BIKER.LU and HEMORIDE

Post by An American in Luxembourg.

LUXEMBOURG DRIVING

The other day, mon frère d’Luxembourg, Fränz Schneider (pictured) texts me, asking if I want to go for a ride in his Porsche. Sure, say I. I’m not a car aficionado by any stretch, but I know a cool car when I see one and Fränz’s 1985 Porshe Carrera 911, which I’d previously only seen sitting in his garage, is tres, sehr, immens kool! 

So Fränz picks me up and we head for the rural, winding roads of the beautiful Luxembourg countryside. Past waves of grain, fields of mooing cows and up and down curvy-swervey forest roads. The Porsche’s engine roars and growls as Franz winds each gear out to the max and expertly maneuvers through serpentine turns—it’s really quite exciting!

Thing is, I’m not quite used to this. In the past six months, I’ve been in a car maybe four times and I’ve never been a particularly comfortable front seat passenger. Plus, I’ve never been in Porsche before, let alone not one zooming across the European countryside on curlicue roads not much wider than a sidewalk. 

Thus, my feet are pumping imaginary brakes pedals left and right and I’m desperately searching for handholds to get a grip. Searching too for somewhere in the car to point my mouth should I have no choice but to toss my cookies in this vomit comet. A couple times, I check the mirror because I’m curious if a person really does turn green when they’re nauseous. (They do.)

For his part, Fränz senses my discomfort and sets out to put me at ease. Men are like that; they’ll help each other out whenever they sense that another of their kind is in need. For instance in this case, Fränz starts driving about twice as fast. He winds each gear out even higher so that the roar and growl are deafening, and he seems hell-bent on finding the curviest narrowest, one-lane roads in all of Europe. At one point, when he floors it going straight up a hill, the passing scenery speeds by in such a blur I feel like I’m in the Millennium Falcon when it jumps it to light speed. Oh, and Fränz is laughing at me and my terrified reactions the whole time too. So there’s that. 

Actually, Fränz does try to help me out. 

“Maybe you won’t feel so sick if you drive,” he says, and he pulls off to the side of the road and stops. 

Again, I’m not a car guy per se, but I do know that in the future, it’d be pretty cool to look back on that one time I drove a Porsche Carrera 911 in Europe, even if the whole time, I felt like I was gonna hurl. So I jump at the chance and after some struggle getting out, Fränz and I switch places . (The car is so low, that getting out from the passenger seat feels like I’m getting out of a sleeping bag after a night spent on the ground.) 

I have to say, that sitting in the low cockpit, gripping that tiny, Speed Racer-type steering wheel in my hands, my nausea instantly subsided. To be replaced by high anxiety—not only have I not driven a car in half a year, but this is a Porsche for Chrissake, and my friend’s most prized possession; the last thing I wanna do is crack it up. So I take it slow. Really slow. In the rear-view mirror, I swear I can see cars backed up all the way to Brussels but I don’t care, I’m not gonna crash Fränz’s car. And even though I never get beyond third gear or above 50K per hour, the Porsche growls like I’m lettin’ her unwind on a straightaway at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. It makes me extremely nervous. 

Finally, I can’t take it anymore. I decide I’d rather be a nauseous passenger on the verge of throwing up than suffer a full-on panic attack while behind the wheel of Fränz’s car. So I pull over and let him drive us back to d’Stad. On the way, I just closed my eyes, stuck my fingers in my ears and tried to think happy thoughts. 

All in all though, I’d have to say, it was another fun time with mon Luxembourg frère, Fränz.

LUXEMBOURG RANDONNEES

In the 2-1/2 months I’ve been in Luxembourg, I’ve ridden four mountain bike randonnees of between 30K and 70K. They’re not races, more like road bike century rides in the U.S. and are a great way to learn the landscape. Lots and lots of forests, bizarrely beautiful rock formations in the north, windswept open fields and farmland that call to mind the springtime pro bicycle races I love to watch on Eurosport. 

Randonnees—and mountain biking in general--have been a great way to meet people too. My entry key into the Luxembourg mountain bike scene has been Fränz Schneider, who runs the Biker.lu site and club. (I think it’s a club; I’m still not sure how Luxembourg bike clubs, associations and the like work.) He’s the Grandmaster of all Connectors (Google Malcolm Gladwell and Connectors and that’s Fränz) who’s been a terrific friend and guide and has allowed me to follow him around like a new puppy ever since I arrived here. 

Apropos of nothing, here are a couple tidbits that only marginally have anything to do with the randonnees I’ve ridden. 

-After a 36K randonnee in Beaufort, not far from the amazing Château de Beaufort there, dozens of us tired, muddied riders gathered in some sort of community center for a spaghetti feed. Just before we dig in, Fränz says to me: “Gudden Appetit!” (Pronounced appe-teet). 

