CRF: Luxembourg

"CRF" is not a crime show you've never heard of, it stands for "Cutting Room Floor." Below are some of our favorite pics that never made the blog. We figured we'd reminisce a little while we're driving from Moldova to Italy (which should take about five days).
Luxemboug City is surprisingly beautiful - it's one of those places that should be better known. The cliffs surrounding the old town are incredible.
We spent a little while in the Moselle valley, one of the tiniest wine regions in Europe. The weather felt more like August than October, but harvest was in full swing.
Another shot of the Moselle valley, and the rolling, vine-covered hills. We camped down near the river below at a marina/campground.
This was the outdoor kitchen and bathroom at another campsite in the Mullerthal region. It was chilly there, and we became celebrities among the other campers because we were brave enough to sleep in a tent. The campground provided sliced bread every morning, and I remember the line of old men at the office waiting to pick up their loaves.
This is also in the Mullerthal region. Although the grass was still green, we were beginning to see frost in the mornings and the wildflowers were dying. Here, along a riverbank, a few blossoms survived. The houses in the background are actually across the water, in Germany.
This picture was taken on a sunny afternoon down in "the Grund" section of Luxembourg City.
We attended two festivals in Luxembourg - the huge, overwhelming Nutfest and the smaller, more intimate apple fest, pictured above.
Luxembourg is obsessed with cleanliness. There were plastic gloves provided at gas stations, so that you didn't have to touch the pumps. These dog-related bags were all over, even in tiny hamlets and on the outskirts of towns.
We stayed at a pretty hotel in Vianden, and never ate at the celebrated restaurant attached. The walls were crowded with awards and pictures - the kitchen had a long and illustrious history, but the dining room was always empty.

See all Luxembourg posts...

The Moselle Valley - Wine Country

We arrived in the Moselle Valley yesterday, with just enough daylight to pitch our tent at "Camport" a combination campsite and boat dock, then journey into town for some dinner. This morning, we woke up to a bright, sunny day, perfect for exploring one of the tiniest wine regions in Europe.
We crossed the road from our campsite and down a hill to find this single road into town. The man in the picture, who was walking his dog, wore a Yankees cap and was the only human we saw on our quick walk through the village. Then, up the hill we went to explore some vineyards.
I'm not sure if you can tell from the picture, but it was quite the incline getting up to this walkway. It was amazing, and impressive, to think of the people who pick grapes on these hills. Most of the vines looked harvested already, but we managed to grab one, small, sweet yellow grape each.
Along the trail were buckets and tools and a few tractors like this, which were much narrower than the average tractor. We couldn't tell if we were on private or public property, but every worker we passed smiled or at least nodded at us.
Every so often, we would come across a grape stash like the one above.
We descended a hill towards another town, and turned a corner to find this. The place where all those containers we saw were brought. It was the back of Wollenstein's Cooperative, which processed grapes from vineyards all around the Moselle. Our Lonely Planet had warned us not to expect to find too many mom-and-pop vineyards, but we were astounded to see how large the operation actually was. We went around to see if we could get a taste.
It looked like some sort of tour group had just passed through the Cooperative, because both people working there, a man and a woman, were busy cleaning out used tasting glasses and gift wrapping souvenir bottles. The man put his dishes aside long enough to offer us a taste of two Rieslings, one older than the other, from different parts of the Moselle. While we smelled and swirled and tasted them, two things caught our eye.
These plastic "champagne bottles" were set up on the wall to the right of the tasting counter. They read "Party for Kids" and, I hope, were simply bubble bath. But, hey, it's Europe. You never know.
Against the wall to the left of the counter were these plastic jugs, ranging from 2 liters to 10. We recognized their label from the signs we had seen at every cafe, bar and restaurant. Fiederwaissen. We asked about it and were told "it's not juice, but it's not wine." Well, I bet you can guess which purchase we made.
The packaging was just too enticing! We just thought, this not-wine/not-juice screams "camping." When we poured it into a glass we were even more excited about the purchase. For about a week now, I have been trying to figure out what the cloudy, yellow liquid I saw people drinking was. At first we thought it was Pastis, which Merlin said turned cloudy when water was added to it. Then, this morning, I saw an older couple each having a glass beside their coffee and I thought, 'Lemonade?' Turns out, what everyone has been drinking it Fiederwaissen.

Traditionally, Fiederwaissen is the first wine of the year at every winery in Luxembourg. Their first batch is released ten days after the beginning of the annual harvest, to give people a taste of the new year's product.

