Luxembourg City, Luxembourg

August 24th we woke up in Luxembourg. The lack of AC was annoying, and sadly the front desk seemed confused about the notion that they should fix the problem or provide an alternate room. Eventually the "helpful" staff provided a big *fan*. Although the "helpful" lady assured us there was no other room available the internet suggested rooms were in fact available.

From the rather high temperature in the room we assumed it would be blue sky and baking outside. When we ventured out it proved that it was just like home: grey above, green below. We may have been the only tourists to celebrate this fact.

A currently pitiful but sometime mighty river runs through Luxembourg City and a giant ravine slices right through town as a result.

Local messaging clarified religious mysteries of the ages.

Across a bridge over the ravine we found a sort of market. The market had, among other things, sweet crystal decanters one might use to store ones scotch in.

And furniture built to withstand tank attack at low prices.

The random ravine continued to be striking whenever a street ended at a railing and a drop.

We found a partner sign to Jamie's favorite from Hong Kong (http://rptripnotes.blogspot.com/2010/01/hong-kong.html).

In some places the gap between old and new has been formally bridged. From the new side.

Sometimes the fountains are confusing. At least the goats are happy.

Another consequence of the ravine: Neumunster Abbey, which is down in the low area known as the "Grund" can be looked *down* on from other parts of the city. In this case, from the ridge riddled with tunnels known as the Bock Casemates.

Far below the river is bridged.

Further away a castle rings a much newer building. The effect is quite neat.

And then ... time to enter the tunnels.

From cave mouths on the cliffs you can look out to see the Grund and whatever the area on the other side is called.

The Casemates stretch for something like 17km, of which some has been collapsed, some is left open because collapsing it would likely dump rock into important places (like the Grund), and some of whats left is open to tourists. Tourists can access several levels, meaning you get to go down staircases meant for people with small feet and limited height.

Heck even the halls are sometimes a bit tight. And lit in not-the-least-bit-ominous colors.

Note the viewports in the cliffs under the remaining old walls.

To visit the Grund it appeared likely this bridge should be traversed so we went in search of it.

It seemed likely to be this way. In as much as this path lead downhill and the Grund was definitely down of us.

It turned out down did indeed lead down and once all the way down there was a bridge.

We crossed, found a cafe in the Grund, and obtained nachos. They are less industrial in Europe perhaps? Good either way.

From the Grund you can look up at the Casemates.

And other parts of town.

Further on past Neumünster Abbey another hill arises, from which you can look across at the Casemates and the treasure they were built to protect.

For reasons that remain unclear the bars were all closed.

This may have related to the presence of an excess number of customers.

Despite the lack of people and open bars there was at least one cool car.

After that we decided to head back to the populated part of town. The route was kind of awesome. Just cross the Grund moat and follow the narrow path along the cliffs that are full of secret passageways and topped by fortifications.

And then look back and realize you have climbed well above the area you were walking around in a few minutes ago.

And that some cliffs have built-in churches.

All that walking will make one tired, better relax for a few minutes before dinner with some WCS SC2. Go Jaedong.

A sudden outbreak of torrential rainfall prolonged the WCS watching period.

Food is quite expensive in Luxembourg except for kebab shops. It's like a local fast food but 73% more awesome than something like McDonalds. Also as the meat is basically always ready it really is fast. 4 EUR for an awesome kebab sandwich. Or, for Rod, 8 EUR for two.

Munich to Luxembourg City, Luxembourg

On the morning of August 23rd we headed to the Munich Hauptbahnof, with our travel plan carefully plotted using the Eurail Expedia app. We needed to hit the ticket office to reserve spots as some legs of the trip required it. The guy behind the counter said our route sucked, proposed a new one involving an apparently scenic tour of the Rhine, and booked it all up. This yielded us a three train sequence instead of train, train, bus and got us reserved first class spots on all trains for 16 EUR. The app he used to look for tickets beat the hell out of the Android app (which is good, just the agents one is better); lets get that available on Android!

The only downside to the new plan was a delay in departure so we wound up with a couple hours to kill at the Hauptbahnof. Luckily there was a Starbucks with both power and free wifi so it wasn't too rough.

Upon boarding the train we discovered our reserved seats were occupied, seemingly by people with a reservation for the same train, wagon, and seats! After a bit of chaos it was determined their reservation, although requested for the 23rd, had been made for the 21st by the ticket agent so we got our seats :)

Chris invested 5 EUR in paid wifi, which worked nicely near Munich. Unfortunately as we got further away it degraded to near useless for anything beyond viewing lightweight sites. No using the blogger editor! An attempt to speedtest it went somewhat poorly: it loaded but never got beyond the selecting server by ping stage. Not impressive for a paid service. At roughly this point it was announced the rails were obstructed by fire (?!) so we were backtracking and re-routing. Shortly thereafter we backed up for a while then stopped.

