Luxembourg City - Better Than You Think
Luxembourg City - A Girl, Some Business
Let me start by saying, Luxembourg City is one of my favourite places. I’ve been going there since 1990. Strangely, more times for business than in a personal capacity.
There was a girl once - isn’t there always somewhere? - once who I arranged to meet there. I flew in, it rained, we drank ‘33’ beer in darkened cafes and walked the pretty streets in the rain. It didn’t last.
Luxembourg is the Capitoline Hill of the Rome that is the EU. EU buildings - vast, magnificent - are everywhere on the outskirts of the city. That and favourable tax regimes means that there’s many corporations also in this small principality. Hello Amazon S.R.L. There’s so much money in the country that all public transport is free within its borders which, as a tourist, is welcome.
A Corporate Rogering!
I was summoned to Luxembourg a few years ago as a (then) massive telecommunications company was about to go live with our financial products. Okay. Between me and you, it was Skype. Wankers. Our implementation manager had fucked up and I got handed the global implementation two days before the go live date. A suicide pass. This was on Thursday. I was in Luxembourg the following Monday to take a senior management team beating from the Skype top brass.
Our product was deficient. Our implementation poor. The yawning gap between what they wanted, what they bought, and what we could deliver had never been discussed by my predecessor. I was the nominated corporate fall guy. I flew in and got kicked out of their office and the country the same day.
Glad Skype has disappeared. No corporate product.
Although I’ve been back to Luxembourg on business a few times, I’ve also visited in a personal capacity probably trying to recapture the first time - the rain, the girl, the memory. But you can’t go back, can you? The dead hand of impermanence in time, in places and, most particularly people, will ever win out.
And Luxembourg City?
But the City? Very pretty and clean, built across a wide gorge scarred with medieval ruins of fortifications throughout. The layout is on many levels - there’s a scary free glass lift (the Pfaffenthal Panoramic Elevator) between the upper and lower town which is a must. The people are bewilderingly multi-lingual.
Transport aside though, it is expensive - all those bureaucrats gotta spend those EU funds somewhere! The city’s annual Blues and Jazz Rallye festival in the lower town is well worth visiting. As you walk the festival site, you’ll notice everyone holding fast food and drinking beer from plastic cups and there is no litter. None.
So, I’d go, if I were you. Surprising. And off the tourist map for some reason.
Shit Guide
Hotels: Many. No recollection. Corporate.
Beers: Can’t remember past 1990. ‘33’?
Food: Overpriced. Not an EU corporate expense account. No great meals remembered or, probably, eaten. You need to have a fat corporate (or EU) expense account to get the fine dining experience.
Reader’s Verdict: Ever feel you’ve been cheated? Whatever, read about The Darkness of Bruges. It’s the people, people. It’s not the place, it’s where you’re at. Yeah, I’m pissed.
Quotidian Notes
Luxembourg City, Luxembourg. Shades of New York, New York or just a mouse buggering an elephant?
This is part of my Cities I Forgot series. Cities visited that for one reason or another, escaped my withering pen. The laptop tap tap of contemporaneous experience was never heard. But they deserve a micro-tour guide. Why don’t you try my thoughts on Charlemagne’s capital, Aachen and an uncomfortable massage?
Or, for the full Tim, let’s go with day drinking in Antwerp or my mega series on Prague - The Prague Quintet. It’s moving. Well, it’s the definite guide in seven, count them, parts. Yeah. I know.