The Lux Experience

LUXEMBOURG CITY —  A weekend of riches in Luxembourg City

LUXEMBOURG CITY

OK, so it isn’t Paris.

This city -- one of two European Cultural Capitals for 2007 and capital ofthe richest per-capita-income country on the planet -- is pretty nice.

Like all worthwhile European cities, this is a center of commerce -- butalso a city of beautiful fruit stands and beautiful pastry shops, of historicchurches and requisite statues and back streets worth poking around in, and ofoutdoor places to enjoy a coffee or a glass of wine or a local brew whilefurtively enjoying the passing scenery.

There is a local cuisine, of sorts, a remnant of a time when Luxembourg --officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg -- was largely a mix of farms andsteel factories, plus this town.

“Up until 1850, Luxembourg was a very poor country,” guide Pierrette Antonywould tell us. “Then we found iron ore in the south of the country.”

Which began the transformation.

So today’s Luxembourg City is a city of banks (200 of them, thanks tomainly attractive regulations), wealth, style and diplomacy (many EuropeanUnion functions function here). Genuine Luxembourgian-style restaurants intown may be heavy on sausages, smoked cuts of pork and such wonders as liverdumplings the size of billiard balls, but the delicate among you certainlywill find sustenance.

I can tell you’re wondering: If it’s all these things, why isn’t itswarming with American tourists?

Partial answer: There was a time ...

A generation ago, long-defunct Icelandic Airlines (slogan: “We’re Cheap”)flew youthful backpackers to Europe and dropped them off here. Those kidsstayed just long enough to grab the first train for Amsterdam.

If any of them brought home memories of Luxembourg, the memories were lostin jet lag or some other fog. In fact, I have yet to hear anyone of thatvintage -- anyone -- say today, “Now that I can afford to stay in a hotelwhere the bathroom isn’t down the hall, I just can’t wait to get back toLuxembourg and do it right.”

For sure, it wasn’t, and isn’t, Amsterdam. Amsterdam, on a Saturday nightand for better or worse, is a happening place. What’s happening isn’teverybody’s cup of tea (or pipeful of dried vegetation), but there’s acertain, well, buzz.

On a Saturday night here in mid-July last summer, Luxembourg City threw aparty called a Blues’n Jazz Rallye. Bands and singers were all over the place-- not only in the Grund, an older part of town below the old city walls witha few crawlable pubs, but up the hill as well -- singing and playing blues ‘njazz. The narrow streets were full of people, young and old, snaking their wayfrom venue to venue, most stopping from time to time along the way forintoxicational reinforcement.

Kind of like Amsterdam without the red lights, porn shops and cannabisfumes.

At one venue, a bar not far from the city’s national art museum, asinger/guitarist was singing/guitaring hits by Brazilian master Antonio CarlosJobim and doing a nice job in front of a nice crowd.

Excited and surprised by the hip scene, I found the proprietor.

“Is it always this lively here on a Saturday night?”

“No, it’s always calm,” he said, calmly. “I wish every Saturday night waslike this, but -- it [soft-core profanity].”

So there’s the main downside: The nightlife here, even -- and especially --on weekends, [soft-core profanity].

There’s a reason.

This is a city of about 80,000. Unlike just about every known European andAmerican urban tourist destination, the population swells on weekdays, to120,000. Part of that surge is people who come to town on banking or EUbusiness, which fills hotels and makes seats at better restaurants precious.This is in addition to a tide of “border crossers” who come here daily to workfrom neighboring France, Belgium and Germany, then go back across the borderto homes they can afford.

(There are no plans, incidentally, to build a wall along the Luxembourgborder. This is Europe.)

The crossers may hang out in Luxembourg City for the occasional dinner ordrinks on weeknights, or even stay overnight if duty calls -- but on Saturdayand Sunday, they’re back in France, Belgium and Germany. The businesspeopleand bureaucrats and their expense accounts go back to wherever they go backto.

Which leaves things a little quiet.

But lack of consistently rowdy weekend madness aside, there is stuff ofinterest here. Most of it relates to history, some ancient and some that’sstill remembered first-hand.

