I'm exhausted because I've poured so much of myself into itinerary planning. What was it that I said two years ago? 'Planning the trip is almost more tiring than actually going per se.' I wouldn't go that far - I've done this oh so many times now and I'm getting better at It and knowing what I want, what sort of a traveller I am - but it's certainly draining. I'm the sort of person who's paranoid and I obsess over minutiae. Sometimes this is a good thing, and sometimes it's just downright stressful. I spent pretty much the entire evening first picking apart the RUS itinerary - they'd gotten loads of rather important travel details wrong - and then talking with the administrator. 'Points uno dos, tres,' I say. I did the same for Vilnius. I do things and I think about them time and again until I'm utterly convinced that they're perfect, and then when I'm sure everything's fine I let it go. They say that a sign of the shadow INFJ coming out is obsessive attention to external, 'minor' details and data. Maybe what they say is true. I oscillate as always between INFJ and INTJ.
This weekend felt slightly strange - a little morose, somewhat pensive. a bit quiet. I went through loads of sugary drinks and far more coffee than I usually do, maybe that's one reason why.
Still sleep eludes me, and still those voices are calling from far away.
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Luxembourg was roughly a 4.5 hour journey from Maastricht, bar my walk from Eddie’s student halls. I had to change trains twice, once at Liege, and once at Ettelbruck, another ‘train town’ as I like to call them. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, all trains lead to Liege, and all trains pass through Namur, yet another Belgic ‘train-town.’ Maastricht to Liege is usually an uneventful 30-minute journey and trains go there quite often. I stood on platform 5a, shivering slightly - Maastricht at this time of the year could still be slightly chilly, especially when it was drizzly and grey, like it was on the 29th of May, the day I went to LUX.
The official name for the Liege station is Liège-Guillemins, and it took me ages to figure out how to pronouce the town name properly. Some people called it Lee-gee, and when I parroted that, other people understood me fine.
(All this running around has wiped me out.)
I managed to reach Luxembourg without too much difficulty, and got there somewhere after noon. Was peckish and all the restaurants were ridiculously expensive so opted for the least expensive - McDonald's. Which was still hellishly expensive, but at this point I was ravenous and past caring.
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| Luxembourg train station |
After that I walked to the historic city centre, and had a look at their town square, where an obelisk was built in memory of the day Luxembourg fell to Nazi Germany. I stood there a long time, thinking about history and imagining what it must have been like, and I stayed there long after all the other visitors had left. There were lots of Japanese tourists, clutching their little travel handbooks as they always do.
Walked across one of Luxumbourg's many bridges, and saw another bridge - Harry Potter Bridge number 1.
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| There were lots of Harry Potter bridges |
And now we come to the highlight of the old town - a ravine filled with picturesque grey and white houses. It was lovely, but somehow these pictures don't really capture it, probably because it wasn't very sunny.
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| Another Harry Potter bridge and there goes the Hogwarts Express |
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