But I thought he said, “Looks good enough to eat,” so I said “Yes, it does.”

We went back and forth like this a couple times before he cleared up the English-Luxembourgish discrepancy. By this time, however, I’d found myself distracted and a little intimidated by the beauty and skill with which this room full of Luxembourgers ate their spaghetti. 

Using a knife and fork, they spin the spaghetti on the fork using the spoon as a sort of base to support said fork spinning and then, with a quick subtle move, pull out the fork so that the spun spaghetti dollop now sits in the spoon. Which they then spoon into their mouths. (Somewhere in the recesses of my brain is the knowledge that this is how one is supposed to eat spaghetti but I’ve never seen anyone actually do it.)

Looking around and seeing every single person eating this way except for me seemed a bit surreal. It reminded me of the Seinfeld episode in which Jerry and Elaine are in the diner and realize that everyone around them is eating cookies, donuts, Snicker’s bars, etc. with a knife and fork except for them. There was a balletic beauty about these Luxembourgers’ spaghetti-eating, worthy of a Vivaldi soundtrack. Meanwhile, I shoveled my spaghetti into my piehole caveman-style feeling like I was Tony Soprano crashing dinner at Downton Abbey. 

-The longest randonnee I’ve ridden so far here is the Mill Man Trail, a 70K near Echternach, Luxembourg’s oldest city located across the Sauer River from Germany. This was with my friends Ferdy, a Luxembourger, and Jean-Louis who’s French. Both speak excellent English and on the drive to Echternach, we talked much of languages, etc. They said that American English is harder to understand than British English and that some of the time when I speak all they hear is “Grrrr-Grrrr-Grrrr.”

So I affected my best British accent and said, “Do you think there will be a lot of people here today?”

“Ah, that’s much easier to understand,” they both said, almost in unison. I imagined it was as if I had fine-tuned a radio station so that it came in much clearer.

Later, on the randonnee I was surprised with the freeness with which riders (albeit, all male) would take out the garden hose, when the need arose, and water the lawn as it were. On an organized ride in the U.S., there’re porta johns (usually not enough) and stern warnings of the consequences if you don’t use them. Just for shaking a little dew off the lily. Here, you’ll see whole pelotons of pee-peeing pedalers mere feet from the aid tent or wherever.

“We’d get fined for doing this in the U.S.,” I said to Ferdy as we and a dozen or so others were poised at the edge of some trees personally trying to put out a forest fire. 

“Fined? Why?” asked Ferdy. “It’s natural.”

Such is true.

LUXEMBOURG TALES

About a month ago, I met and rode mountain bikes with Franz Schneider for the first time. (I’d contacted him through his terrific mountain-bike website, biker.lu.) Franz bike commutes to work and he made a plan for us to meet up on his way home in Strassen (Stroossen in Luxembourgish), a neighboring town about three miles from my Luxembourg apartment. We’d ride to his house and, after he changed clothes and bikes, spend a couple hours riding the trails and dirt roads of the Strassen Forest. Sounded good to me.

So we meet up, chitchat a little while riding and, just after pedaling into Strassen, we pass what appears to be a drunk (or dead?) guy lying in the grass next to some bushes at the side of the road. My initial thought is: “Interesting. I didn’t think Luxembourg had drunkard-slash-junky-looking folks lying around, but I guess they do.” At the time I’d been in the country for two weeks and hadn’t yet seen anyone like this. And then, truthfully, I didn’t give the guy another thought. (If I had stopped to think about every dubious-looking character I saw lying in the grass at Maritime Heritage Park on my way home back in Bellingham, I’d have never made it home.)

But Franz is clearly alarmed. He skids to a stop, gets off his bike and approaches the guy. A bus driver pulls over, jumps out of his bus to see if he can help. A passing motorist stops too. Franz tries to rouse the guy but he’s not moving at all. I’m sure he’s dead. Wow, my first dead guy, I think to myself. Welcome to Luxembourg!

Soon enough, the guy starts moving around, gives a big exhalation of breath whereupon the air all the way from Strassen to Luxembourg reeks of booze. He tries to stand, plants his feet wide apart for balance and looks right at me. He says something that has great meaning to him in Drunkenbourgish and then keels over and passes out again.

It’s cold, a damp 35 degrees that chills one to the bone, and so Franz and the bus driver are concerned that the guy will freeze to death. Franz dials 112 for an ambulance to take the guy to the hospital. Ten minutes later an efficient team of EMT folks arrive and herd the guy into the back of their vehicle. Addi, my drunken friend!

All I can think of is the two emergency room visits I had in recent years—for facial lacerations when a tree fell on me; a broken collarbone—and how they each cost me more than $1,000. And that’s with insurance and without an ambulance ride to get there.  