Luxembourg began in 963 as a castle (now gone) built by a Count Siegfriedon a rock -- the Bock -- that made it defensible on all sides. As happened inthis part of the world, when a castle went up, a town grew up below it.

After a few hundred years and an upgrade in armaments, the French, Spanish,Burgundians, Austrians, Dutch and Prussians took turns occupying the place.Seems everybody wanted to control this impregnable fortress -- nickname: “theGibraltar of the North” -- despite its newfound pregnability.

It was mainly the Spanish, during their reign, who carved fortifiedcompartments -- casemates, complete with cannons -- into the Bock. It’sestimated those walls could hold 50,000 soldiers, their horses and their gear.By treaty (the Second Treaty of London, which came in 1867 after theAustro-Prussian War, but you knew that), Luxembourg became an independentnation, and the casemates largely disassembled.

But not entirely. In the 1940s, surviving casemates, repurposed as bombshelters -- though bombs never fell here -- held 30,000 horselessLuxembourgians. Today, along with major parts of the old city, they are aUNESCO World Heritage Site, and you can tour them, alone or with guidance.

Speaking of World War II: Before and during the Battle of the Bulge in thewinter of 1944-45, Gen. Omar Bradley’s headquarters in Luxembourg was theGrand Hotel Cravat.

“Before that,” said a clerk, “the Germans.”

Bradley’s signed photo still graces the hotel lobby. There are no signedphotos of Germans -- but even though the city escaped the bombing that strafedmuch of the country, there are scars. Not all are visible.

“In 1942,” said Pierrette Antony, the guide, who was born not long afterthe war, “there was a strike [during the German occupation] and a lot ofpeople were shot.”

Others died in concentration camps.

“It’s kind of controversial,” she said. “Like in my family, my mom wasGerman, but my grandfather -- my mom’s dad -- they hid Jews. Whereas myfather’s father was a loyal Luxembourger, but his brothers and sisters, theywere Nazis. So it went through all Luxembourg families.”

And: “We have villages that totally disappeared.”

A few miles outside the capital, near the suburb of Hamm, is an Americanmilitary cemetery. Most of the dead, more than 5,000, fell during the Battleof the Bulge, whose battleground was this country and eastern Belgium. Amongthe war dead resting here: one woman (a nurse), 22 pairs of brothers -- andGen. George S. Patton Jr., who died in Germany months after the war’s end butwanted to be buried with his troops. (Also here: ashes of Patton’s widow,scattered on the general’s gravesite.)

Near the American cemetery is a German military cemetery. More than 11,000German dead are here -- some who were as young as 16 -- most buried two ormore to a cross but 5,000 in a single mass grave.

“They didn’t have the space,” said Pierrette Antony.

North of the city, primarily in the lovely rolling countryside that is theLuxembourg Ardennes, are towns that also remember, among them Diekirch, homeof an outstanding military museum, and Ettelbruck, with its Patton MemorialMuseum and monumental statue of the general whose army liberated the city onChristmas Day 1944. (For an earlier story on the Battle of the Bulge, go tochicagotribune.com/battleofthe bulge.)

There are other places. Other monuments and memorials.

In the fields, they’re still finding remnants of war . . .

But Luxembourg City is doing well. Fine homes grace Chemin de la Corniche,a lovely walkway that affords strollers marvelous views of the Bock, the Grundand the Alzette River Valley

Last summer, the city opened a new museum of contemporary art, the Museed’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean (or Mudam, for short), designed by I.M. Pei, whogave the Louvre its pyramid.

Reaction was decidedly mixed.

“About 80 percent of the cost went to the building,” snarled one of themany youthful tourist helpers scattered around town. “That didn’t leave muchfor the collection.”

Added a woman who works the ticket desk at the established art museum intown, the Musee National d’Histoire et d’Art: “Well, they have some paintingstoo. But for me, very strange ones. Very strange.”

Robert Garcia, coordinator general for “Luxembourg 2007,” the CulturalCapital operation, provided perspective: “Normally the focus of the museum israther on temporary exhibitions, because the size is not big enough for bothat the same time.”

