July 3 – Mainz to Luxembourg, Luxembourg. Train day again. This time we have to drag our suitcases across the square to the Hof and then up the elevator to the crossover and down the elevator to the platform. I was chatting with one of the station managers when I got a very useful piece of information. When I bought my train ticket it looked like the train went from Luxembourg to Brussels without any changes. In fact, that's how the web site showed it. I discovered that the train from Luxembourg only goes to the first stop inside Belgium and then you have to change to the train across the platform. Seems odd but that's exactly what you have to do. The train we boarded was exactly like the one we left. We even had exactly the same seats. I don't think that the two countries have different gauge tracks. Both are Standard Gauge as far as I know. Both trains were operated by the same railway company. Maybe it's an engine thing and rather than switch engines they just have the passengers change trains. Just one of those little travel mysteries.
I'm now a criminal in Luxembourg. When we got to the station we got a cart for our luggage and pushed it to the taxi stand to get a cab. The cabby wouldn't take us to the hotel because, "It's just up the street." He wasn't kidding about the up. It is uphill from the station to the hotel. The other problem is that you couldn't see the hotel from the station. Diana really can't manage luggage on the long hall. So what could I do. I wheeled the station cart out of the station and up the hill to the hotel. I'm pretty sure they don't really like you to do that. Now I had to decide if I was going to wheel it back and then go get another one for the return trip three nights from now. I decided to keep the cart in my room and use it again going back. I told the front desk I had it and to tell the housekeeper not to remove it. Hope that works.
The hotel is right on a main street and is sort of a loft hotel. There are shops on the first two floors and the hotel starts on floor 3. Well, to be honest, if it were in the USA it would be on floor three, here in Europe it's on floor 2 because the bottom floor that's above ground is either 0 (Zero) or G (Ground) here.
Numbering Note: They were way ahead of their time in numbering floors. Any computer scientist or programmer will tell you that the first of anything attached to a mainframe is 0 not 1. For example if you have 4 printers attached to the system they will be printer0, printer1, printer2, printer3. The same goes for disk packs or input devices, etc. Numbering systems are fun!! Numbering systems have always started with 0, we just didn't recognize that fact. Our beloved base 10 (decimal) numbering system has ten digits, 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9. Octal has 8, 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7. Hexadecimal has 16, 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,a,b,c,d,e,f. (hint, 10 in hex is decimal 16. c in hex is = decimal 12) Binary only has 2, 0,1. I know I've said this before but that's why the 21th Century began on Jan 1, 2001. Without the year 2000 the 20th century would only have had 99 years, because during the changeover from BC to AD (sorry I'm old school on this) there was no 0 (Zero) year. There should have been but the system wasn't controlled by a computer geek.
The hotel is a Park Inn by Radisson and I have to say I was a little worried about my reservation there. After my experience with the Park Inn in Zagreb where, when I complained about how hot my room was twice they moved me to a new room that was hotter. If you are ever going to Zagreb stay somewhere besides the Park Inn.
Anyway the Park Inn in Luxembourg is great!! The staff is friendly, knowledgeable, efficient and courteous. The location is great; it's just a short walk to the old part of town where the Hop On-Hop Off (HoHo) bus has its headquarters. You could actually get it down by the train station. And if you didn't want to walk there's bus service that runs right in front of the hotel that will take you there. The rooms are comfortable and very nicely appointed. I don't watch TV when I'm traveling so I can't tell you what any of the TVs have been like. The wireless internet connection is fast and free.
July 4 –Luxembourg, Luxembourg. Today we are renting a car because we wanted to see more of Luxembourg than just Luxembourg. Don't you just love places where the country and capital city have the same name. So I got up very early in the morning to take a taxi out to the Renault dealer where Budget has a rental counter. My Renault Clio was waiting for me. A black 4-door, hatchback with a diesel engine. Years ago I had driven a Volkswagen Golf with a diesel engine and it was a dog. There's been improvements over the past 20 years, the Clio is peppy, not noisy and drives like a gas engine. They've borrowed a feature from hybred cars in that if you idle for more than a few seconds without stepping on the gas the engine shuts off. It automatically restarts when you step on the gas. I didn't know about this feature and couldn't figure out how I was stalling the car at first. I'm sure there's a way to turn that feature off but I found it was easy to just step on the gas a bit every 20-30 seconds while waiting for traffic lights.
I thought yesterday that people here were speaking French but found out today that it's actually Luxembourgish. They are aggressively pursuing the universality of their own language. At this time only about 400,000 people worldwide speak it. Considering that not many people speak it I was surprised to find out that there are 8 geographical dialects of Luxembourgish. It's a High German language from the Moselle Franconian group. It's actually spoken in parts of Germany, France and Belgium. It's one of the three legal languages here along with German and French. It's possible to be in a court trial where one side uses German the other side French and the judge and court reporter Luxembourgish. That must be fun!
I picked up the car and it had built in GPS. I'm glad it did. Out on the highway maybe I could have done without it, but in the city with the curving, one-way streets that almost never meet perpendicularly, driving without it would have been a real chore. As it was I had to get used to it saying that some turn was 800 meters ahead when it was actually 150. Many turns caught me by surprise at first.
I don't really like black cars but since I only have this car for a day, it's not critical. The drive back to the hotel went smoothly and I found Diana not quite ready to go to breakfast. Eventually we got to breakfast and then started off in our Renault.
On the train ride yesterday we shared out compartment with a friendly man who had been born in Luxembourg. When I told him I had a car for the day he said we should visit Echternach, a nice little city near the German border that has a monastery. I looked it up and found that it was the main city in Luxembourg's Alpine region. Anyway, sight unseen, that's where we're headed.
