Weeks 12 & 13: Lots 'o Luxemburg

You can tell I am living in Germany from how I spelled Luxemburg. The French add an o before the u in burg.

We spent the last two Sunday afternoons in Luxemburg. The first Sunday there, July 24th, was a bit of a serendipitous event. Our intent was to go to Beaufort Castle, but when we arrived, they were having a "Rock the Castle" music festival, which had an admission fee. So, instead, we drove back the way we came and stopped at a pretty cool rock formation that we had passed on the way in.

A car, a rock and Jason

That was pretty neat, but we did some more driving around and found some more amazing formations, again, right next to the road. This included a few trails that went to the top of big rocks and others that went into large cracks. As someone who grew up with only a single little rock in our yard (it was between the roots of a tree and about the size of a basketball--or at least that was what stuck out of the ground), the rest being sand, I still love climbing around on rocks. (I seem to remember that I might have asked for a big rock to climb on for a birthday present at some point.)

Jason in a crack

As we were driving out of that area, known as Little Switzerland, we saw more and more cool looking places to stop, but decided we would save them for another trip to the area, as it is very close to us (about 45 minutes away). We also wanted to look into where the good bouldering spots are, as it looks like it could be quite a lot of fun to get on the side of those rocks with the right shoes on.

Now, this weekend's Luxemburg adventure was less on the naturalist side. As Jason and I are both *terrible* at meeting people, we tried forcing the issue by joining a Meetup group. We found an expat group in Luxemburg city and figured we would try hanging out with them a bit to see about meeting some folks outside of the base. The group turned out to be quite mixed--a Briton, an Amerian, a Spaniard and an Ecuadorian by way of NYC.

The destination was Echternach, which Jason and I have visited a number of times before, but this trip was specifically for the balloon festival. I have never seen a hot-air balloon up close, so though they didn't get far into the air until just after Jason and I left, I enjoyed watching them fill up the balloons and getting things floating. The highlight was getting to step inside a balloon that was being inflated. Very cool.

It was a Paulaner balloon-- unfortunately no beer inside

I would be completely remiss if I didn't also mention our activity from this Saturday. The base had it's open house, where it invites Germans to visit and check out the planes with lots of airshow like activities. While we were there, we got to see an A-10 and an F-16 fly in formation. Jason was saying that the F-16 pilot probably had a hard time matching the slower speed of the A-10.

They also had a large number of static displays of planes and plane parts. I particularly liked the view of the A-10's gun outside of its packaging. Man, that thing looks like it can pack a wallop. They had the whole plane on display as well, but the interesting parts of the plane (other than the gun) are all in the redundant design features that are far more interesting to read (or hear) about than to see in person.

A-10 Gun

Oh, and we had some fantastic food while we were at the airshow. The different groups on base each had their own booths. The one that was selling hamburgers and hotdogs and another selling ribs had the longest lines. We instead chose to eat from the Filipino booth. And it was a good decision. On a final note, Jason heard from one of his colleagues that German teens caused his group's booth to sell out of Mountain Due and Doctor Pepper. Evidently, teens are the same everywhere.