It's very sweet and has a pungent fermentation smell. We think it will taste better colder. So, our jug of Fiederwaissen is currently sitting behind the back wheel of our car, cooling down from a warm day's travel through the Moselle Valley in our backpack.

Castle Hunting: Vianden Castle (part II)

This is Vianden Castle, which I had tried to take pictures of ten days ago. We explored it on our first visit to Vianden, a while ago, and thought it was really cool. The mist and generally bad weather limited us to mental-pictures. We went back to Vianden yesterday, for nutfest, so I got another shot at it.
We had known about this high-meadow vantage point from our rambles around the town, so we knew where to stop to get the best pictures. I had to do a little scrambling to get a good view - luckily, this fence was just barbed wire and not electrified.
The cows in the pasture weren't all that impressed. They didn't seem to mind us, though.
It's an amazing place for a castle, and I bet it's going to be really beautiful in a week - the foliage hasn't peaked yet.
Making our way down to the village, I was able to get these images too. The weather was superb. So much better than our first visit.

Nutfest

We heard about Nutfest, we saw signs for Nutfest, people warned us it would be packed - still, we weren't prepared. "Veiner Nëssmoort" was a big, big event. It's all about walnuts and the (sorry) people who go nuts over them.

Traffic into Vianden was shut down, completely. We had to park along the roadside a couple kilometers up the hill from the village, among hordes of other vehicles. As we made our way down, we started to see little vendors - like this woman - selling nuts. "How quaint," we said.

It was crazy. There was loud music, lots of people, kids drinking vodka (straight from the bottle), beer tents, security officers - we had a hard time making it down the street. This was no quaint little nutmarket.

The people of the region make all kinds of walnut products, including many liquors and alcohol. Vin de Noix was popular and tasted like vermouth.

Nut breads, nut pies, nut cakes, nut candies, nuts in chocolate, nuts in honey, nut creams...

Nut pates and nut meats. The guy selling these pates was a very heavy man. I tried to get a picture of him, but he was being swarmed by customers - probably because he was handing out samples and telling jokes.

These were nut pastries, which we didn't try. Why not? They weren't made with walnuts! This stand wasn't doing much business.

The local fire brigade had a beer tent going, and we stopped by to give them a little support. We bought two beers and two shots of "Nut - Bailey's," which tasted pretty much exactly like regular Bailey's. I'm not really sure what that was all about.

There were a lot of stands that were just selling walnuts, of course. People were buying them by the kilo. Walking back up to our car, we passed people who were carrying huge sacks of them - literally tons of walnuts changed hands that day!

This was our haul from Nutfest: One huge loaf of nutbread, one tin of nut pate (wild boar nut pate, if you're curious), one small nut cake/pie thing and one small bottle of Vei'ner nossdropp. The man who sold us the liquor gave us a choice - the nossdropp or some nossliquor. What's the difference? "The liquor is twenty percent alcohol, very sweet," he said. "The dropp is forty-five percent, not sweet." Obviously, we went for the dropp. It tasted pretty darn good in our tent last night.

The Grund

This is The Grund, which probably means "The Ground," but might mean anything. It is a sliver of Luxembourg City that is at the bottom of the ravine along the Alzette river. The view from the Old Town, at the top of the ramparts, is really terrific.

Our bus route into town followed the bottom of The Grund, right along the main street, but it took us a while to descend down from the main, higher part of the city into the neighborhood.

This view is from further along the ramparts. The city used to be (and still is, to an extent) immensely fortified, especially at its strategic peak in the eighteenth century, and the walls and cliffs below the main part of town are still difficult to navigate. The road down has a lot of switchbacks. On our last day, by chance, we found a handy elevator that ran between the high and low sections of town.

On our first visit to The Grund, there was an art fair going on. The art wasn't spectacular, but the fall day was beautiful and there were a lot of people sitting around, drinking. There are a number of great restaurants and bars down in this area, and it feels more like a neighborhood than the higher part of town - which is dominated by high end retailers and the Grand Ducal palace.

There were some great views from the river of the Old Town, and we came back here on a quieter day during the week to sit and spend some time having a coffee. Luxembourg City really is an amazing place - we're surprised at how few tourists there are. It is certainly one of the more dramatically situated cities I've ever seen, and it has such a wealth of cool eateries and cultural experiences that it seems strange that more people don't visit. In the few days since we've left, I've actually started to miss it a little.

Swiss Luxembourg?

