Week 57: Abtei and Luxembourg Photographers

Jason's boss is an A-10 pilot. As one coworker of mine said when I told him that "OMG! That is the coolest boss ever!" (That was in front of his boss, so he quickly backpedaled...) But, as happens with most military jobs, he will be rotating out of Germany and out of flying the A-10 within the next few months. As these rotations tend to come in waves, there were a number of pilots who were moving on at the same time, so the squadron had a farewell dinner for them all.

The dinner was hosted at Abtei Himmerod, located about 15-20 minutes from our place and is home to some ridiculously strong beer (10.5% alcohol content--that is much closer to wine...). We had the options of a few different German meals. Jason selected the Moechskloss (potato dumpling), whose correct spelling, with the German letters, is shown in the picture below. 

What would you like for dinner?

The farewell dinner was interesting, as no one wanted anyone to speak for very long, but each person did. And, this was despite the fact that they had a bowl of water full of ice at the front where everyone spoke. While speaking, the speaker had to have his hand in the bowl of water. It seemed to me to not be much of a deterrent since (1) these guys are in the military and have to put up with crap like that all the time and (2) they were sucking down the 10.5% alcohol beers like they were going out of style.

On Sunday we went off to Luxembourg for the afternoon. We were planning on doing Happy Mosel, where the road next to the Mosel is closed and becomes a huge bike way, as we did last year, but when we woke up it was PORING rain, so we decided to avoid making our selves into the wet and, likely, unhappy people we would become after riding our bikes for 2 to 4 hours in the rain. Instead, we visited a photo museum in Luxembourg.

The museum is located in one of Luxembourg's casemates (we've toured other sections on a couple of occasions) and is named, appropriately, Am Tunnel. Two Luxembourgish artists were featured. The first, is a sport photographer, Arthur Thill, who does photography particularly of F1 and Olympic sports (currently his site is showing snaps of the EuroCup). Check out this award-winning series of photos of a Formula 1 race in Germany, where some errant fuel was ignited. Very dramatic.

The other photographer on display was Edward Steichen. Steichen is really only a passing Luxembourger, having moved to the US with his parents when he was very young. He is, though, quite famous (in the right set) for curating a photo exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in NY called The Family of Man, which went on tour around the world and was seen by over 9 million people. They had some information in this exhibit regarding his work, but the actual Family of Man exhibit (the last one left) is located in northern Luxembourg. That goes on our list! For 2013 (it is closed until then...)!

After visiting the museum, we got a coffee and walked around a bit, finding the crew of Asian tourists taking photos of each other in front of Dunk Henri's palace. Sort of a meta picture, I suppose.

The Duke's Palace, in many photos

For the evening, we caught up with the meetup group at a pub and did a pub quiz. We came in second, but by only three points. On the way back to the car, we saw a little piece of home in a shop window...go Celts!

Evidently, the Celtics vacation in Luxembourg