The Grand Duchy

Two of these people are Grand Dukes of Luxembourg, one is James Bond- try to guess who's who!:

(http://www.banzaj.pl/pictures/kultura/film/Filmy/James_Bond/james_bond_6.jpg, "Henri of Luxembourg (2009)" by א (Aleph) - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Henri_of_Luxembourg_(2009).jpg#/media/File:Henri_of_Luxembourg_(2009).jpg, http://pixshark.com/james-bond-pierce-brosnan-wallpaper.htm)

For Jochen's Dad's Christmas gift, a gift to see the city of Luxembourg City was gifted ( yes, my English is on point).  The Opa had never visited and was pretty excited to take some videos. Unfortunately it was very cold and rainy.

Luxembourg is an hour or so away and it was also my first time.  I was embarrassingly suprised to discover that the city is actually a giant 'castle' of sorts (LuxemBOURG Burg= Castle). Which brings up naming and language first.

As mentioned in a blog post about water and power from October, Luxembourg has a silly French/Germanesque language.  Luxembourg has existed for over a thousand years between the influence of it's original language, French, and German.  Here is just a recent history picture to give you an idea of the mix-up and fusion:

By Spanish_Inquisition (LuxembourgPartitionsMap_english.jpg) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Luxembourg has remained its own country, I'm going to imagine, in some part due to the awesome ramifications of Luxembourg city and the mystical power of money often associated with royal dynasties.  But, I haven't watched a documentary on it, so this is speculation.

The entire city is on top of a plateau that seems to have been completely fortified.  Here is a sunny day picture of a part of it that remains:

"Bockfelsen Luxemburg" by Roland Struwe. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bockfelsen_Luxemburg.jpg#/media/File:Bockfelsen_Luxemburg.jpg

And if you look closely across the gorges that surround the city, you notice lots of cleverly integrated buildings and doors/holes for fighting.  Here is another picture from a camera with more than 1.2 MB.

"Luxemburg Felsenbatterie-Kasematte Rham 2012-04" by Zinneke - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Luxemburg_Felsenbatterie-Kasematte_Rham_2012-04.jpg#/media/File:Luxemburg_Felsenbatterie-Kasematte_Rham_2012-04.jpg

We walked around and let the Opa satisfy his desire for 3 second video-clips of different sights.  It reminded me of an obsession a certain brother has...

Here is our short trip:

After searching for parking for an hour, we got to walking.  We started with the most famous landmark, the Gorge bridge:

 If you squint your eyes and pinch your nose it actually looks like this:

"Topography of Luxembourg IMG 0943" by Владимир Шеляпин - Own work. Licensed under CC0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Topography_of_Luxembourg_IMG_0943.JPG#/media/File:Topography_of_Luxembourg_IMG_0943.JPG

And looking the other direction:


The weather was somewhat gloomy, but it didn't slow down our videographer:

This is the whole blood-line of The Grinders:

We went inside the Notre Dame Cathedral but it was the middle of a service we didn't want to interrupt.

We walked to the Judicial center:

Photo-bombing and confusion about my rear-facing camera-use runs in the family:

 This is the other side of the plateau with respect to the Gorge Bridge picture.  The plateau is maybe a quarter-mile wide at this specific point.  The area between the two ramifications is the Füßgangerzone (walking, luxury import car lot, and absurdly expensive shopping zone- translation unofficial).

More pictures of this area:

 

Approaching Feet-path-zone:

 

We walked around and saw some of the shops and sights for about 30 minutes and then went home.  Here is one of the better red-colored cars I saw:

 I almost got videography brother a pen- but i was 4,000 euros short:

Although our trip was cold, wet, and short, it was really cool visiting and having a reason to read up on the Duchy.  We are now looking to rent a documentation on the city because we had a lot of unanswered questions, and reading is too hard.