{"id":1906,"date":"2011-05-04T21:03:40","date_gmt":"2011-05-04T19:03:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/?p=1906"},"modified":"2011-05-04T21:14:08","modified_gmt":"2011-05-04T19:14:08","slug":"big-weekend-in-luxembourg-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/2011\/05\/04\/big-weekend-in-luxembourg-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Weekend in Luxembourg, Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

We stumbled into a weekend full of events here in Luxembourg. We missed plenty of them, like the duck race<\/a>, concerts, and anything after our bedtime (about 9 pm). The ones we did attend did not disappoint. <\/p>\n

Saturday morning, we made our usual trip to the market in Place Guillaume (known locally as Knuedler<\/a>). It’s getting more crowded every week, and we’re as lazy as ever about driving to it. (We could easily cycle there, but with our purchases, and I’m a bit groggy, and well, you know.) That means that we had to park in the more distant garage — about five more minutes walk — but we also walked along the Corniche, with its spectacular view.
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\nEarlier in the week, Anita noticed that the Cercle<\/a> would have its grand re-opening on Saturday. We’d heard a lot about how beautiful the building was, inside and out. But for our time in Luxembourg, it’s looked, at best, like this:
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\n\"\"<\/a>So we had to go. There was a line of rather mature visitors waiting for it to open<\/a>. We were easily the youngest of the first 50 visitors. Kids these days — they just don’t know what’s good!<\/p>\n

The Cercle Municipal was built in the first decade of the 20th Century as the city’s administration building; it was intended to be a grand piece of public architecture. Now, it’s a conference center. And a splendid conference center it is — if your taste runs to regal ballrooms<\/a>. This is a side chamber named Salon Bleu<\/a>:
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The Salle des Dames (Ladies’ Room) is below. A pseudo-translation of the promotional webpage<\/a>: The Ladies’ Room guarantees a more intimate atmosphere and complete tranquility during your reception or meeting. Elegant and charming, this room can accommodate up to 20 people.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Every inch of the place was finished with luxurious details. Anita really liked these square floral arrangements:
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Hard to imagine attending a professional conference here, but it would be suitable for an intimate royal wedding reception. There is no lack<\/a> of<\/a> suitable<\/a> candidates<\/a> right now!<\/p>\n

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Back out in the sunny Place d’Armes, we noticed a heightened level of tourist activity. Their technology is progressing — this group had the earbud broadcast system<\/a>, which was once seldom seen outside big attractions.<\/p>\n

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…and apparently, there was to be a dance party in the near future. Probably after our bedtime.<\/p>\n

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It wasn’t five minutes before we noticed a disturbance at the end of the street. A protest march was leaving the G\u00eblle Fra, decked out in hunter’s orange.
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\nAnita physically restrained my curiosity and we went back to the Market instead.<\/p>\n

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\n\"\"<\/a> It’s time for summer plantings, so we bought as many flowers as we could carry. I was distracted by the roar of the protest nearby. Just my luck, the orange-garbed marchers had assembled in Place Clairefontaine, on our way back to the parking garage!<\/p>\n

I deduced that they were hunters. One of the signs said, “No hunting = no biodiversity.” Aside from that, I was at a loss. The speech was in Luxembourgish, and I’m not able to comprehend full sentences yet.<\/p>\n

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\nI found their website<\/a>, but no news reports in English or French. Nevertheless, we could appreciate their snazzy safety vests and hats.
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I must say that I found it unseemly that they wore orange on Queen’s Day<\/a>, despite showing no outward appreciation for things Dutch.<\/p>\n

One last photo from the city center — the tourist train has a new paint job. (It may even be a new tourist train. The Bugle PSI<\/a> (Photographed Scene Investigation) Unit has a huge backlog, so we’ll have to wait for the verdict.)<\/p>\n

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No Saturday passes without a few chores around the house. This one was a bit unusual. Will put his Boy Scout training to good use to devise a way of keeping our current houseguest safe. Naturally, the guest herself helped with the project.<\/p>\n

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This IKEA hack<\/a> keeps Daryl from chasing ducks in our “backyard”, i.e. the park — without cutting off our beloved spring breezes.<\/p>\n

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That’s it for this update, and we’re barely past noon! Don’t worry, it won’t take two weeks for me to post Part Two. I swear!<\/p>\n

Correction: My lovely spouse informs me that the ever-reliable ARA City Radio<\/a> did<\/strong> report on the hunters’ protest, and that she, in fact, did<\/strong> send me a link on Monday. She also wants our readers to know that I never read her emails. The upshot is that the hunters claim to be “victims of a witchhunt” and wish to preserve their right to access private landowners’ property.<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We stumbled into a weekend full of events here in Luxembourg. We missed plenty of them, like the duck race, concerts, and anything after our bedtime (about 9 pm). The ones we did attend did not disappoint.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[620],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1906"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1906"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1951,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1906\/revisions\/1951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}