Luxembourg: the alluring myth of Melusina & the reality of rest
Date : Friday 13 October, 2023
Contents
Luxembourg: small is beautiful
“Where did you say you were going again, Switzerland?”, I was asked a few times as our August trip was approaching. With an exception of one friend who’d recently been to Luxembourg and loved it, everyone else was intrigued, if not puzzled, by our choice.
Luxembourg is not the most popular holiday destination. In fact, it remains pretty obscure, not just because of its modest size, but a general lack of presence in international media and culture (how many famous Luxembourgian artists do you know? Zero?). But going to unpopular places has its perks — you become an explorer, discovering paths and places by yourself, as opposed to recreating a page from TripAdvisor. And chances are, you’re not going to hear “Andalusia? Ah yes, we go there every summer”.
The reason we went to Luxembourg was because of an painting exhibition I had at the Ancien Cinema in Vianden. It opened in the last weekend of July and lasted a month, so we decided that, besides going for the opening, we would also spend the last week of the exhibition in Luxembourg. By that point, my summer had been quite intense — I had travelled to New York, Philadelphia and Washington; visited friends in Copenhagen, spent a weekend in Lille, spent another weekend visiting Ghent & Bruges, and had hosted my family. I was looking forward to discovering yet another place but I was also tired from the hustle and bustle of the previous weeks. Instead of the usual enthusiasm and energy that always accompany on the way to my destination, I was apathetic and cranky. But as we arrived in Luxembourg City on a late Saturday evening, we were greeted by a pleasantly peaceful ambiance: almost no people, no noise, no cars. It was mysterious and strangely soothing. And incidentally, the first thing I saw as we found ourselves in the flat of a friend who had very kindly let us house-sit her apartment during her own travels, was a book on meditation. I instinctively felt I was in the right place.
Luxembourg is indeed small, which is ironic as it’s considered to be the European economic powerhouse, famous for its GDP (the highest per-capita of OECD countries), high wages and, erm, controversial tax breaks (LuxLeaks scandal which erupted in 2014 cast light on how Luxembourg helped hundreds of multi-national companies like Apple, Ikea, and Pepsi save billions of dollars in tax payments). But the financial sector appears to be the country’s largest asset, and other sectors seem pale in comparison. The visual art scene is small and uneventful — the National Museum of History and Art (MNHA) offers a nice but rather modest section of contemporary art (half of which was unfortunately closed for renovation during our visit). The building of MUDAM – Grand Duke Jean Museum of Modern Art, designed by the late Chinese-American architect Ieoh Ming Pei (famous for the Louvre Pyramind in Paris) is indeed impressive but I didn’t find their exhibitions particularly interesting, in contrast to the fantastic Family of Man exhibition at Clervaux Castle. The latter, which incidentally has been granted UNESCO world heritage status, consists of 503 photographs by 273 photographers from 68 different countries, compiled by Edward Steichen, the American artist of Luxembourgish descent, for the “Museum of Modern Art” in New York in 1955. It’s a splendid collection and a moving tribute to the various stages of man’s life. Not the easiest to get to (it took us 2 hours to get there on a combination of trains and buses) but definitely worth visiting.
Ironically, one of the most interesting places in Luxembourg City was a gallery located in the tunnel called “Am Tunnel” which was built between 1992 and 1993 to connect three buildings of Spuerkess bank. The tunnel encompasses a space for rotating exhibitions (we saw an exhibition of Raymond Clement’s photographs of jazz musicians) and a space dedicated to none other than Edward Steichen. After the MNHA, Clervaux and Dudelange collections, Am Tunnel is the fourth permanent collection of his works.
