For those who don't know, Luxembourg is the last independent Grand Duchy in the world, about the size of Rhode Island, with about half the population of our smallest state. It's a population that is obviously well-ordered. There is nothing out of place in this country. Even the flower boxes in Vianden are tended...and the relic buildings in ruin from the Middle Ages look good.
Vianden is in the midst of a natural (not National) park, with a cute winding main street that leads up to a gorgeous castle. That castle sits on a promontory overlooking the River Our (pronounced more like Ewer).
We're staying in an old hotel, the Heintz Hotel and Restaurant, which appears to be a favorite of German bikers, with a few Brits thrown in. The proprietors' family have owned the place for generations. It is very nicely modernized. We have a balcony that overlooks an old monastery and some of the fortifications from a thousand years ago.
Sunday morning--The few Brits thrown into the biker mix included two from Whitefield, Manchester. They are exploring the European countryside on huge Hondas and thoroughly enjoying themselves.
All about our age, except one, somewhat younger---she glowed at being jokingly called 21!--Frank and Judy, Peter and Jean, heading off to the Black Forest then to Austria and northern Italy for a few days before returning to Britain. Frank and Judy live in Whitefield near Manchester and have delightfully home-town Mancunian accents (for John). Peter and Jean are more from the south, Bedfordshire if we remember righly, but now living in Southport on the Irish Sea.We had a delightful time with them closing down the bar after we'd had a few Diekirch beers and lots of conversation. They apparently continued the party in their rooms later to the point of the proprietress asking them to cool it. Peter was in the merchant marine, helmsman for LNG carriers. Frank delivers gasses to chemical plants in Grangemouth, Scotland, from Lancashire in convoys of three trucks. All looking forward to retirement and perhaps a major trip across the US by bike, though they disdain our low speed limits. Off to Montana, John said.
Dinner at the Heintz Restaurant was good... Ben had schnitzel and John had fried trout from the Ardennes. Both were very good, though the trout was superb. Brought back memories of our first date when I made trout on Good Friday, going on 28 years ago.
Sunday, September 13
Up to breakfast at the hotel, goodbyes to the Brits and then off to France for the day—to see the Maginot Line's Le Hackenberg fortress.
We stopped a few minutes to see the city of Luxembourg, population 81,000, the center of money laundering and tax avoidance that has made the country rich. (John may be overstating this, but the Grand Duchy is not noted for its international financial regulations.) The city has some grand boulevards, but has more the air of Providence with a ravine in the middle of it instead of the headwaters of Narragansett Bay. Lots of French style medieval architecture and old fort ruins, but mostly a sleepy provincial, rather than national, capital of parks, cute buildings and ho-hum.
We got to the Maginot Line two hours before the first tour, to find there was no English language tour, so we took off to explore Lorraine. Our first stop was the ruins of a medieval chapel with a graveyard, overlooking the province's gently rolling hills with Germany in the distance and little towers of the underground Maginot defenses sticking out of the ground around it.
We went further afield looking for lunch and eventually found it at a village fête des artisanats in Monneren. We enjoyed a local baker's pizza and farmer's ice cream from a local farm as we heard a local band play 50s and 60s favorites.
Now to the Maginot Line. We had to take a French language tour, which proved to John that although he is good in French, he doesn't stand a chance if the vocabulary is military. However we enjoyed the visit to this subterranean 20th century French castle designed to stave off a German attack and provide ready-built trenches for the French army that would avoid the debilitating trench warfare of WW1.
Understand that the line was built between 1930 and 1936 with the then latest technology. Just at Hackenberg alone, it housed 5000 men, had 10 km of underground tramways to move around the ordinance and people. It had hospitals, kitchens, and sleeping quarters for the troops, and it held enough fuel for its generators that would fuel thousands of hours of protection, food for several months, and necessary water supplies. There was a story, that John only got part of, that Charles de Gaulle said the money spent would have been better spent on an airforce, and that he had used some parts of the Line for the French nuclear force de frappe of the 1960s. The place is probably nuclear proof, since it has air filtration systems and food and water supplies.
Outside, the massive concrete entrances look like the entrance to a science fiction movie. On surrounding hillocks, the underground tunnels protrude little turrets and larger monitor-like installations that host cannons that can be aimed at invaders in any direction.Inside it's dank and dark, like a huge home for moles. The caverns are all lighted with old fashioned railway station lights, the unlighted sub-caverns lead away into the distance. The tram we rode runs for about 1 km between two of the forts. In truth it is a 20th century castle built against invaders.
It was also totally out of touch with the reality of the 1930s. Designed for the First World War as a replacement for trench warfare, it did not stand up to the air and land blitzkriegs of the Second. Once the French gave up their hold on the Rhineland to the Nazis in 1936 and Belgian ceased to be an ally, choosing instead uesless neutrality, the Germans could execute their speedy invation and were able to run around it. The French were isolated in their Great Wall, that they thought would protect them and give them time.
This is important because the Line was built to give the French, with a dispersed population and less intensive rail network, the chance for the Army to mobilize as the Line, and before 196 the Belgians, stopped the Germans' progress into France. To a certain extent this occurred. During the year of the 1940 Phony War the French felt relatively secure behind their wall, but that came to a quick end later that year when France fell and the Vichy regime was established under Maréchal Petain. At that point, the Germans staffed the line until the Americans came. As the Americans advanced in 1944, the Germans found that French construction was pretty good. The Line is virtually indestructable. It is still owned by and on land of the French military.
Both John and Ben enjoyed the two hour tour, in the 60F temperatures, along with an entire trainload of French speakers. Now if the Amis de Maginot had lived up the promise of an English language tour, it might even have been better.
Hamburgers for dinner at the Auberge Aal Veinin, since 1683 on Vianden's main street. Could well have been one of the best burgers John has ever had. Ben had a chicken à la king on a puff pastry. You could almost imagine d'Artignan and the Three Musketeers there. Instead a family with a new baby, and a group of Polish students! Early night.
Monday, September 14
We rose late, intentionally missing the hotel's breakfast because we thought we would do cappucino at the local bakery with a couple of croissants. The cappucino was good, but the sandwich and croissant we had totaled nearly 10 euros and we had to buy orange juice later, so the savings for a much smaller breakfast, albeit with cappucino, was not more than 3. Tonight we will eat in the hotel.
We decided to do virtually nothing today. Ben is writing letters, John is reading a cheap novel. We did drive up to the Vianden Castle, a huge old pile of a building, which we did not tour. We also drove to an old shrine on a promontory overlooking the river and then drove down the river to Echternach, an old abbey town about 30 miles away. It is raining off and on. We got yoghurt at a local Q8 and returned to the hotel. The sun is trying to break through, but it is a day of gray skies and quiet. It's Monday and almost everything is closed. After the last few days, that's fine. We have a busy day tomorrow. Time to go home.
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