Interrail Europe 2002

Day Eight (Mon 21st) - Au Revoir Metz

In our ever-changing plan we had chosen Metz as our destination, the main reason for choosing Metz was as a good point to break our journey between central France and Luxembourg. In order to complete the journey, find accommodation AND see some of the town we had to leave Lyon pretty early – this time we were up, showered and out of the hostel by 05:55. We arrived at the station for 06:20 and had a fast-food continental breakfast (croissant and espresso) before heading to the platform, our train was delayed and we almost got on a train bound for Milan, in the end we boarded the right train and got the journey started.

When we had been in Paris the guy at the hostel (Christian) had asked what our route was going to be after we left, when we told him we were going to Metz he had said that he didn’t recommend it, apparently not a very interesting town. With this preconception in our minds as we were pulling into the outskirts of the town I asked Barrie what he thought, he agreed with me that the place looked kind-of dull. I had already been looking at train times from Metz to Luxembourg for the following day so I knew that there was a train just after midday, we decided on the spot to skip past Metz and head straight for Luxembourg. At Metz Ville I popped outside and took a photo of the station building, a photo of the platform-board and pretty soon we were moving again.

We arrived in Luxembourg at 13:30 and caught a cab to the hostel, having spent so much time in Lyon walking up and down the hill I was dismayed to see that the hostel in Luxembourg was at the bottom of yet another hill. We sat about in the hostel for a while just relaxing, repeatedly early mornings tend to take a certain toll on you which can only be recovered by doing absolutely nothing for a while. When we had finally plucked-up enough courage and energy we climbed the hill and went into town, stood on the Bock Promontory and went to the Tourist Info at Place d’Armes. By this time we had barely eaten all day and were utterly starving, despite the potentially large amount of unique restaurants around us we decided to eat at Pizza Hut. It would seem that marketing had beaten us into submission, all around France we had been seeing Pizza Hut adverts featuring their new cheese-crust or ‘Cheesy Gold’ as it was called – we had to have one. It turned out to be pretty good, the menu has been modified to fit into the local eating habits and includes goat’s cheese on pizzas and on garlic bread – interesting and tasty!

After eating we wandered (slowly) around the city, I was surprised how lovely the city was – all my life I had not really heard much about Luxembourg and almost expected it to be a little dreary but it is one of the nicest cities I’ve seen. Running through the centre of the city is an enormous gorge crossed by a series of bridges which provide amazing views, almost the whole of the gorge is covered in trees. The majority of the city is also pleasant and clean, Luxembourg has become quite a financial centre in Europe, a fact which is borne out by a large number of designer jewellery and clothing shops (though not anywhere near as many as Monaco). On our excursion around the city we saw the Beck Bastion, Adolphe Bridge, the Old Bridge, the Solidarity Monument and the Monument to Grand Duchess Charlotte, a rose had been placed in her hand.

After wandering we ended up in an shop selling art books, unfortunately it was closing otherwise I might have ended up buying something, I was particularly taken by a book about the work of my favourite photographer Andreas Gursky. By this time it was getting dusky and I was getting more and more tired, we stopped off for a Bofferding (the local beer) at a bar called The Tube. The sign outside was like the signs on the London Underground and inside the bar is shaped like a tunnel with various decorations and artefacts to give it a Tube-like atmosphere. The weirdest thing was walking into a Luxembourg bar and being confronted with a stereotypical cockney accent (from the clientele), the girl behind the bar was a local girl and quite chatty – she had been travelling too so we talked for a while, we even got some clean Bofferding beer-mats as souvenirs.

After a pint of beer I felt even more tired so we just went back to the hostel and chilled out, there was a guy called Ron who was sharing our (6-bed) room, he was from the USA and had finished university and decided to spend three months travelling around Europe before starting work. After writing up the day’s events I went to sleep in record time, only to be woken up by some guy checking-in to our room at 1am – I got back to sleep in the end though.

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