The search for independent galleries however was not so fruitful. But then again I didn’t go to Luxembourg to catch the latest exhibitions and events, or be bombarded with cultural attractions. As a rule, I tend to seek inspiration, not stimulation. And I’m pleased to say that the country offers enough visual delight that it more than makes up for the shortages in artistic events. There’s a lot of beauty, charm and attention to detail in the least expected places. From kebab shops to supermarkets, I had a feeling that Luxembourg pays a little more attention to the aesthetics than many other European cities I’ve visited. The city has an aura of wealth, elegance and refinement. Second-hand clothes shops don’t sell battered Primark dresses for €5 — instead, you’ll find vintage Pradas and Diors. With 13 starred restaurants and a total of 16 Michelin stars, Luxembourg has the most stars per capita of any city in the world (to compare: Poland, which is 121 times larger than Luxembourg, has only 3 starred restaurants).
The city of Luxembourg is on the UNESCO World Heritage List and its Old Town has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1994. The city’s main fortifications date from the 16th century to 1867, when they were partially disassembled, and Corniche is considered to be Europe’s most beautiful balcony.
My default activity as a traveller is walking, walking, walking. Being surrounded by a delightful scenery upon those walks contributed to the mission of recharging my batteries.
Multilingualism and Diversity
How do you define a relaxing city? What are the things that put you at ease? For me, the important aspect is to feel safe and relaxed in terms of who I am. Not standing out and being able to comfortably disappear in the crowd takes away a lot of the tension one can feel in a foreign place.
Luxembourg is a multilingual and multicultural country — almost half of its population is of foreign origin (the largest group being the Portuguese) and there are approx. 211,700 cross-border employees on a daily basis. In fact, around 70% of the country’s workforce is composed of immigrants or cross-border workers. According to Georges Hausemer, the interaction between 160 nationalities on such a small territory, “is rather perceived in and by Luxembourg as an opportunity to maintain its dual European and Luxembourg consciousness, to draw new strengths in the peaceful cohabitation of all concerned and to serve as an example for a future harmonious Europe.”
What this means in practice is that it’s one of those rare places where you don’t feel like an intruder. The fact that in 2022 the population of Luxembourg City was 132,800, of which 38,700 were Luxembourgers and 94,000 were foreigners, means that it’s unlikely that anyone will assume you’re a tourist, unless you explicitly tell them. And there’s no one official language, there are 3 of them (Luxembourgish, French and German), not to mention the fact that English is widely spoken as well. With my French being rather rusty, I’m always very self-conscious when I get an opportunity to speak it, especially as the French tend to be rather critical towards foreigners murdering their language. But Luxembourg was the first place where my accent and grammatical mistakes didn’t seem to matter.
Nature
For a lot of people, cities are by default fairly stressful and the quickest way to relax is to go to the country and be close to nature. The question is: how far do you need to go to access it? Now, some people think that Luxembourg is “just like the Netherlands”, but despite the similarity of their respective flags, these two countries couldn’t be more different. To start with, while the Netherlands is flat, Luxembourg is mountainous — the prominent Bock Promontory rises from the Alzette valley with a height difference of 45 metres. Because of its landscape, the city has two elevators which can be used to go up or down to the Old City: the Pfaffenthal Panoramic Elevator and Ascenseur Elevator Plateau St. Esprit Grund. The frequent climbing of the stairs reminded me of Lisbon, though the slippery cobblestone streets in the capital of Portugal added an extra level of difficulty. As a cyclist, I’m very happy with the landscape of the Netherlands (and with the country in general), but what I do miss is having an easy access to the mountains outside of the city. The Netherlands is such a dense country that one city blends into another, and finding wilderness is not an easy feat. In Luxembourg, it takes about an hour on a local bus to get from the capital to the 112km long Mullerthal Trail which goes through a gorgeous valley full of beautiful caves, rock formations and forestry. We spent two days hiking down the trail, saw an extraordinary diversity in the forest landscape and for several hours felt utterly disconnected from the city life.
In Luxembourg, there is no shortage of relaxing outdoors activities. You can walk, hike and cycle, and the bike rental places enable you to return the bike in any of their locations, which gives fantastic flexibility of sightseeing. We spent one day cycling from Wasserbillig, where we had borrowed our bikes, all the way to Schengen, with a little detour on the French side of the border. With barely any other cyclists on the route, this 6-hour cycle alongside the Moselle river through vineyards was the most beautiful cycling trip I’ve done so far.
