Emaischen

You are probably (or not) wondering what happens in a tiny place like Luxembourg. Well I've just been looking at some photos we took a few weeks ago. Early on the 25th April (well we thought 10am was early for Luxembourg) we walked into town to find it packed full of people! Very strange for this hour on a public holiday.  And no, nothing to do with Anzac day. Instead it was Emaischen.

We have been told that this is one of the few uniquely Luxembourgish traditions, and it involves small clay bird whistles. Lots of them. Old ones and new ones, for sale. You may wonder as we did why so many people were pushing and pressing to buy these clay birds, but apparently they are collectable. And everyone had the day off work to celebrate, well, bird whistles I guess!

new ones

old ones

these ones look like chickens

more new ones

 
And a festive occasion in Luxembourg would not be complete without beer and sausages, even at 10am (Personally I prefer to stick to eating muesli for breakfast). And there was even an organ grinder - with a stuffed monkey!

So that is something new we learnt about Luxembourg this year. Fortunately for us, we could celebrate Anzac day with a bunch of other kiwis in the park. (For once, the Aussies were definitely outnumbered).

There are alot of public holidays in May/June due to catholic church traditions; we've just had Ascension day and Whit Monday is coming up. And then the Duke's Birthday is on June 23, which of course isn't really his b'day, but just the annual Luxembourg day celebrations and fireworks. So we get to finish the school year on a festive note!

bicycles, bridges and tulips

In recent weeks we have done something that we haven't done since we were teenagers.  We have gone bike riding - twice!    Hiring a bike to ride in Europe is like using a pay phone.  Very easy, and most cities have a system where you can check out, or check in, a bike at stations  all over town.

I'm not so keen on cycling in traffic, but in the Netherlands we went to a large national park near Arnhem where the bikes were free, so you just grabbed one and went.  It was fun and I only had to avoid crashing into other cyclists.  I am not the best bike rider, and I put that down to not having the opportunity to learn until I was 13.  Just a little late for it to be natural.  But the best part of this park was the gallery in the middle with a worthy collection of Van Gogh paintings - what a treat!

Bikes are what stuck out the most in the Netherlands - I presume they are all born on one.  Certainly we saw lots of infants and children on the back, or in the cart in the front (big wheelbarrow like contraptions that can hold up to 3 children).  In fact, being a pedestrian is a risky business as the bikes seem to have the right of way, everywhere.   I know I stepped out in front of many cyclists, but it was a very appealing approach to personal transport.

Of course the reason they are all happy to cycle so much is that the biggest hill they have to climb is the gentle rise of a bridge over a canal. Phil thought it very graceful to watch the pendulum like rythym of bikes crossing bridges; Bridges over canals that were lined with boats. So the dutch must be big on boating too.

Back to art.  This was one of our main reasons for wanting to visit Amsterdam. We agree that Vincent van Gogh was an outstanding artist and we wanted to see lots of his paintings; And we did and they were great. I wish I could go back again and again to feast on his brush work. Better again, just have some of his paintings hanging on our own walls (dreams are free). The other treats were 1. The MC Escher gallery in Den Haag (The Hague). Yet another brilliant mind, but this one focused on exquisite detail, mathematics and design; and 2. Visiting Rembrandt's 300 year old house in Amsterdam with a special exhibition of his stunning etchings.

MC Escher

We timed our visit for spring so that we could go to the tulip gardens - a place called Keukenhof.  Somehow I managed to pick the busiest day of the season to visit - the day of the huge flower parade - so by noon we had to share the park with literally thousands of other people, all trying to stay off the grass even when there was no path left to share.   The flowers were nothing short of magnificent.  Beautiful. Enchanting.  And in the surrounding fields the flowers are grown like rainbows; not just tulips, but hyacinths, narcissus (daffodils) and iris.  We spent 5 hours in the park looking at flowers and it was only the crowds that pushed us to leave.

Our final stop was Delft, the town famous for blue and white pottery.   For us, Delft is famous for wonderful food at reasonable prices.  We used the opportunity to celebrate our anniversary one night and my birthday the next night (well they were our pent up excuses to indulge in one Michellin star fine cuisine).   The chef introduced us to some palate tingling cheeses which we were subsequently able to buy from a local speciality shop to bring some home and extend the taste sensation.  The most memorable was the Delft Blue - definitely a challenger to a good Kapiti version.  This is Delft below.

