Mini road trip - Luxembourg and bastogne

So hockey first then we will get to the more interesting part of my week this week.
We lost 4-3 - Penalty after the game. I thought I played one of my better games, the tempo was very similar to Pennant A, but like Pennant A - they were half a second off the pace. Unlucky for them :-)
The most disappointing thing was that half the team stayed out till 4-5am the morning before... ridiculous. But I managed not too add to my personal card tally, so I get to play this week yay...

Monday was a nothing day - Andrew went to Amsterdam to meet his parents, I looked up stuff to do in Luxembourg and Bastogne, we were supposed to work, but there wasn't much to do on our house. We  had an early night as we wanted to leave the next day to go on our first road trip. It is only really 300kms to Luxembourg.... but, it was still a trip. So we set off early in the morning, made good time, with our "prearranged" music by Tarks... which I later found out was just an 80's folder copied onto his Ipod, we sang along to tunes such as "electric blue" and "sail away" if you have to ask what those are, too bad! We were quickly in Belgium and the lights lining all the freeways were once again our friends - even though it was daylight.. I suppose money like that gets spent when you don't have a government. See the link for my time lapse (only 10 secs worth of belgium driving!) Our first of 2 destinations was Bastogne - pronounced BASS STONE and we arrived on scene of not knowing where the tourist office was - this was a minor hiccup, but we found it after a bit. We got to the office - there was a famous Sherman Tank out the front, with me doing my 'Tank Face' - don't ask...

 

We then found the museum in bastogne - unluckily for us the massive one was closed, but the temporary one was good enough. It was pretty good, we were there at the same time as a school group - our students are usually much better at behaving in a public place - they were running around crazy everywhere. Maybe they have seen too much war history. For me, I only told them off a few times.. ahhaha.

 I will post a collection of photos from the war museum, will be easier then describing it.  

Note the two photos with the gun above, the gun is placed on wooden pylons.. Immediately after this photo was taken, the gun slipped off the wooden support, and somehow - I managed to catch it. yeah... it's pretty heavy. We left quite quickly....

After the museum (about 2 hours) we had lunch at the amercian memorial - which is a huge star with all the states around it. On top you can look and see which army came from which direction etc. But it was a little vague and a little annoying. Belgium is a funny country, some speak dutch, some speak french, the road signs change in the south to French. But Luxembourg is a whole new ball game. Will get to that later.

 

After we left the American memorial, (oh and for those who don't know, bastogne was the point at which the war turned towards the allies in the Battle of the Bulge (or the battle of the Ardennes as it is known as) Hitler decided it would be a good idea to make a huge counter attack through the forest, and a huge amount of people died there (not as much as the eastern front, but still alot)) we went to the forest where the 101st airborne were situated. It just looks like a pine plantation, but on further inspection we discovered the foxholes where the troops were hiding when they were holding the woods near the town of Foy.

This a foxhole -
  As you can see from the left, the woods are quite dense, and the foxholes that you can see are originals that the soldiers were hiding in. Like all war places that I have been to in the last few months, this was almost the eeriest. it was a warm 24 degrees when we were there, not the negative 15-20 when the troops went through.


This is a tree that had been hit by a shell, the tv series band of brothers made this experience more valuable, as it showed what it was "like" without just trying to imagine it.

We left the woods - briefly taking a chance to see the german war cemetery (only about 6000 graves....) and then headed to Luxembourg to meet Jo - the person we were 'couchsurfing' with. We drove quite easily through belgium and into Luxembourg, and with the help of 'Jimmy' our GPS took us there with only 1 wrong turn. We met Jo - had quite a nice chat with him - he works as an IT tech in a high school in Luxembourg. He lived/s in a nice 2 bedroom flat with quite a nice view of the hills behind his flat. We went to the supermarket when Jo went on a Mbike ride. We soon quickly found out that the language was crazy!!... we heard german - saw some french written down, and I swear that I heard some dutch words being spoken also. We got by using our charade skills :-) When we got back we found out that they speak "luxembourgish" I don't know if that is the correct term for it - it was what Jo told us it was though. So some speak french, some speak german, and some luxembourg. Which is a thrice of german, dutch and french from what I could tell. Interesting... Suffice to say - we struggled. We struggle enough in holland! But we got by. That night we went to a bar int he middle of luxembourg, - check out the toilet picture!!  The next day we caught the bus to see the city of luxembourg.

To the left - The female toilet - to the right - male toilet, they both meet in the middle to wash their hands! Not bad, but different..

We walked around the city of luxembourg, the whole city was a fort. There is a huge valley in the middle of the city with some really cool bridges that are spanning the valley. Castle designs everywhere, and huge walls and tunnels.The highlight was mainly to see a city that it so much different then what we are used to.

BBQ - this is off his balcony. Enough said - enjoy the shot.

This is a castle that was on the other side of the valley that took us a long time to walk to. Well, it looks much better in this picture then it does up close. It was two stories! I can jump over 2 stories, no wonder they got smashed! (note: Smashing may or may not be factual)

Another cannon! :)

Train bridge spanning the valley. - With train going over.

This is one of the walls - the cannon is in one of those holes in the wall.

This is from the road as we drove into Viaden, fairy castle :)

That night we had a BBQ - see photo, and showed Jo some hamish and andy and a little bit of netball and AFL. I don't know how much he understood of the H+A or how much he understood of the sports (considering he was an IT guy) but we showed him that and went to bed early - stuffed after walking from 11-6 with 2 breaks of 10 mins. Lots of walking... The next day we went country luxembourg. Seeing two towns, Viaden ( think it is spelt wrong) to see some castles.







This is where we had lunch - we were looking for a place to eat lunch - but off the beaten track and quite a nice place to eat. I will upload the video. We really had no idea where we were, but it was good. After this - a tired time going home. We only traveled for 3 days, and we were spent after it, I don't know how we are going to go with our plans to travel for 6 months total... hmmm....