A hop, skip and a jump to Germany
One of the perks of being a small country is the proximity to one’s neighbours. No matter where in Luxembourg you are, it’s very easy to get to Germany, Belgium and France. Which is why, besides our little detour to France, we decided to do a day trip to Trier (formerly and traditionally known in English as Trèves). Trier is not just a city close to the border. It was founded by the Celts in the late 4th century BC as Treuorum and is considered to be Germany’s oldest city. It was also one of the four capitals of the Roman Empire during the Tetrarchy period in the late 3rd and early 4th centuries, and to this day there are many well-preserved Roman and medieval buildings, such as the Porta Nigra, the best-preserved Roman city gate north of the Alps; the 2nd century AD Roman bridge and the ruins of three Roman baths.
It’s a charming little city with an impressive history and hearty German food. And all this a mere 47 minutes away from Luxembourg City on public transport, which since 2020 has been completely free across the whole country. With the goal of cutting carbon emissions, Luxembourg has gone in a very different direction than many other European countries, where rural bus routes are disappearing and train travel is often prohibitively expensive. On the other hand, it’s worth pointing out that almost everything else in Luxembourg is extremely expensive, so free transportation gives a bit of a relief when it comes to expenditure. But has this made everyone abandon their car? Not at all. Because of the low cost of petrol (yes, this is the other cheap thing) and Luxembourgians’ love for driving (the country has one of the highest levels of cars per inhabitant — just below 700 cars per 1,000 people — and the highest number of luxury cars per capita), most people still drive to work. Nevertheless, there is an ongoing effort to change people’s attitudes and continuously improve the railway network, which should be applauded, even if it’s not yet bringing the desired outcome.
Melusina
The beautiful hikes and walks I did during that week in Luxembourg worked as a fantastic de-stressor. But as much as the external environment affects our well-being, and spending a week in a lovely place close to nature can definitely help us relax, what is most important is what’s in our head.
On the third or fourth day of our Luxembourgian holiday, we were strolling down the river Alzette, when we saw a statue of Melusina. According to the local legend, Melusina married Count Siegfried of the Ardennes and the morning after their wedding, she magically created the Castle of Luxembourg on the Bock rock, which is the historical center point of Luxembourg City. There was one thing she asked though: she needed to be left alone in absolute privacy every Saturday. For years, her husband respected her wish but eventually curiosity took over and as he followed his wife into her chamber one Saturday and watched her bathe, he discovered Melusina’s secret: her bottom half was a fishtail. He cried out in surprise, and upon seeing her husband, Melusina disappeared into the depths of the river Alzette, never to be seen again.
The moral of the legend is clear: every woman needs some me-time; some uninterrupted rest, time to engage in a pleasurable activity without having to explain herself. And we, women, are not particularly good at that. I know I’m not — I’ll fill my calendar to the brim, say “yes” to any project, assignment or invitation, and mop the kitchen floor before I allow myself some downtime.
In the weeks leading up to my trip, I was feeling very much like I had been swallowed by a river. Drowning in mental and physical activity, and struggling to come to the surface. Therefore, I went to Luxembourg not only because of my exhibition, or to visit another country, but to finally give myself some rest. And by rest, I mean stress- and guilt-free ability to not be productive and efficient, mentally stimulated and alert. Instead, I was spending time with nature, I resumed meditating, I began listening to what I truly wanted to be doing as opposed to what I thought I should be doing, and towards the end of my stay in Luxembourg, my mind was already much more clear. And a clear mind is absolutely necessary for any creative work.
Coming across the beautiful sculpture of Melusine by Serge Ecker during a stroll down the river Alzette was a reminder of the importance of my private time, my mental space.
And while I thoroughly enjoyed many aspects of Luxembourg, this is the most cherished memory I brought back from this trip.
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