Back on our bikes, Franz and I continue on to his house. I ask him if the drunk guy is going to have to pay for his treatment. He wasn’t sure, but he didn’t think so.  

LUXEMBOURG RANDONNEE VIDEO

Here's a 2-minute video from last Sunday's mountain bike randonnee near Kayl, Luxembourg, just a few miles from the border with France. The dude in yellow pants who shows up a lot is my friend, Franz Schneider, impresario of the way-useful biker.lu site.

I've been riding two or three times a week with Franz; he's been an excellent tour guide to the beautiful Luxembourg countryside. Here's a shot Franz took from yesterday's snow-filled ride.

LUXEMBOURG WEEKEND RIDES

About a week ago I had the great fortune of making contact with Franz (umlaut over the 'a') Schneider, who runs the way-cool, all-things-Luxembourg mountain bike website biker.lu. Along with being a great rider and knowing every square inch of where to ride in the Grand Duchy, he's a super guy with a terrific sense of humor. And, he speaks like four languages--Luxembourgish, French, German and English. 

This past weekend we got in a couple really fun rides--a nighttime Tour de Luxembourg City that looped around this 1,050-year-old city, and a Sunday morning ride across the forests and fields of the central Luxembourg countryside. During the night ride, Franz tried to teach me how to count to 10 in Luxembourgish. I didn't do very well but I can say hello ("Moien") and good-bye: ("Atty") 

As I hope these photos show, the riding here is very different from Bellingham and the Northwest in general. I grew up in rural New Jersey (not an oxymoron) and it reminds me of the rolling terrain there with its leafy forests, short steep hills, narrow creeks and streams. Many's the time I've thought to myself that the Luxembourg countryside is very similar to where my sister Kath used to live in Warren County, NJ.  

Franz has led me on several great rides and one of the things I find interesting is that we just seem to go from field to field, forest to forest, without any demarcation of parkland or recreational forest or whatever. We ride seemingly wherever we want. And we see lots of others out hiking, running, etc. so everyone's doing it. (Quick note on the above pic of the band; on Sunday I rode to Franz's house and came across this combo marching up and down the street garnering donations door-to-door ... at 9 o'clock in the morning!)     

In truth, much of what we've ridden so far is dirt road, intermingled with stretches of fun singletrack. The more technical trails are apparently in the Mullerthal, an area about 25 miles north of Luxembourg City and that's known as Little Switzerland. I'm hoping to ride there in a couple weeks in the Randonnee Mullerthal.

There seem to be lots of mountain bike randonnee events--mountain bike tours, as it were, as opposed to races. You pay 5 or 10 euros and follow various marked routes (called "tracks" over here) of 20-, 40- or 60-K, whatever. Seems like a lot of fun.

I don't think I've mentioned my new bike frame yet. Before I left Bellingham, I took my bike into Fanatik, to have a once-over and they found a crack in the chainstay. So I just had to buy a new frame and all they had lying around was this sleek, sexy Niner Air 9 (below) which I was pretty much  forced to buy. Really, I was. Honest. I'm still getting used to it on these totally unfamiliar trails, but so far, I'm digging it. Funny, it's only been ridden in Luxembourg. 

LUXEMBOURG RANDOMNESS

Franz Schneider of www.biker.lu leads the way on a fun ride last night across the snowy, muddy, windswept fields of  the Luxembourg countryside. Franz knows all the best places to ride in the Grand Duchy and I hope to tag along on many rides in the future.

Here's a sort-of mixed bag assortment. Some random thoughts, impressions and occurrences from my first few days in Luxembourg.

(Feb. 16, a few hours after we arrive.)

It’s 4 .m. but to me feels like 7 p.m. and given that I’m deep in the throes of a jet-lag funk, I can’t sleep worth a damn. So I go out for a walk in this city I’ve never been to before.
I walk through a nice park which has signs that appear to say no ball-playing, kids with helmets, or apple cores among other things. It also has the most amazing clipper-ship playground which, whale-and-clipper-ship lover that I was as a child would’ve been absolutely heaven for me. (An admitted Aubrey-Maturin series nerd--"Master and Commander," etc.--it still knocks my socks off!) 

Even though it’s getting to be 4:30 in the morning, I begin seeing singles, lovey-dovey couples and drunk folk walking down the streets around me. I follow to where they appear to be coming from and find We Own the Night, a hopping nightclub with pulsating lights and music and and dozens of young Eurohipsters hanging about. I watch the spectacle for a bit—it’s as if I’m invisible, a function I take it, of me no longer being young and pretty— then head down into a pedestrian area very similar to Rue Claire in Paris.

Yeah, baby!