Here we are in the Müllerthal region of Luxembourg, which is called Little Switzerland. Actually, it's called Kleng Lëtzebuerger Schwäiz, in Letzeburgisch. I can kind of see why, because they have some hilly mountain-type features and some great geological events. It's not the Alps, though.

To the Northeast, the Müllerthal is bordered by the Sauer river and Germany. It took us about half an hour to drive here from Luxembourg City. It's pretty countryside, and we took a long hike today up along this ridgeline that runs parallel to the river. The rock formations were very pretty. We did some clambering around through tight spots and semi-caves. It was a beautiful day, we were enjoying the walk... and we really misjudged how far it was between towns.

Because it was way past noon and we were hungry, we decided to steal some apples. We passed by a few orchards on our walk, but they were all fairly well guarded. The one in the picture above had an electric fence around it (to be fair, it was a pasture) and a few other trees were behind thick hedgerows or barbed wire.

Finally, we found an unguarded tree - we thought - and picked a few nicely ripe Äpfel. They weren't without scabs, and they weren't ideal eating apples, but they hit the spot. A few paces down the lane, we saw that we had been watched. A man tending his roses gave us a withering, awful look and grunted as we passed. He wasn't too pleased about the American kids stealing his fruit.

A little further on, we found a few blackberries - barely a handful each - that had survived the end of fall and the other hikers. They were delicious and perfectly ripe.

When we got back to the town we're staying in (Bollendorf, really only a village), we crossed the river to get a bit of coffee. We didn't even think about the fact that we were crossing a border until we noticed the language difference on the signs. This is the view back across the river, from Germany, towards Luxembourg. The picture isn't great because the sun was going down right behind that hill, but it's all I have. The building in the forefront is a cafe and gas station. Beside every border crossing - so it seems - you'll find a gas station. Everyone knows that gas is really cheap in Luxembourg.

Oh Duchess, My Duchess

Above are Henri and Maria Teresa, the Grand Duke and Duchess of Luxembourg. Henri is the heir to the throne and Maria Teresa is a Cuban-born commoner he met in college. We didn't actually meet the royal couple. This is simply a google image. However, we saw their faces everywhere - displayed in store windows, on postcards, etc. Walking around Luxembourg city you saw Duchess Maria Teresa's Cuban influence immediately.
Okay, to be honest, Brussels and Amsterdam both had as many Cuban or Hispanic inspired bars and restaurants. Each had as many Che t-shirts as a shop on St. Marks Place. I was just much more aware of it because of the lovely Maria Teresa (and my Cuban relatives back home).
Went went to this place to try out their mojitos (which were pretty awful) and found the walls lined with cuban cigar boxes and portraits of Che and Fidel. The free tortilla chips and salsa seemed a little misguided, though.
This "Brasserie-Restaurant" was actually a tapas bar that we wound up visiting twice. We were easily the youngest patrons by about twenty years and, aside from the lovely older woman preparing the food, I was the only female in the place. The waiter was a thin, balding Spaniard with a handle-bar moustache who first addressed us in French, then English and spoke to other customers in Luxembourgish, and the cook in Spanish.

That seems to be the norm here. At any given time, you will hear Luxembourgish, French and German being spoken in a single conversation. All three are official languages of this tiny country. You may also hear some English, Italian and Spanish. There is a big Portuguese population here and about 60% of its banking industry is foreign. Almost every Luxembourger is at least bilingual, usually tri.

The Grand Duke and his Cuban Grand Duchess exemplify this diverse country perfectly.

Apple Day

There we were, meandering through Luxembourg City on a dreary day (it's been damp this whole country, so far), heading in the general direction of the bus stop so we could go home, feeling a little tired and cold... Then: Apple Fest!
There were a few tractors circled up in the Place Guillaume II like a wagon train preparing for an attack. We swooped down on them, hungry for some pommes.
There were apple tarts, cakes, and beignets. Also, baked apple, and candied apple. Also, sausage - without apple, and a little out of place.
There was also a beer cart, doing some brisk business. For a while, a young boy was manning the taps. He really couldn't have been older than twelve or thirteen.
This was our favorite stand. The friendly guy on the right was doling out little shots of some very tasty apple brandy and eau-de-vie. The brandy was a little sweeter than "real" brandy, but the eau-de-vie was definitely full proof. It made us feel great about the day and about Apple Fest in general.
There were some people pressing fresh cider, too. Here they are taking the press apart. I don't think that the guy in red had done this before. His job seemed to be, mostly, poking at the mash and asking questions. We left feeling very pleased, a little tipsy and quite good about the Autumn.