Nationalfeierdag in the Capital City of Luxembourg

    So, on Saturday I woke up around 7 in the morning to make it to the train station. I was under the impression that I had to register at the station for my trip, which I would have had to do no later than 30 minutes before the train departed from what I had understood. But, I didn't have to register apparently, so I ended up getting to the station much earlier than I needed to. I was fine with that though. I was also under the impression, though, that trains in Western Europe would be on time. Apparently that's not so either. The train to Brussels pulled into station at 9:37 when it was supposed to leave the station at 9:30, so I was kind of nervous I had somehow missed it. Fortunately that wasn't so and the train was only seven minutes behind time. On the train, I ended up sitting in 1st class for awhile. It was a rather cool train car. It reminded me a lot of the train from the Harry Potter movies that took Harry to Hogwarts. It was an old-styled car with wooden frames and all and personal sections for each group. I got kicked out of the section though by the guy checking the tickets. So I went to the equally cool, more modern double-decker car and sat up on the second deck. I had really good views of the countryside from the seat I had. The ride from Brussels to Luxembourg was about three and a half hours, so I ended up sleeping part of the way. When I got to Luxembourg, the rather cheap hotel I had reserved a room in was located directly across the street from the station. That was convenient, but it was a somewhat long walk to the city center. Sunday was Luxembourg's national holdiday and the city was going to have a lot of celebrations on Saturday too. Fortunately I had gotten to the city before any of the official events for the national holiday had started, so I got to see the city some while they were still setting up for the city. I liked the city a lot. I has a quaint, rather youthful and lively feel to it. The first official event to start the celebrations was the changing of the guard at the Grand Ducal Palace. Luxembourg happens to be the sole remaining Grand Duchy in the world, so that's cool. And, the current Grand Duke of Luxembourg is the nephew of the current King of Belgium, so that's also cool. The changing of the guards was at 4 in the afternoon and I made sure to get there early to get a good spot. I actually didn't get to see the entire ceremony, because military's marching band blocked most of my view when they marched in. I found that to be rather ironic. But it was cool there to see it happen. After that, the next official event wasn't actually until 10 that night with the parade through the town. So I had a bout 5 and a half hours of exploring the city. The part of the city I was at is divided between two main districts, the Central District and the Gare (train station in French) district, which are separated by a gigantic ravine. The Central District is where the old historical city center and the Grand Ducal Palace are. The hotel was in the Gare District. During that 5 and a half hours, I stayed mostly in the Central District. After awhile, after I saw most of the stuff in the immediate area that wasn't too much of a hike to go see, I went back to the Grand Ducal Palace and hung out there for about 2 hours until the parade. Apparently, spending hours in front of the Grand Ducal Palace waiting to see the Grand Duke and Duchess is a popular thing to do, because by no means was I the only person doing that. It was actually kind of cool to see the crowd that was waiting out front to see how the Palace is run. I got to see the Grand Duke and Duchess being escorted into the Palace, which was cool because of all the pomp and circumstance, yet quite apparent lack of visible security, of it all.  Later in the evening, before the parade, the Grand Duke and Duchess were to make a public appearance walking from the palace to the large square next to the palace where the parade was to end. No one new when they were to appear, so it kinda became a game for the crowd that was waiting for them. During the hour before they appeared, the police, military, and security forces were constantly coming and going from the palace, so each time the main door to the palace would open, everybody would get their hopes up that it would be the Grand Duke and Duchess. When they finally appeared, it was really cool and a surprisingly gratifying experience. I was among the first row of people along the security lines, and the Grand Duke and Duchess actually came within about 5 feet of me. I waved to the guy and he looked at me, smiled, and waved back. I wanted to say something, but there was a rather intimidating member of the military standing right next to me with a rather impressive rifle, too, so I didn't want to do anything alarming. Once the Luxembourgish Royal Family were seated for the parade, the parade started. I think the parade took longer than it was supposed to last, because it was supposed to end at 11:30 but didn't end until after midnight. That also meant that the fireworks show had to be delayed until after midnight, too, because the fireworks show was supposed to be the last of the main events to happen on Saturday. I tried to get a good spot for the fireworks, but apparently Luxembourg has no sense of crowd management, so I found myself in more than one really awkward situations while trying to maneuver through the crowd to find a spot. I did eventually find a good spot and was able to see most of the fireworks, which were quite impressive. After the fireworks, I made my way back to the hotel for the night. On Sunday morning, I went back into the city center to watch the shooting of the 101 cannons. That was a really amazing event too. There also was another parade that started at 12, but I had to miss it because I had to go back to the hotel, check out, and get to the train station. All in all, I really enjoyed Luxembourg and definitely want to go back. On the train back to Lille, I met this cool Australian girl and we talked for awhile while we were on the train. She had just graduated from college and her parents were letting her independently travel. She had already been travelling through Africa and Europe for the past 3 months by the time we met and was not going back home to Australia until Christmas. It was fun talking to her about our experiences travelling and telling each other what our homes were like. It was interesting because neither one of us knew it was going to be Luxembourg's national holiday when we decided we wanted to go to the country, so we entertained ourselves with the stories of what we did while celebrating Luxembourg's national holiday while in Luxembourg. It's fun being a traveler meeting other travelers on trains in Europe. Back in Lille, I bought some baguettes on the way back to the dorm. At the dorm, I worked on some homework and relaxed for a while. Today in French, we worked on stuff as usual and began to prepare for the final exams. We also had a discussion on science, medicine, and how the human life expectancy is predicted to increase. So that was an interesting conversation. We yet again did not have our afternoon elective class, so I went to study for the French exam. with one of the Memphis people that is in my French class. The program people put on a special French dinner thing where we had a wine and cheese tasting. I enjoyed that a lot because I like French food a lot. Afterwards, I went back to study for a little longer. And, that now brings us up to now. So that's been my weekend. I had a really great time in Luxembourg.

Some photos of Luxembourg:

A somewhat bad picture of the Grand Duke and Duchess, but a picture of them nonetheless. The Grand Duchess in the pink on the left and the Grand Duke in the suit on the right.