Christmas and stuff...

So the Holidays are pretty much over and I am back (back again, tell a friend).  I spent a good 10 days in Luxembourg with my Aunt, Uncle, Cousins, and cousins' friends. But I'll get into that later. 

First Just a couple of Pre-Luxembourg pictures for you all. The first one below is from the Alexanderplatz Weinnachtsmarkt. It is pretty sweet. No real story, just a picture, deal.

"Oh your Christmas Carousel is only 20ft high... I don't think I could downgrade back to that. "

The next picture is from Amsterdam Airport. While running around I decided to  snap a pictures of some of the cots that had to be used over that weekend (December 17th - 20th) when all the airports were shut down and all hotels in Amsterdam were filled up. I need to emphasize that there were hundreds of these cots in the airport, ridiculous.

"So heres your cot. Just remember that it is 50 in the 30 down... Oh yeah and we are all on the honor system so you are probably going to be robbed blind tonight."

Ok, we now have that out of the way, onto the Bourg of Luxum. So when I finally arrived in Luxembourg I was tired and had no luggage (it was picked up later that day). I was one of the first to arrive, only my Aunt (Nancy) and cousin (Julie) were at their house in Dippach Luxembourg. a couple of days later my Uncle Dan showed up. The first few days were uneventful, I shoveled their driveway, we went and Checked out Luxembourg city (pretty cool). We went to this sweet soup place (a La soup). All they served was soup, if it hadn't been for the modern chic styling, and pleasant staff (what I call C-Webb style... which only about 2 people will understand) it would be reminiscent of the Soup Nazi episode of Seinfeld.  They had daily soups  in a small seating area and I had no idea what the protocol was (there seemed to be some, so I let my aunt order because she had been there before). The soup was awesome and I even got some bread!! There was also this weird statue near a Hair salon that looked like Conan O'Brian as a gay stereotype... I also forgot my camera that day so no pictures of soup or Gay Conan.. I am sorry for my failures. 

Moving on

A couple of days later we headed to Trier, a small city in Germany near Luxembourg. We were doing this so we could pick up my other cousin (Holly) and her four friends (Grant, Alex, Will and Nick).  Her friend are also a bunch of misplaced Canadians, but they are going to school so they have a better reason  for being here. When we got into Trier it was a few hours before their train was coming in so we decided to wonder around. So here are some fun facts about Trier.

1. It is the oldest German city, originally established by the romans (at least according to my aunt, fact checking can suck it) 

2. They do still have a piece of roman wall (seen below) which is pretty cool.

Sorry for the suckiness of this picture, it was really dark and the only lighting near the wall was that tree, which  was no where near as bright as it looks

3. There are only two entrances into the city for the Luxembourg side, and one of them in a one lane bridge (once again this is according to my aunt, but when entering the city it seemed pretty legit).

4. Apparently they are too good for regular looking McDonalds (directly below

The only true McDonalds have red roofs and a play centre 

5. The streets are kind of pretty

OOOOOOOooooh pretty lights

So Holly and the rest of the gang made it and we all had a nice drive back to Luxembourg, also I got to find out that Alex is from Hants West in Nova Scotia. When we got back to the house, Nancy immediately put hats on us... as you can see by his hat, Alex is obviously the leader of our Christmas themed super team.  Our team handled such perilous missions as: "Fixing the slingbox internet connection", and "Drinking the any excess alcohol". We made a good team. 

Christmas powers activate, form of... Drinking.

So now we skip ahead to after Christmas... it gets too much hype and though fun is never super interesting... well sometimes it is. I got a Mankini, a german cook book and a sweet beer glass.. THERE I gave you a taste. Now moving on once more. Nancy and Dan went to Paris on Boxing day to spend the week at Euro Disney: The Happiest place with French People on Earth. This left the rest of teh crew with spare time. So we went into the city a couple of times.

Walking into Luxembourg

Although I was sad because apparently the Luxembourg people tear down Christmas decorations very fast, where two days prior there was a bustling Christmas market, now there was an empty square... the city is still cool though... but expensive compared to my sweet Berlin. Although you can find anything you need in the city, including a house made of underwear... I am assuming it was constructed inside this building.

Another little known fact about Luxembourg is that it contains Hogwarts as seen below.

Sup Harry

Despite my refusal to believe that this is not the home of Nearly headless Nick, my cousin insisted that it was actually the headquarters of the Luxembourg Bank.

You may have noticed that there was a fairly deep chasm underneath Hogwarts, this is call the Grund, it is the old part of the city. I didn't ask why it was called the Grund, I probably should have, or I could look it up... oh well. Fun fact about the Grund: There is a small piece of graffiti there that looks like my Uncle Goonsy... Yup, so here is another picture of it. We are up top right now and we are headed down.

The only way down is the stairs. This would not be a problem, but everyone in Europe lost the part of there brain that makes them know how to clear snow. So the stairs were more of icy death slides. So icy that they made Grant go fast enough for his feet to completely vanish. Given that he wears something like a size 19 that's an impressive amount of ice.

Grants feet reaching light speed.

We did eventually make it down with only some minor injuries. The Grund has some cool stuff. There are these tunnels that go all through the old city (they are blocked off mostly but you can get tours in the summer. One of the entrances is below

The Grund is also home to a super sweet sledding hill. So sweet that the boys (lacking sleds) used their jackets to slide down it. The only down side to this hill is that not too far from the bottom is a river with nothing to stop you from going into it so yo need to stay alert when you reach the bottom, lest you want an icy grave.

Sweet sledding hill, Icy grave not featured

We found an easier way up then the death slide and we cam up right near Hogwarts.. although the campus seems to have developed quite a bit from what I remember. It also had a sign that said it was a bank.. so that is kind of weird.

"Screw vast fields and magical forests. I want a Jamba Juice!" 

Much like Trier, Luxembourg has pretty lights

So that sums up the great events of being in Luxembourg.  It was a good time, I suggest you check it out. Although you may want to listen to my aunt who constantly let me know every time we went somewhere the "Everything is so much better in the Summer"

and now we end off with me on the Death Slide and being far too happy about it.

"WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!"