Getting out of the city of Luxembourg proved to be problematical. The GPS was still tricking me with its estimates of distances to events, traffic was heavy and worst of all there were a lot of street closures. Can't really blame the GPS for that. Every time it would seem like we were finally getting going we'd hit another detour. Finally, after about five reloads we were out of town and on the way. We drove a short way on what would be a small interstate but then we were off on two-lane blacktop 'highways' like I grew up with in rural Pennsylvania. With the rolling green hills, farmland and small villages I felt right at home.
In about 45 minutes we arrived at Echternach. Now the problem is where to park. I know these old cities and narrow streets with no parking is the norm. There are several parking lots but they seemed to be badly located for where we wanted to be so we just kept going. I saw what looked like church steeples and kept trying to head toward them but our surroundings kept blocking the view. Finally we got to a mostly empty lot near some old buildings so I pulled in, put some Euros in the parking vendor and got a 3.5 hour tag to put on my dashboard.
When I got out the map and figured out where we were it was right next to the main gate into the Monastery. We could not have parked any better. It's like my dad used to say, "I'd rather be lucky than smart!" We walked into the walled monastery around some buildings that were obviously a school, must be kids here on summer break, and wound up on the plaza with the monastery church and the museum.
As our friend on the train told us, Echternach is near the border with Germany, and is the oldest town in Luxembourg. Today a little over 4,000 people live there. Basically it surrounded the walls of the Abbey of Echternach. Founded in 698 by Saint Willibrord, an English monk from near Yorkshire, England. He was the first bishop of Utrecht and worked to Christianize the people living in what is now the Netherlands. He was the Echternach monastery's abbot until his death in 739.
Echternach is on the Sauer River that the border between Luxembourg and Germany. A Roman villa at Echternach, which was discovered in 1975m is the largest in Northern Europe. It was in Trier (a forerunner of Germany) and was presented to Willibrord by Pricess Irmina, daughter of Dagobert II, king of the Franks. (In Pennsylvania we have a man named Yacco who calls himself "King of the Hot Dogs", somehow I don't think that the same thing.
Charlemagne continued the official support of this monastery but the monks were displaced by the canons of the Bishop of Trier by 971. Willibrord's tomb is in the crypt of the he Romanesque basilica.
The abbey's library and scriptorium were known all throughout Europe. Echternach grew around the abbey's outer walls and was granted a city charter in 1236. During the French Revolution, the monks were banished and the abbey's contents and its famous library were sold, except for the part the French stole and moved to their National Library in Paris. The Echternach Gospels were renowned for their beauty and style and that's where they are.
A scriptorium is a manuscript production center. Monks work at desks to hand copy books, at this time mostly scriptural or liturgical. These handmade books took months to produce. In the early years they were made using vellum pages. (It took the skins of about 400 sheep to produce one of the Gutenberg printed Bibles on vellum.) Later they used paper to produce the books.
They have one copy of the Gospels and it's gorgeous. It's easy to see why they have been called the Golden Gospels of Echternach. This copy is bound in leather but the front is entirely covered by carvings (both gilded and ivory), enamel or cloisonné badges and jewels. The center of the cover is an ivory carving of the crucifixion. It takes up the center third of the space. Around this carving are four L shaped areas with what are probably gilded woodcarvings of saints and biblical scenes. Bordering the center ivory and the perimeter of the cover are half-inch wide strips that are made up of rectangular enameled designs interspersed with gold settings with precious and semi-precious stones. It is beautiful.
Inside many of the illustrations and fancy letters have golden elements and some of the script is written in gold. I've never seen anything quite like it before.
What made the museum interesting is that they compared illuminated manuscripts from around Europe that were produced at or near the same time. They had examples from the Irish Book of Kells and from the Monastery in Escorial, Spain. It's amazing how similar they are and yet each has elements that the others don't. It's pretty clear that there was probably some sharing of technology from one place to the other. After all, these places were established my missionaries and produced by monks.
They have extensive displays of books produced here and in Escorial. One entire hallway is lined with pages from the gospels from both books. There's a short film about Saint Willibrord, his life and his travels. The displays center on his attempts to bring the gospel to Ireland. Funny all we hear about is Saint Patrick. He was very successful there.
The Basilica of St Willibrord, now surrounded by the eighteenth-century abbey and is located in the heart of the town's historical center. It's the largest church in town and is a very handsome structure. From directly on the front façade looks fairly flat but from the side you can see that it has an unusual dimensional aspect. There are the usual three doors but the main door in the center is set under a colonnade and a rose window with a crest above it just below a very short gabled roof. Set back about five feet is the start of the higher gable of the roof over the main body of the church. This area is a wide as the church and a bit taller than the area containing the main door. It's gable is topped with a carved stone cross. Set out on either side of this structure are the two towers. They are set back from the front about another 8-10 feet and extend outward about 15 feet. The two smaller doors are set into the base of the towers. There are two smaller towers at the far corners of the building as well. Other than the stone cross and the crest there are no exterior adornments on this church pretty much defining the Romanesque style. Very straightforward, few curves except for arches over doors and windows or between columns.
The interior matches the exterior. The only real touches of décor are on the altars, the stained glass windows and stations-of-the-cross. The stations-of-the-cross are done in low relief and carved from undecorated grey stone. It's almost like the entire structure is saying Shhhhh, quiet please. The stained glass was very nice. Lots of red, a color that was very expensive to produce.
Much of the old city walls are still intact and any damage from WWII has been repaired. This little town is remote and not militarily significant so the damage was minimal.
The drive back to the city of Luxembourg was uneventful and we decided to return the car rather than wait for the next morning. All in all a very restful and interesting day.
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