City without a Soul

And speaking of Luxembourg (mentioned in my last post as a country that didn't really capture my heart). . . I just found this draft for a post from 2009. It's got kind of an abrupt ending, but it's been so long now that I don't feel like I can finish the post with a whole lot of accuracy.

Actually, I'm really thankful that my cousin and frequent travel partner Kirsten is so good about journaling. I do have her record of the trip, but my intention on this blog is to get my own impressions down in writing. So, here's the unfinished post; it was fun for me to re-read it, and it's a good incentive for me to blog now about my more recent travels - before my impressions are so faded.


Luxembourg is absolutely gorgeous, like a city right out of a fairy tale. But it's also, well, kind of boring. Ok, so we took a good tour of the palace where the Grand Duke lives and saw two very interesting museum exhibits, we enjoyed exploring the casemates that underlie the old part of the city, and we had some good food and some great Reisling - but two days there was plenty of time. Longer than that and I think the sumptious bank buildings and the shiny BMWs and all the Loius Vuitton bags (even more than I see in Seoul, I think - and that's saying something!) would start to grate. In the short time we were there I found myslef thinking several times - and saying it out loud at least once - that I kind of felt like we were in a fake city in Disneyland, wondering when it would close down for the night.

A bit more on the bright points mentioned above: our palace tour was guided by a friendly middle-aged Luxembourg transplant from Holland and included lots of interesting info on the royal family, including their one-time connection to the Dutch royal family.

The Luxembourg City Museum had a temporary exhibit on murder. I don't think there was any particular connection to Luxembourg, but anyway it was thought-provoking. The exhibit included sections on famous murderers, like Charles Manson and Jack the Ripper, and on punishments for murder, and an interactive item where museum visitors were supposed to place a card in a clear glass box with a scenario in which they would murder someone. Some of the options: Would you murder for money? Would you murder someone who had murdered a loved one in retaliation? Would you murder in self-defense?

An underground tunnel museum (kind of like the skyway in Minneapolis, it seemed to connect a lot of buildings) ended with a really interesting section recalling the MoMA's "The Family of Man" exhibit of the Luxembourg-American photographer Edward Steichen.