The Chronicles of Narineh

So, it has been about 5 weeks since I got back. I arrived July 9th. We're finally settled, sorta. We found an apartment and are in the midst of unpacking our stuff. I have been thinking about Luxembourg constantly, wondering how life is moving along over there, and with the friends we left behind. It has been a crazy 4 weeks here, with the hurried apartment hunting and moving and whatnot. Now that things are settling, I'm looking forward to writing more frequently and documenting our last couple of weeks in Europe. We were able to squeeze some traveling in at the end there. I've got loads of pictures to annotate and post to flickr. So stay tuned. I'll be back with more.

My flight is in 7 hours. I should be asleep. This is my last post from Luxembourg, but definitely not the last post about Luxembourg. I still have lots of photos to post and talk about. My day started very early, with Joe's departure at 7:00am. After he left for the airport, I did some cleaning around the apartment. Then I had a lovely brunch with my friends Solenn and Olivier. They made me such a fantastic meal that it has been the only thing I've eaten all day and I haven't been hungry since. In the evening I decided to take a walk in the city center and check out Rock um Knuedler in Place Guillaume. It started raining, and so I didn't stick around to see the show, I walked around Place Guillaume and took in the sight. It was pouring by then, and I, having packed away my umbrella and other rain gear, got drenched. But I didn't mind. I love the rain, and it seemed a fitting last evening in this city. I walked all the way to the Gare, and caught the bus home from t...

the sky. the city buses and the whole public transportation system. Hoegaarden . Fischer bakery breads. the cheese aisles at Auchan. yes i said aisles. plural. the thunderstorms. the city center. the view of the Grund from Plateau St. Esprit. Oscar Wilde's the summer concerts in Place d'Armes and everywhere else. There's always something going on somewhere in Centre-Ville. i've already mentioned the bread. and this, i didn't expect, but it is true... I will miss the smallness. Luxembourg City is such a small town compared to Los Angeles, and the smallness and the sense of community it fosters are quite nice. Charming, even. I don't know, maybe if I'd stayed longer I would have gotten sick of it, but as it is, I will miss it.

I know this analogy isn't going to work for everyone, but it works for me... It's like being promised a trip to Walt Disney World. The whole place, you know, all the parks and attractions, even the cheese-y ones. A good long trip, maybe 2-3 weeks -- long enough to allow you to experience everything you want. And then you get there, and you get only one day. At Epcot Center. And that's it. You didn't even get to see all the pavilions in Epcot. That's what it feels like. Sure, Epcot is cool, and you got to do and see a lot while you were there. And you appreciate that. But you were planning on much more. And it got taken away from you. The reason this analogy has been bouncing around in my head is that it looks like we will be leaving here significantly sooner than we had planned. I am sorely disappointed. I really like Luxembourg, there's more I would like to see and do here. And much more I'd like to see of Europe. I know this wasn't my one and only chan...

I should take a picture and include it with this post. For now, I'll just tell you about it. Those of you who know me know that I LOVE bread. I have found my favorite in Luxembourg. There's a local bakery chain here called Fischer . Their motto is "Fischer... äre bäcker." Which I think translates from Luxembourgish to English as "Fischer... our baker." Anyway, they have this one bread called Körnli. It is a multigrain bread with sunflower seeds, oats, rye and other tasty treats. It is SOOOO good. Yum. I don't think I'll ever buy sliced sandwich bread ever again.

We had taco night this Saturday! It was very exciting, because as some of you may know, we miss the Mexican food. There are no Mexican food restaurants here. We've found a good South American place, but no beans, no burritos, no tacos. As we enjoyed our meal Saturday night, we wondered why it took us so long to do a taco night. We realized it was because we were hung up on the beans. It had been incredibly hard to find pinto beans here. Or black beans for that matter. The most common bean here is white, although kindey beans have been easy to find too. And we had it in our head that we needed beans if we were to have a proper taco night. A few weeks ago Sibyl and I found dried pinto beans and black beans at a natural foods store we visited. But they sat around in the pantry for weeks because we weren't sure what to do with the dried beans. We are used to the canned stuff that just needs to be heated up. Well, this weekend, with taco seasoning packets from my mom as impetus, we ...

there are new photos up on flickr , please to enjoy :) I try to organize my photos in sets, and I try to accompany each set with an entry, but sometimes, it just doesn't work out. This time you get 4 new photosets, one entry. but first... I thought some more about what I said in What's it like? a couple of days ago, and I was reminded of another huge difference I've experienced here. In Luxembourg, you bag your own groceries. It is the best! Not only do you bag your own stuff, but you buy the plastic bags you're going to bag them in! 3 cents each for the plastic bags. Or, instead you can buy an éco-sac for 80 cents and use it all the time, at any store. The éco-sac is a large, sturdy reusable bag. It is about as tall as a paper bag you get in the US grocery stores, but it is about 1 1/2 times as wide. It takes a while to get used to remembering to take the bags with you when you go to the store, but otherwise, it is super-handy, and a very easy way for everyone to redu...