Plus, sometime this fall a new Fortress Museum is expected to open nextdoor. In any case, whatever’s on exhibit in the art museum this tourist season(a “Design and Science Fiction” show will be on for most of it) likely will bea must-see for anyone drawn here by the Cultural Capital designation. (Theother European Cultural Capital for 2007 is, of course, Sibiu. In Romania. I’dnever heard of it either, but you can bet nobody there has heard of me, so . .. )

Speaking of art: Among the examples of public art worth seeking out is afountain that features musicians, with great faces, performing whilesurrounded by sheep. It is commonly referred to as “Roude Petz” -- the RedFountain.

Why? It isn’t red . . .

“We just call it ‘the Red Fountain,’ ” explained a local.

On Wednesdays and Saturdays, Place Guillermo II -- the plaza in front ofthe city hall, steps from the seldom-used palace of the grand duke -- becomesa farmers market, filled with fresh produce and fresh flowers, all colorful.

“During a regular Saturday,” said Antony, “you can walk into the market andrun into the grand duchess -- and she’s doing her grocery shopping. That’svery normal, and it’s very different from the States.”

At the main city square not far from Place Guillermo II -- Place d’Armes --bands play live music almost daily during summer. The choice of music can be .. . eclectic? One day, it was the Elmer Bernstein march from “The GreatEscape” -- a film about a World War II prison camp. Another, it was an Elvismedley.

In Luxembourg -- the entire duchy is the size of Cook County -- childrenare taught French and German, and speak Luxembourgish, despite efforts to thecontrary.

“The French have been telling us -- for 800 years -- that soon nobody’sgoing to speak Luxembourgish anymore,” said Antony. “For 800 years!

“We still do speak it -- and we will speak it for a very long time to go.It’s part of our identity, and that’s what we want to be . . . and we’re veryproud of it.”

It is a pride that helped carry this little country during the worst oftimes.

Carved above a door in a building that in the 14th Century was a fishmarket is a motto, in Luxembourgish: Mir wolle bleiwe wat mir sin.Translation: We want to stay what we are.

“And that,” explained my guide, “comes from the lyric of a song that waswritten in honor of our first train, in the 1860s.

“The lyrics say, ‘You can visit us from Belgium, France and Prussia, but donot try to change us, because we want to stay what we are.’ ”

So Luxembourg, and its capital city, is what it is, and what it has beenfor a while now: absolutely worth a day or two, before catching the next trainto . . . somewhere else.

- - -

IF YOU GO

GETTING THERE

There are no non-stop flights from Chicago to Luxembourg, but severalairlines offer one-stops through various European gateways. Cheapest andquickest was a KLM/Northwest code-share via Amsterdam at $1,160 (subject tochange).

Worth considering: With some good rail connections as well as attractivecities within a couple of hours’ pleasant driving (Brussels and Cologne areespecially handy), flying into Luxembourg and home from another city is alow-cost option. The money difference may not be much more than the cost ofgetting from Luxembourg City to City No. 2.

GETTING AROUND

There are taxis and buses, but if you stay in or near the traditionalcenter, almost everything worthwhile to the leisure traveler in LuxembourgCity -- restaurants, the old city and its fortifications, markets,entertainment (such as it is) and shopping -- is within walking distance. Acar may be handy for side trips -- to the American and German militarycemeteries in suburban Hamm, for example, and into the Ardennes -- but in thecongested center it’s only a nuisance.

For sightseeing, the hop-on, hop-off CitySightseeing buses (12 euros, orabout $16, daily subject to dollar-euro fluctuation), with narration inmultiple languages through headphones, operate every 20 minutes during summerand are hard to beat; guided walking tours (recommended), as well as freeself-guide maps (almost as good), are available through the tourist office onPlace d’Armes.

Ask at the tourist office or the hotel front desk for more extensive bustours that include some of the surrounding area.

Language note: English is widely spoken at hotels, restaurants and touriststops in Luxembourg City; in the countryside, a little French or German (orLuxembourgish, for you linguists) will be helpful.

