We made it to Mulhouse, France from Luxembourg City after what has felt like a very long day today. We picked this "hotel" I'm writing from because it's very cheap. But I would say it's a glorified hostel in a very seedy part of town. There are communal toilets and showers. There is a group of men out front in the car park who just loiter and look intimidating. This is the kind of place where it would behoove you to stick a frown on your face and make yourself look tough, and it wouldn't be surprising to me if there are drug deals happening in and around this place. But I'm not complaining as it's just for a night.
We made a stop in Perl, Germany for a small break and coffee earlier in the day. Going into Germany was as easy as getting off the motorway and crossing the river into the very small town of Perl. I was able to use a little bit of German, and the more I thought about it the more of the language came back to me. And after we left, we were forced to use a detour through several small towns among the green, rolling hills instead of the motorway. I liked this part because you don't think to go through the small villages. You see more of the country that way.
But we passed through Merzig and Saalouis in Germany, passing clusters of large wind turbines, and we eventually crossed the French border at Creutzwald where we drove the A4 around a French national reserve and through Strasbourg. And with the sun fading and mountain ranges surrounding us on either side, we drove through the valley towards Mulhouse. And now that we're in Mulhouse, it's near the end of the valley as it's surrounded by hills on three sides. But Basel, Switzerland is very near us and it's getting exciting. We see Switzerland license plates around us more, and we know the Apls are very near.
About Luxembourg City...we came away stained, bruised and battered, but with great stories. As it turns out, Rocky the bull terrier is not good with other dogs. He gets thoroughly overexcited every time he sees a dog, and Danny has to constantly yank him back on his leash. We were sitting on the side of a steep grassy hill in the canyon that runs through the center of the city, with the Petrusse stream at the center. Danny ran Rocky down the hill, but a smaller dog came running in from the right. Knowing Rocky was beginning to growl and get aggressive, Danny had to wrap him up and fall on him. It looked like a train wreck from where I was standing on the hill and I was surprised the dog was not hurt. The two went to ground hard, rolling a few times along the way, and coming very close to the fence surrounding a construction site. The owners of the loose dog never came down the hill to control it, so I had to get down there and get that dog away from Danny and his snarling pooch. We both were stained with grass and dirt, but Danny got some cuts on his hand and a welt on his forehead. But after we calmed down, we started laughing, and it turns out that was our only bad experience with the city. (And Rocky had a Go-Pro camera on his back; the footage was pretty great.)
Luxembourg City is beautiful, starting off with the canyons that run through the city and have paths down to the bottom. It has a giant cathedral (Cathedrale Notre-Dame) an aqueduct-looking Adolphe Bridge and is the home of the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, who lives in the Palais Grand Ducal, which has guards stationed out front. We even saw a changing of the guard today. Shockingly, that draws much less spectators than the one at Buckingham Palace in London. In addition, like England, there are areas in parks where you can exercise with machines using your own body weight. There were even some stationary climbing walls in this area. This is another city that deserves more than just a few hours of exploration.
So here's to the next few days going through the majestic Alps. I've seen pictures and videos of them, but of course they'll be much more please-get-me-a-new-pair-of-pants electrifying in person. Right now, our path is south towards the shadowy, undefined hills. But what lies along that path will be what I've really been waiting to see for more than a month now, and eventually Milan, Italy waits for us on the other side.
No comments:
Post a Comment