Pretty soon I hear two guys and a woman—all French—walking behind me. She’s singing, is quite pretty, and holding a full glass of wine. It’s like something out of a movie.
Eurohipters themselves, they say “Bonjour,” “Hallo!,” “Wei geht’s,” to me and when I don’t really react—like I say, I’m jetlagged like crazy and not really sure what I’m seeing--one of them finally says “What’s Up?” in a phony American accent.
Then, “Weed … do you know where we can find some weed?” they ask.
They tell me they’re from just over the border in France, and seem disappointed that I can’t help them. I tell them I’m from America, near Seattle, which seems to somewhat impress, but also confuse them.
“You moved from Seattle to Luxembourg?” one of the Euroboys asks. “You’re going to be very depressed. There’s nothing to do here; you’re going to need Xanax to live here.” (Since Xanax is for panic attacks, that’s probably not what he meant, but I got the idea.)
As they stumble away down the cobbled street, the woman calls back over her shoulder, “Good luck, Seattle Boy!”

Just one of the countless cool, Europey buildings here in Luxembourg.

(Feb 16 - later that same day.)
Our first full day in the city we rent a van, an Opel not much bigger than our Versa and head to an IKEA just across the border in Belgium, known here as Belgique. (It’s less than 10 miles from our apartment.) We pick up a couple beds, a desk, some chairs and more during an exhaustive 5-hour shopping marathon. We note that the cafeteria offers IKEA-brand beer. Bake and I are so tired that a couple times we sit down on chairs in the store and nod off for 20 minutes.

(Feb 17)
Got out for a 90-minute ride to a forested area south of Bertrange (I think). Fun, pretty mellow. Though dirt and mud, there was nothing narrower than a city street. Still, amazing to get out in the Luxembourg countryside. Early in the ride, met a Danish rider named Jesper who let me follow him for a bit and pointed the way to this forest. He rode a Cannondale MTB with 26-inch tires and a rigid carbon fork.
Ornithological observation: There are magpies here the way we have Stellars Jays back in Western Washington state.
Later, Jen and I rode bikes downtown (Centre) to a McDonalds. It was Sunday and no grocery stores, or really anything was open. We notice that everything that’s extra-large or extra-meaty is the “American” this or that. (Same thing in grocery and retail stores; 'American-size' seems to be code for XL or XXL.) 

A couple blocks from our apartment I came across this mural of Krusty the Clown, my spiritual leader and adviser.

(Feb 18)
After-dinner exploratory night ride down into the gorge (Petrusse Valley). Incredible. Spooky cool. Expected to see homeless or nefarious types down there but it was empty. Lots of birds (crows?) in the trees, seemed upset by my presence.

(Feb 19)
Stopped in at a bike shop. (I don’t know the name.) It’s a combination high-end (Pinarello/Cannondale, etc.) bike shop and Shuck’s auto-supply store. You pay for stuff at the  store's only check-out counter near the front exit whether you’re getting Mavic Cross Max rims or windshield wiper blades. 

Later, at one point during a short exploratory ride, wherein I'm pedaling cobbled streets past the ducal palace while contemplating the city's thousand-plus-year history, I say aloud to myself: “I loooove this city!” (I may have thrown a "frickin'" in there for effect.)

Later, later, during a run, I stopped in to check out Luxembourg’s Notre Dame Cathedral, which dates back to 1613. It’s stunningly ornate and beautiful. I love big old European cathedrals and the art within—were religion not involved, I would so be Catholic.

(Feb 20)
With the potential for four different languages—French, German, Luxembourgish, English—combined with my eagerness to throw myself into it, I get confused. Yesterday at a bakery, I said “Si” for thank-you. In general, if people don’t speak English, they speak German and I can sorta try that. “Was ist das?” goes a long way as does “Wei geht’s?” “Danke” and “Auf Weidersehn.” Plus, if they want me to, I can count to 20 in German, but that hasn’t come up yet.

Lots of bike lanes here in Villa de Luxembourg!

(Feb 24)
Saturday, along with another trip to Belgique and IKEA (15 minutes away) we went to Cactus, a huge grocery store Strassen, a neighbring town of L'bourg. As soon as you walk in, you’re greeted by a bar and a sort-of food court area. Also, some retail stores like a mall.
Yesterday, I rode down into the Petrusse Valley to take pics of the snow. (We’ve been having the oddest snowfall I’ve ever seen—non-stop snow for going on 48 hours and yet total accumulation is an inch, maybe two.) Hooked up with another mountain biker and he took me riding east of the city, to a nice forested area with some fun mellow trails. Getting there and back was cool too—up and down various narrow cobbled streets, along the river, past an ancient monastery, etc.
It was a Sunday morning and hearing church bells gonging through the valley of an historic European city makes you feel, yet again, like you’re in a movie. It’s incredibly moving. 

Last week Bake and I had to get physicals in order to prove our fitness for living in Luxembourg. Next up, we get chest X-rays and are tested for TB which, from what Jen said, is a sort of creepy experience. Lookin’ forward to it!