A Day in Luxembourg

Last New Year’s, my parents and I embarked on a somewhat impromptu road trip from Heidelberg to Brussels at the behest of my lovely aunt, who wanted us to pay her a visit in the Belgian capital. Luxembourg is a short detour from the usual driving route. The extremely tiny and exceedingly wealthy country of Luxembourg had been on my mind for quite some time owing to a Luxembourgish friend of mine, Constantine, a 20-year old who always gushed about his country and could speak 4 languages, namely, German, French, English and Luxembourgish, like most citizens of the country.

We drove for a few hours along the route dictated by our trustworthy GPS device and at some point, veered from the autobahn into the countryside, through small towns and rolling vineyards. Just as we crossed the border into Luxembourg, a town with a very familiar name greeted us - Schengen. Normally, when a person travels from one country to another he or she requires permission to enter the country which is given by way of stamping the "visa" or permission to visit on the person's passport given by the consular or embassy officials of that country. In order to ease travel within the European countries, a person can obtain a Schengen visa which entitles the person to visit a number of countries who recognise this visa without taking separate country-wise permission. Pardon our ignorance, but prior to that day, we didn’t realize that the term ‘Schengen’ actually came from this small, quintessential European town in south-east Luxembourg, lined with vineyards and famous for its wine. It lies on the banks of the Moselle river, conveniently located in the border triangle of Luxembourg, Germany and France, making it the ideal place for signing the Schengen Agreement. This historic agreement was signed aboard the boat “MS Princess Marie-Astrid” in 1985 between Germany, France and the three Benelux Union countries, namely, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg, to dismantle border guards and barriers between them. Today, the Schengen area encompasses 26 members countries across Europe, thanks to which we could drive surreptitiously across the border without even realising.

There are some interesting exceptions when it comes to European politics. Countries that are members of the European Union (EU) are not necessarily members of the Schengen and vice versa. Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein are members of the Schengen but not of the EU. On the other hand, Croatia, who recently joined the EU in 2013 is currently seeking to be part of the Schengen, but if you have a Schengen visa for one of the member countries, you can visit Croatia with it. I envy my fellow German colleagues who don’t require visas for most countries in the world!

We made a quick pitstop in Schengen, parking our car near the European Museum of Schengen. 33 years ago, we wouldn’t have been able to do so without the border guards upon us. Instead, we were greeted by a family of ducklings and their mother, flapping around lazily on the river bank. We took a good long look at the ‘nation pillars’ with their bronze stars, each representing a member state of the Schengen, and tried our best to read all of the innumerable plaques with historic facts and photographs that were arranged chronologically. Having filled our brains with all this newfound information, we took to the road again in search of the capital city.

Luxembourg City gave us a hard time in terms of finding a parking spot, like most European cities. While driving around in circles, we crossed quite a few major banks of different countries, evidence of the finance industry being a major player in the country’s economy, much like Switzerland’s. In the last few years, Luxembourg has become the European hub for most banks as well as the European headquarters for Amazon, Skype and Paypal, owing to its long-term experience in the e-commerce domain. It has the world’s second highest GDP per capita and funnily enough, everyone out on the street actually looked the part. They somehow oozed an aura of effortless affluence, with their pearl necklaces, perfectly coiffed hair and some with their shiny-furred, well-groomed dogs.

Stepping out from the heated car into the freezing cold on the ‘Boulevard Royal’, we aimlessly walked into a nearby park simply because it looked nice and eventually came out onto one of their main roads, ‘Rue Notre-Dame’, which like the name suggests, led us to the huge Cathedral of Notre Dame. We took a quick peek into the Cathedral from the entrance since a magnificent arch-bridge had caught our eye previously on our walk to the Notre-Dame and all three of us were equivocal about wanting to go see it. The Adolphe bridge turned out to be one of the world’s largest stone-arch bridges, connecting ‘Boulevard Royal’ in the Old Town to the station quarters across the river Petrusse. The bridge alongwith the castle on the other side paints quite a fairytailish picture. We didn’t go across it because it seemed like a rather long walk and we were content with just looking down at the lower levels of the Petrusse Casemates, which are plateau-like edges built into the side of the hill by the Spaniards in 1673, akin to terrace farms but for the purpose of positioning canons and other masonry. The upper level, where we were standing  in the Constitution Square, houses a statue of a golden gilded woman, "Gëlle Fra", a memorial for the Luxembourgers who died in World War I and a symbol of freedom and resistance. Had the weather been warmer, we would’ve ambled down to the lower levels of the Casemates, but a cold, grey December day was not apt for it or for our hunger.

After some croissants and a stroll through the nearby Christmas market, we hurried back to the the warmth of our car to resume our journey to Brussels. We didn’t want to keep my sweet aunt waiting!