We reached Frankfurt 90 minutes late, which meant we'd missed our connection. They booked us onto two *more* trains, this time an ICE Frankfurt => Kulblenz, then a regional to Luxembourg. Not as much fun as our all first class booked route as regional s have no reservation.

The ICE to Kulblenz contained people who felt they had reserved our seats again, this time because they were confused about ICE 26 vs wagon 26. No problem. Then our train managed to arrive late to Kulblenz, helpfully causing us to miss the train to Luxembourg. No problem, take a later regional from Kulblenz to Trier, then another regional from Trier to Luxembourg. This plan allowed 6 minutes to switch trains in Trier, and arrive at around 10 pm. The train from Kulblenz to Trier departed 3 minutes late. It was a double-decker, a first for both of us. By about the third stop we estimated we were 5+ minutes late. The ticket checker confirmed we were running about 7 minutes behind, which seemed to bode poorly for a 6 minute connection window until he said he'd call ahead and have the Trier => Luxembourg train wait. We relaxed a little but retained crossed fingers.

At Trier it turned out our next train was right across from us so we ran aboard, once again to the upper deck. Arriving in Luxembourg at night is a bit odd; it has few city lights visible from the train so you don't feel like you have entered a city at all.

In case I made the trip sound horrible, it's worth mentioning that the route from Frankfurt to Kulblenz spends a good bit of time following the Rhine, which is covered with towns and castles on the hills overlooking the river, basically forming a long series of postcard worthy views that are hard to photograph with direct sun hitting your unopennable window that hasn't recently been washed. The double decker to Trier also spends time on the waterside but in the dark with curved windows with interior light causing massive reflections

Even the Kulblenz station has a castle!

A double decker car. And some regional train luxury. Nothing to an ICE first class seat!

Finally we arrived in Luxembourg, only to discover the City Hotel had provided us with an in-room AC unit that primarily served to produce VERY loud noises and vibrations. The night manager agreed this was unusable - "you cannot sleep veez zees" - and provided a fan. Sadly the fan wasn't quite up to the job so we spent a rather sleepless night in a very hot room. On the positive side the beds and pillows were way better than the ones in Munich, the shower had good pressure, and the internet was both free and decent. Unlike Munich and it's pay-only internets ... grumble mumble grumble.

Munich Tour

August 22nd we were lucky enough to have a tour guide! On of Chris' fencing fellows met us and guided us around for a couple of hours. This was awesome as we got a good lay of the land and made it into places we might not have otherwise found. We started with St. Michaels (hopefully correct name...).

This was quiet eye catching. Really like the way it escapes it's borders.

The local mall has made considerable efforts to keep the passageways feeling fresh and airy. Beats the hell out of any passageway at Metrotown!

The next square we emerged into had many things whose names are uncertain. The yellow building is probably the Royal Residence.

Churches are always impressive.

The shattered and mostly repaired statue was particularly striking.

Sometimes it's easier to just paint pillars and such than to build them; this isn't infinite-budget Vienna after all. The result is actually pretty cool!

Apparently Bowflex has had competition as a do-all home gym for some time. A new build of an old design.

This is not a good place to walk through hungry.

Luckily our next stop was the Hofbräuhaus. Pretzel with your cliche?

Lunch was good, and as is traditional accompanied by a litre of very good dark beer.

Inside the band had begun to play.

In Marienplatz nearby stalls with food and drinks of all hearty kinds are ringed by cafes. Luckily our guide knew the secrets and guided us to marzipan goodness.

At this point, after an espresso and some clarification of where on the map we might be, our guide abandoned us. We visited another church but we aren't strictly certain which one. Cool stairs tho.

And wall-mounted headstones.

And of course the obligatory stern man with moustache.

We decided to see some of the Isar river and the Englischer Garten. Sadly some signs were confusing so we took an indirect route.

Eventually, after a detour of maybe even five minutes The Wrong Way (tm), we found the river.

Some stretches were full of sun bathers.

In the parkland near the river there are proto-Ents. That is one leathery dude!

And old beamers.

Across the water was St. Lukas modest facility.

And a little further up some sort of imposing building.

At some points the river has narrow branches, creating surprise surfing areas. Well, at least one.

Inside a Diana temple south of the gardens we heard some rather decent street music.

After that we found the Augustiner brewhouse. Their beer apparently has VERY old recipes. It sort of shows; the beer is very good but lacks the complexity of flavor of more modern beers. Not to say it's bad by any stretch; it is quite good in fact.

Having visited Hofbräuhaus and Augustiner with good results we decided to go in search of further super fresh local beer. Our plan was to reserve tickets for the next days travel to Luxembourg City, Luxembourg - utterly impossible, courtesy of the byzantine half-functional logic of the reservation kiosk - and then find more beer.

After the ticket failure, we headed for Löwenbräu.

Löwenbräu dark is very good. Their pilsner is also decent.

A few beers and a nice chat with a well-travelled English family later we contemplated heading for Paulaner but ultimately decided that our 2.83L consumption for the day was sufficient and called it a day. Rough going but we survived our first German city!