We didn't see many windmills, but it wouldn't be a blog about Holland without a photo of one so here it is (snapped on the highway).   My final thought is of friendly people.  The country is full of them and that made our visit so much more enjoyable.

a brush with Brussels

This is a chocolate shop in Brussels (Bruxelles) and the Belgians are right about one thing...chocolate is definitely a cure for some things!   I think I have mentioned before the wonders of Belgian chocolate.  YUM.
Last weekend I got to look around Brussels while Phil was supervising a group of boys attending a mathematics competition (exciting stuff).  The first thing I noticed about the city is the confusion of signage duplications, as everything, and in particular street names, are written in both flemish and french.  This can be most confusing if you are looking for a street by the french name, and the only sign you can see is in Flemish - the link is often far from obvious.   At least identifying the chocolate shops is easy, and there are plenty of those (many with free samples!).
Then there is the Grand Place (central square), which certainly puts the grand into place, partly due to the lavish use of gilded decorations.  Most of the buildings are 400 years old, and many were built as guild houses for things like the bakers and beer makers.  The exception is the state hall, which is 700 years old and has a tower of truly big proportions - certainly too big to easily fit into any photo even with my wide angle lense turned sideways.
 



Many people think that Germany is the beer capital of the world, but I would argue that the Belgians are more passionate about it.  |The story goes that the belgians were advised to drink beer instead of water to avoid the plague.  So they did, and the habit stuck.  Beer became a steady source of income for the many monasteries that exist in Belgium, and these trappist beers (made in limited production) remain extremely popular.

Menus everywhere are dominated by seafood, which obviously has something to do with being so near the sea, but the passion for seafood seems indomitable.  In comparison, New Zealand is surrounded by the ocean, but seems to take a more balanced approach to diet.  I have to note that when one travels through Belgium it is not common to see sheep or cattle in the paddocks, so maybe the comparative lack of other protein options contributes to the seafood diet.  I couldn't help but think of a particular friend (K) who would love a gastronomic visit to Brussels!

And for those of you who, like me, enjoyed a good read of Tintin when you were a bit younger, there are the delights of wandering around the old city streets searching for cartoon art which certainly brightens up a grey city day. There are about 30 wall murals to discover by a wide range of artists.

Finally, and most importantly, I have to mention the highlight of my explorations which was the museum of musical instruments.   What an amazing place.   I spent two hours wandering around looking at the most fascinating instruments, while my headphones would tune in and out of the wifi signals which gave samples of music played by the instruments.  I wish I could have purchased some of the recordings on the spot - it was wonderful.  The final picture has nothing at all to do with the museum, but it does have a bell on top that gets rung by a little man.  This is a very modern piece that I imagine one day will be a tourist attraction

I'm dreaming of a white christmas...

 

This is Luxembourg city this week.  It's even whiter than last week.  Not a big deal for some of you, but a huge deal for this town.

We decided we had to change the words of the song 'I'm dreaming of a white christmas, just like the ones we used to know..'  because of course this is still new to us!     So now we're singing 'I'm dreaming of a white christmas, just like the ones in the movies ....'

Our landlord tells us that Luxembourg hasn't seen this much snow in 30 years.  And they are certainly not equipped to deal with it, even the main shopping street in the city is piled high with snow and as you can see, even good for a sleigh or two!   And there is not a snow shovel left on sale in the city - so Phil has been borrowing our landlord's to clear the foot path in front and just enough to get the car in and out of our garage for essential trips out.

If you are up with the news you will know that travel in Europe has been severely affected by all the white stuff, so we are very glad to be staying at home this year.

We wish you all a Joyeux Noel!

the big freeze

 Last week we had what they call 'the big freeze'.   Basically, that means it gets cold enough for long enough that the ground starts to freeze and ponds etc along with it.  And it was cold, averaging about -5 degrees all week.  And those ducks are still swimming about in the parts of ponds that aren't frozen.

This week it has been warmer, but on wednesday we got the biggest snowfall in Luxembourg for 20 years, resulting in a 'snow day' to Phil's great delight, as they cancelled school yesterday!   So we decided to go for a walk and kick (and throw) some snow about, and enjoy the beauty of an almost monochromatic winter palette:

So what do people do in weather like this in Luxembourg?   They go to the Christmas market and eat and drink and shop.  Looking at these photos, I noticed how the festiveness of the Christmas markets helps to explain the pleasure of colour and light when there is none anywhere else.  

