Thursday 14th August 2015 – Luxembourg → Liège
Ahh, air-con. Sometimes it’s the little luxuries that make all the difference. Our room at the Ibis Budget in Parc Bouillon, Luxembourg, may have been stripped down to the bare bones, but at least it had that glorious hum of cold air pushing back against the heatwave outside. The only catch? The place isn’t exactly central — a fair trek to the heart of the city.
Still, we were up and out early, walking twenty minutes into Battembourg for what turned out to be a pretty unsavoury breakfast. But honestly, life’s too short to obsess over the finer details of nutrition. You can Google your way into neurosis, or you can just eat what’s in front of you and accept that one way or another, we’re all going the same way.
From there, the real gift of Luxembourg kicked in: free public transport. Free. Imagine that in the UK! I’d live on buses. (I did read that the Welsh government has introduced £1 travel for 16-21-year-olds — which is something — but still, Luxembourg is in another league.) We hopped on a bus into the city and spent a few hours mooching around in the rising heat.
One of the day’s highlights was stumbling across the Pétrusse Skatepark, sunk into a deep valley with a colossal flyover soaring above. It looked as if someone had air-lifted the Menai Bridge and dropped it into the middle of the city. A little further along, we found a boarded-up church carved into the rockface. Its iron doors were locked, but peering inside we could just make out a surreal video projection of flowers and bees looping on the wall, paired with a spacey soundtrack. Either that, or we had ingested hallucinogens and they were kicking in... (see here)
By midday the sun was merciless, so we retreated to the station in search of shelter on a train. The first departure was for Troisvierges, which sounded promising until we arrived and found… absolutely nothing. Not to be beaten, we boarded another train to Liège. Switzerland might let you ride free once in a while, but once in Belgium they have an exclusive gender: Ticket Inspector, so I coughed up the £30 fare without hesitation.
Just when we thought we were making good time, the day unravelled. Engineering works threw us onto a replacement bus service that crawled through the Belgian countryside. Pretty though the scenery was, the vehicle itself was an oven on wheels, hotter even than the buses I’d sweated through in New Delhi. By the time we finally reached Liège we were medium-to-well-done and into the evening, so any chance of exploring the city today was lost.
At least our apartment in the Walburge neighbourhood was welcoming. After a short taxi ride from the gleaming, space-age train station, we arrived at this homely little flat. Food and beer rounded off the evening. No sightseeing, no late-night wanderings, but after a day of unsavoury breakfasts, surreal churches, and oven-hot buses, home comforts were exactly what we needed.
