Unexpected Luxembourg

Last weekend a dear friend from Copenhagen - a fellow globetrotter - came to visit me in Brussels. We met at the railway station and the first thing we said to each other was that it would be cool to go somewhere for a day trip. Brussels has a central location both within its own country but also in relation to the capitals of its neighboring countries. And so we bought spontaneously train tickets to Luxembourg!

I've spoken with a lot of people lately about the country but no one has been very excited. It is home to banks, European parliament and tax-avoiding companies. It is small, probably boring, only high buildings. With these low expectations we could only win!

And indeed, we were positively surprised - Luxembourg was nothing like we expected. Although, we could tell that it is a small country because we received the "Welcome to Luxembourg" -text message only after arriving at the station. We bought a coffee and started to walk around. We saw the Judiciary City, the Notre-Dam Cathedral and the shopping street with mainly high end brands. We walked past the Grand Ducal Palace, went down to Grund to walk around a little and saw so many bakeries selling amazing looking pastries. And just by walking around and exploring the city we managed to fill one day - it's not that small after all!

Luxembourg City has basically everything to offer a city lover like me would look for during a city trip. It has its more modern part, but also a historical part with more character. When we were there, Christmas markets were being built, Asian tourists were walking around in groups with their selfie-stick and shopping streets were busy like in any capital city on a Saturday afternoon. The areas where we were walking were not destroyed by ugly and boring looking office buildings, but had its own appearance. 

In many aspects the city was actually very similar to Brussels and it didn't really feel like we went abroad - the weather was the same, the architecture was similar and on the street we could hear many different languages spoken, just like in Brussels. French dominated from what I heard, which is interesting because they have their own language as well. Anyway, people were very friendly and spoke better English compared to my experience so far in Brussels.

Luxembourg is also known for its castles, but we focused on our day trip only on the city. So plenty of things to explore during a next visit!