STAYING THERE

Visitors not here solely on business will want to stay within an easy walkof the city’s center. Tip: Hotel prices dive on weekends and holidays -- oftenby 50 percent and more -- when business/governmental travelers travelsomeplace else and vacancies happen in bulk. They also drop in August, but youmight find nobody’s there. All listed prices subject to change andexchange-rate variation. Luxembourg City’s only five-star lodging (and theonly one near the historic area with a pool) is Le Royal (doubles from $475;www.hotelroyal.lu), a stolid hotel a few easy blocks from the middle ofthings. Its air conditioning, a serious plus in mid-summer, is its primaryedge over the better-located Grand Hotel Cravat (from $350;www.hotelcravat.lu), a four-star. A couple of blocks from Le Royal and aboutthe same distance (a tolerable walk) from the heart is the surprising, sunnyand artsy (and also air-conditioned) Domus (from $145; www.domus.lu), a muchhappier-feeling place than the weary Hotel Rix a block away. No hotel is morecentral than the clean and bright Hotel Francais ($165; www.hotelfrancais.lu),right on the Place d’Armes; especially in summer, when there’s lots of musicon the square, try for a room facing the back. On the other hand, rooms facingits own square -- the quieter Place Guillaume II -- are the way to go at thelovely Casanova Hotel ($172; www.hotelcasanova.lu); only caveat is thesmaller of its two small singles is really small (all doubles are nice).

There are lots of well-priced hotels clustered within a few blocks of thetrain station. Problems are 1) they’re convenient mainly to the train station,and 2) the area is just a chunk of nondescript, faded urbanness. But if beingclose to the train station is all that matters, the modern Best WesternInternational ($190; www.bestwestern.com) is right across the street. Acouple of blocks away (and a tolerable walk, if you’re a walker, to the Placed’Armes and other good things), the basic (no lift, no A/C) but clean HotelItalia ($103; e-mail italia@euro.lu) is an OK bargain.

DINING THERE

Luxembourgian cuisine tends to be hearty, Teutonic fare, but Luxembourgrestaurants -- as befits an international business and governance center --are international. Lots of Italian around, along with Chinese, Indian and theoccasional American chain. Wash it all down with the excellent local wines andbeers. (Bofferding, of the beers, was a particular favorite.) Warning: Manyrestaurants close on Sundays. To eat like a local who likes local stuff, trythe liewerkniddelen mat sauerkraut (liver dumplings with sauerkraut) at theinformal Maison des Brasseurs, on Grand Rue, a shopping street; or, on Placed’Armes, the judd mat gaardebouhnen (smoked pork chops served with a side ofwhite beans in a bacon sauce) at Restaurant L’Academie. For a splurge, Speltz-- between Place d’Armes and Place de la Constitution -- merges French withLuxembourgian; the pot-au-feu of pigeon was a marvelous chaser for thecarpaccio of Luxembourg beef starter. People we trust also touted Am Dierfgenand Mousel’s Cantine for local goodies, and two more upscale picks, LeBoutique-Garni and Brasserie Guillaume -- all in the center.

CULTURAL CAPITAL

Expect a year full of international dance, music, theater and visual artsevents throughout the country (and spilling over into neighboring regions ofBelgium, France and Germany) but primarily in Luxembourg City, some in the2-year-old, architecturally fascinating Philharmonie. As of now, about 450events are scheduled in all; closing party is Dec. 8. One sure to be fun: afestival of brass bands -- bands from all over the world playing all over thecity -- Sept. 29. For schedules, check the Luxembourg 2007 Web site atwww.luxembourg2007.org.

ABOUT MONEY

ATMs abound, and some businesses will accept U.S. dollars. Traveler’schecks, on the other hand, can be difficult to unload, even if they’re ineuros; my large hotel wouldn’t cash one, and even banks can be reluctant inLuxembourg City. One that consented to cash my Visa traveler’s check wanted tocharge 25 euros to cash a 50-euro check. In general, if you feel you must usethem, shop around and cash large amounts at once (which, to some, defeats thepurpose); a more accommodating bank charged 8 euros (still a 16 percentcommission) -- but would have charged the same 8 euros to cash up to 600euros’ worth.

INFORMATION

Call the Luxembourg National Tourist Office (212-935-8888 in New York;www.visitluxembourg.lu); or check the Luxembourg City Tourist Office site atwww.lcto.lu.< -- Alan Solomon
----------
asolomon@tribune.com