Thursday - Dinner with Mr. Hoff
Mr. Hoff, the man who took us hiking through Lux City a couple of times invited Jeeves, Tony, and I over to his house for dinner. We gladly accepted. It was a difficult getting there via public transportation since he lives in Junglinster, a half an hour outside of Lux City. We also got off at the wrong bus stop, but no big deal. Mr. Hoff has a nice house, and was a nice host.
As soon as we got there, around 4:00 pm, we had some warm coffee. Also, he said it was common to take brandy with your coffee, so we had some brandy. I had some peach brandy that was apparently a favorite of Dr. Stiller (the old director of MUDEC, and my father's econ professor when he was a student here). It definitely warmed me up. We also were served chips and some cookies as a little afternoon snack while we chatted. Mr. Hoff is amazing and has lived such a full life.
His birthday is December 17th, and he doesn't very much enjoy celebrating it. He studied abroad for a semester when he was at university, spending a semester in Lisbon, Portugal. Every year he goes back to Portugal for a week. He was a member of the junior Red Cross in Luxembourg, and as a teen, was sent as one of two Luxembourgish representatives to an international program of the Red Cross in the United States. He spent four weeks in America, and even met John F. Kennedy. JFK was on very familiar terms with the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg at the time, Charlotte, and when the junior Red Cross delegation visited the White House, JFK personally asked to meet the Luxembourgish representatives. So it was that Mr. Hoff met JFK about a year before he died.
Mr. Hoff then worked for the Red Cross for a while after university before going to work for Arcelormittel, the large Luxembourgish steel company. Turns out Mr. Hoff was pretty much the reason I'm now sitting in Miami's Chateau in Differdange. You see, Arcelormittel owned the Chateau and had been using it as a guest-house for visiting businessmen, but wanted to get rid of it. Mr. Hoff had also been involved with Miami before then, and when his boss asked him for suggestions as to who would possibly want to rent a Chateau - he knew how to answer. So it was that MUDEC came to be located in our lovely Chateau.
Mr. Hoff has a huge library, comprised of over 4,000 books. Most of them are historic in nature, and he loves to read. He told us stories of how he'd accumulated so many books, and many of them were signed or rare editions. He also is an art collector, and has several pieces that are centuries old. He also possesses an original Salvador Dali drawing (that's gotta be worth something). A very interesting man, indeed.
For dinner, we had a potato casserole with cheese on top, cauliflower, pumpkin soup, chicken with mushrooms, and oranges in a rum sauce thing for dessert. It was all delicious. We also drank a few glasses each of sparking wine from the Moselle region. After dinner, we had the typical cup of coffee, but then we had to rush out to make the last train home before we had a chance to have the typical after-dinner digestive (read; extremely strong alcoholic beverage). It was awesome.
Friday - Bofferding Tour and Dinner with Norby
As a class trip, we visited the Bofferding Brewery here in Luxembourg. Bofferding is the most well known beer in Luxembourg. So, our school paid for us to go on a brewery tour and drink unlimited free beer. Wait, did I say free beer? Yeah, that's right. After our brief tour of the brewing facilities, we got to sit down and taste the products. First, we tasted a shot of brandy made just from beer. Next, we had small cups of beer that still had the yeast in it. Next, we had water from their deep spring. Then we had a glass of the original Bofferding beer. Then, we had Battin, another type of beer that was developed in Esch but is now brewed at the Bofferding brewery. Then we had a glass of Bofferding's Christmas beer. It did not taste like Christmas. Nothing ever does. Then we had a glass of Bofferding's fruit beer - now that was good. After all of that, they just asked us if we wanted anything else (still all free), and I had another glass of Battin. It was awesome. All of us Miami students were noticeably louder on the bus ride back to the Chateau.
Then, I went home to meet with Norby and go out for pizza. So at 7:15 pm, we left and walked to the Christmas Market in Esch. We met Norby's friends Giles and Patrick and we all had a beer at the Grinch Cafe (a semi-indoor tent cafe at the Christmas Market). Then, we got in Giles' Alfa Romeo (Yeah) and drove to this little Italian place in Esch to get dinner. We started off our meal with an aperatif: some orange liquor which we then poured beer over. It was rather refreshing and quite strong. I had a cheese pizza for dinner. With dinner we also each had a couple glasses of wine. Norby and I were drinking rose and Patrick and Giles were drinking a red. I heard many, many stories of their adventures together, none of which will be repeated here. Then, after dinner, we had an espresso, and then some after-dinner drinks. We each had two verneers (sp?) which was some tasty (and not too strong - according to Norby) alcoholic drink. I was a little bit concerned about the large consumption of alcohol, since I had to get up the next morning at 4:00 am, So at around I don't even know what time, Norby and those guys dropped me off at home before going out to Pitcher to continue their Friday festivities.
Saturday - Skiing in France
Yeah, that's right. So I got up at 4:00 am (after having chugged like a liter of water before going to bed the night before), and got ready to go skiing. I didn't exactly have all the right equipment, so I had to improvise. Instead of snow pants, I wore long underwear, my flannel pajamas, and then my water resistant hiking pants. I didn't have a winter jacket, so I wore an underarmour, long sleeve cotton shirt, a thick jacket, and then my raincoat. I also wore my scarf, hat, thin gloves, mittens, and sunglasses.
I had to take the 5:28 am train into Differdange where I boarded the bus. We left Differdange at 6:00 am, and got to Lux City to pick up the others at 6:30. It was supposed to be a three hour bus ride to Lac Blanc in the Vosges Mountains in France. It was not. We got lost once, and had some traffic delays, so we didn't arrive until like 11:00. Sad day. But, it was also a beautiful day in terms of weather: sunny and about 25 all day, which was shredtastic.
So after waiting in the huge cluster of a line for our rental equipment, we finally got to do some skiing. I love skiing. It's so satisfying when you are skiing well and really loose. Unfortunately, that is not how most of the day was spent. It was spent laughing at people falling down trying to get on the tow ropes, trying not to slide across all the ice, and avoiding the random ditches built into the mountain (what the heck?). But the views were incredible:
It wasn't too crowded, only problem was we only got to actually ski for about 5 hours since we got there so late and had to turn our rentals in at 5:30. But, the bus has this rule about driving where the driver legally is obliged to take a 9 hour break , so we could not leave the place until 8:15 pm. So, after returning our skis, we chilled at the top of the mountain (where the ski rental was) and then had to ride the chair lift down (where the only open restaurant was) before having to ride the ski lift back up to the top (where the parking lot was). Who the heck designed that place?
Anyway, it was a rather late night, as we got dropped off in Differdange at around 12:20 am, and then we just kinda chilled at a bar until 1:00 am. We all caught the 1:00 am train towards the city, so I got home around 1:30 am. Last detail of the story, I went right to sleep, and didn't get up until 1:30 pm the next day. Awesome.
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