Why Luxembourg

I have a somewhat arbitrary life goal to visit two new countries every year. Granted, this goal is only three years old, but I figure that's all the more reason not to give up on it yet.

I might have moved to a new country this year - a major life goal in itself - but as we entered November of the year 2010, I had yet to visit any new countries. With time rapidly running out and without much vacation time to spare, I found my solution: Luxembourg.

Luxembourg is a five or six hour train ride from the Hague, is stereotypically European (think church bells ringing through town squares and ruins of ancient castles on the hillsides), and is ripe with amusing factoids.

Luxembourg, like Liechtenstein, Andorra, Monaco, and San Marino, is inherently amusing just for being a historical anomaly that American school children have often never heard of. Luxembourg's mystique is further increased (for me) by the fact that it's actually not all that small - by which I mean, it has a full train system, and the length of the country would take more than an hour to traverse. There are plenty of rural towns in Luxembourg that are entirely distinct from Luxembourg City.

Other interesting/amusing factoids we learned during our 36 hours in Luxembourg:

• Luxembourg has basically the same flag as the Netherlands, except that the shade of blue might be a little lighter. Evidently, this is not unprecedented. According to the Internets, for example, Chad and Romania have the exact same flag.

• Luxembourg City was once surrounded by three rings of defensive walls, including a dozen or so forts, and was called the "Gibraltar of the North". Under the Treaty of London of 1867, Luxembourg became a neutral state and was forced to tear down almost all of its fortifications - a process that (according to UNESCO) took 16 years and cost 1.5 million gold francs. I question the wisdom of this decision (to the extent Luxembourg really had any say in it), as the Allies had to liberate Luxembourg twice during WWII alone. (General Patton is buried not far from Luxembourg City.)

• On the upside, the rest of us have benefited from Luxembourg's tribulations as a neutral country stuck between France and Germany: after WWII, Luxembourg was the driving force behind the European Coal and Steel Community (with the idea that Germany and France would stop fighting each other on Luxembourg's territory if they were economically interdependent), and the concept of the European Union was born. Also, Schengen - of the Schengen visa fame - is in Luxembourg.

• The country is a grand duchy, ruled by a grand duke. Yay for European royal families unknown in the U.S. I wonder if Luxembourg was the inspiration for the country of Genovia in the Princess Diaries. (Wikipedia Factoid: One of the Grand Duke's sons had an out-of-wedlock baby with a commoner named Tessy, whom he later married. She has now been granted the title of Princess, and they live in Florida.)

• You can travel throughout Luxembourg, including on all trains and buses, for a flat rate of 3 euros per day.

• Luxembourg has its own language. It's called "Luxembourgish." As far as I can tell, it's Dutch pronounced with a French accent. It is also, based on our experience, not a dying language - outside of the capital especially, it seemed like everyone spoke Luxembourgish, and not necessarily anything else. In fact, according to Wikipedia, there are more than half a dozen dialects of Luxembourgish. Just so you know.

• Thanks to I.M. Pei, Luxembourg City now has one of the most anatomically incorrect examples of public architecture I have come across.

So what is there to do in Luxembourg? Stay tuned...