Barcelona by Gaudi

After the summer holidays here we decided we needed a rest from travelling, but I had already booked a trip to Barcelona, so that is where we went last week even though it would have been more restful to stay at home. Barcelona was another one of those places on my ‘must see’ list, and with good reason. If you are not into art or architecture then I recommend that you just look at the pics – they’ll give you the general idea!

There is a lot to do in Barcelona, which is a city of five million people, but we like looking at art so we went to no less than 7 art galleries on a combined ticket. Three were excellent, two were good and two were verging on rubbish in our opinion.

The best was the MNAC – the national gallery. I kind of expected to be a little bored, as while i like art, I often find wandering around huge galleries exhausting. But I was delightfully surprised by some 12th century spanish art that showed amazing expression and creativity instead of the usual flat, blank staring images. I even wanted to take a few pieces home with me (see first photo) but they would only let me take a photo ‘sin flash’. Good enough.

The rubbish was modern art. We did see some interesting 20th century art by Joan Miro who extensively documented everything he did and wrote notes about what he was trying to achieve, and [probably consequently] some of his work showed thoughtfulness and intrigue. Then we looked at work by Antoni Tapis who, in a film we watched, admitted that he tried not to think about what he was doing. It showed. This confirmed our suspicisions about alot of modern art – that there is not a lot of thought or talent behind it. 

We still don’t understand why they think it is worthy to exhibit every last little scribble (when some of them are not good) just because someone does some brilliant work. If you are a succesful novelist and you write a dud, critics will tell you so and not buy the book. Indeed, you probably would rather sweep your disappointments under the rug yourself. For example, Picasso did some brilliant work, but some of his sketches show no inkling of this brilliance. Hmm, is that the point? Still, if you are paying €8-10 Euros entrance fees (which we didn’t), what are you getting for your money?

Sagrada familia

The main reason for our trip to BCN was not the football, (or the art), but the legacy of Antoni Gaudi, who died in 1926 when he was hit by a tram. At the time he was full swing into his masterpiece the Sagrada Familia, which is a church with three facades. Some of the basilica and his workshop were destroyed by bombing during the Spainsh civil war in 1936.

Gaudi only completed one facade, and since his death no less than five architects have taken up the challenge. Currently Mark Burry from NZ is the executive architect, and they have introduced computer modelling into the project. There are a legion of builders on site, and they expect it to be completed in my lifetime. I haven’t met anyone else yet who actually went inside the church, but it was well worth the half hour wait. Incredible. Like nothing we have ever seen or imagined. It was like something out of a sci-fi movie.  And it is still unfinished. It impressed me more than the Sistine Chapel (which is a painting of course not a scuplture).

Casa Mila

Casa Mila

The other Gaudi works were fun, very clever, flirtatous, and most importantly ergonomically harmonious. What I mean is that the seating was comfortable and the spaces made for man to be in. He seemed to understand spatial organisation, so when you walk through a room you don’t just think ‘oh wow – all the walls are curved’, but ‘this feels right, I could live here’. I think that is what made him an artistic genius. That, and the ability to throw up the lofty irregular towers and cantanary arches of the Sagrada familia without sophisticated computer modelling.

Park Guell

Park Guell

Gaudi’s work was part of the modernism movement in architecture, which was the spanish response to Art Nouveau. And there are other buildings in Barcelona built by Gaudi’s contemporaries that are also noteworthy. We went to a jazz concert in one, which had to be seen to be believed as it was completely over the top, and so poorly laid out inside that a lot of us had seats with no view of the stage; fortunately the theatre was a spectacle in itself.

Amidst all of this architecture and art, there were also roman ruins hidden in the old city and very recent glass enrobed office buildings that attempt to defy the laws of physics. I applaud the Catalonians for their insight to invest in new ideas both past and present. It is an area where I feel New Zealand has always been weak, and even now, only Wellington seems to have had the courage to be adventurous with public buildings (whether you like the new airport or not, it is most definitely courageous).

So we liked Barcelona, and I think I would like to go back in 15 years and visit the Sagrada Familia again, hopefully in a more complete state, when the interior is more free to wander in. I wonder if they will still charge to go in then - probably. As an aside, in England they charge for EVERYTHING including notable churches; in France churches are most definitely free; and in Spain it depends. In Luxembourg the cathedral is free.