complete strangers was a new experience.  I have since learned that no one keeps their SSN secret like they do in the US.  Weird.  Other than that, it was a pretty quiet day.
Friday-
We went to Maastricht, Netherlands.  It was a gorgeous city, two hours away from where I'm living.  We drove through Belgium to get there, so I have now been to six countries!  This city was also once a fort, and parts of the wall can still be seen.  I took lots of pictures, but I won't spam you with all of them, just a few.  We walked through a park that follows the old walls.

                                      

Then, we walked through the center of the city, which was a maze of cafes, stores, and ice cream shops.  We ate lunch on terrace of a tapas restaurant, where we shared lots of food from a variety of different countries.  The food was delicious but also very strong, and we all smelled like it the rest of the day.  While in the same area, we walked through an old bread mill that still makes bread for the attached cafe.  It is run by water, and I have pictures of both the outside and the inside.  After tapas, we had a waffle dessert.  The kids and I chose to have our waffles covered in chocolate, which tastes as good as that sounds!

 

After some shopping, we went back to where we had parked.  We went through a street market that had set up in some of the streets.  The vendors sold food, produce, handmade items, and bolts of fabric.  The fabric was the main event, it seemed, with tables and tables of it.

Saturday-
I'm stopping with Sunday, don't worry!  The kids had some of their cousins over for the day, so we went in to the city with them.  We saw some more of the touristy sights before eating lunch at a burger restaurant called Snooze.  The burgers were huge!  Like, eat with a fork and knife, huge.  There was even a burger called "The Chuck Norris Burger" and it had four times the amount of stuff- patty, cheese, bacon, everything.  They had a wild berry cider, which is my absolute favorite.  There is a glass elevator that looked over the valley, and we took it down to see the houses below.

Sunday-
I got to see a castle!  If you recall from one of my earlier posts (or all of them, I can't remember), I said I was obsessed with castles.  We took a trip up to the northeastern part of the country, to the town and castle of Viandon.  It was AMAZING.  I love castles so much.  Not only did we get to look at the outside, we got to go inside and look around too!!  Even writing about it right now, I'm trying not to tear up thinking about it.  I took A LOT of pictures, so scroll to the bottom if you're a weirdo who doesn't like to look at endless pictures of the same castle.  Also, I haven't figured out how to put the photos on the post in a nice way, so bear with the weird arrangement.

Well, that was my first week in Luxembourg.  I will for sure post this Sunday on this week, though it was pretty quiet compared to this week.  I will talk more about my job as an au pair and what specifically I do with the family.  For now,  Äddi!