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Villa Vauban, Haute Ville, Luxembourg City

On my last day in Luxembourg, I decided to visit the Villa Vauban, located in the charming Haute Ville. The 1873 villa owes its name to a fort built on that site by the Marquis de Vauban in 1684. The seige of Luxembourg was part of a series of wars launched by Louis XIV in the latter part of the seventeenth century, to establish defensible boundaries in the northern and eastern parts of France.

The day I visited, the rain was tumbling down from the heavens, just as it had for the previous two days. Apparently (according to a Luxembourgish matron) it rains more here than it does in England! When I challenged her on this statement (I am, after all, English) she told me that she’d spent some time working in England as a young woman, in the hotel trade. And that she’d noticed that while the weather blows past you in England, due to those strong Atlantic gales, in Luxembourg, the clouds stay put, pouring a considerable amount of water upon you before, fiiinally, sloooowly moving on. 

So there you have it. The weather is definitely worse in Luxembourg than it is in England!

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THE SWIFT & THE HARRIER by Minette Walters

I read THE SWIFT AND THE HARRIER second, so am reviewing it after reading THE PLAYERS, the second novel set in Dorset in the 1600s about the same family.

While THE PLAYERS is set in the 1680s, starting just after the death of Charles II on 6 February 1685, THE SWIFT AND THE HARRIER occurs around forty years earlier, in the 1640s, during the English Civil War.

Jayne Swift, a young woman of some twenty-six years, is hurrying into Dorchester because her female cousin has summoned her urgently. It turns out that Mistress Jayne is a doctor, which is a very unusual occupation for a woman in 17th-century England. Needless to say, on the very day when she must hurry to her cousin, the streets of Dorchester are absolutely jammed with people, on their way to see the execution of two Catholic priests. Along the way, Jayne takes shelter in a doorway, and when that door is opened sets eyes on a woman who is just as remarkable as herself. For Lady Alice Stickland is a painter, who specializes in portraits. Naturaly, she cannot possibly take credit for her talent, and so found a way of practicing her art by persuading an actor to act the part of the painter, while she sat in the shadows and actually painted the portrait herself.

Lady Alice takes a liking to Jayne, and suggests that her footman William escort her to her cousin’s house. Unfortunately, their journey takes them by the gallows and so the reader is “treated” to an extremely gruesome account of hanging, drawing and quartering. This part of the book is really not for the faint hearted, so I advise those of you who are sensitive to such matters to just skip over it, as the rest of the novel is really a treat.

When William finally deposits Jayne at her cousin’s house, we find that all the people within are on their knees in prayer in a darkened house with the windows closed. They are all terrified of Rachel’s husband, who has imposed Draconian Puritanical measures on his household, because he says they will help his dying son.

The two-year-old son, Isaac is suffering from croup, and Jayne immediately countermands the husband’s orders in order to save his life. She insists on having the windows opened, cauldrons of water boiled, and towels brought so that she can drape scented hot towels over herself and the child to ease his breathing. Realizing that the father is enjoying himself egging on the executioners, Jayne knows that she has a couple of hours at most to effect real changes in her cousin’s life.

And that is how THE SWIFT AND THE HARRIER opens. Jayne not only saves Isaac’s life, but she rescues her cousin from an abusive marriage.

So we know that Jayne Swift is the Swift of the title. But who is the Harrier? It turns out to be footman William, who is not really a footman at all, but rather posing as one. And that is how the two novels are tied together, for while THE PLAYERS opens with Jayne and William’s son Elias pretending to be a clergyman, THE SWIFT AND THE HARRIER opens with William pretending to be a footman.

Although more than one reader described this novel as too dry for enjoyment, I disagree. It probably helps to be a history buff, as I am. But I thought the characters of Jayne’s parents, her three brothers and the various people she met during the siege of Lyme were beautifully drawn. I have never heard of Minette Walters before, but I am now going to read some of her earlier books. 

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THE ANGLO-SAXONS ~ A History of the Beginnings of England: 410 to 1066 by Marc Morris

In 400 CE, the Roman Empire was coming to an end in Britain. It was pulling back its military. Coins were not being minted. And ships stopped sailing across the channel.

In around 430 CE, the Anglo-Saxons began coming to England. As author Marc Morris points out, the term Anglo-Saxon does not mean that Britain was just invaded by people from Saxony and Angeln in Germany. Nor does it mean that it was just the Jutes from Jutland in Denmark who came. No. It means that people from Scandinavia and Germany flooded into England from around 430 on, taking advantage of the chaos surrounding the sudden collapse of the Roman Empire in England. 

That was bad enough, but in the mid-sixth century, things became even worse. Apparently, a volcano in Iceland erupted three times in 536, 540 and 547, creating massive dust veils that swept over England. The effect of this was to create the coldest decade Britain has ever seen in two thousand years. Because the rays of the sun were so much weaker during this decade, there was massive crop failure leading to large-scale starvation. 

What must it have been like for the people of England in around 550 CE, shortly after this horrendous decade? I imagine they were thrown into complete panic. As they wouldn’t have known anything about volcanoes in Iceland or the resultant dust veils that occur when a volcano goes off, they probably told themselves that the gods were angry with them. If they had nothing, or very little, and were completely ruined, they probably left their homes and took to the road.

If, on the other hand, you were one of those lucky people who had a farm that actually functioned, and enough acreage so it was easier for you to deal with bad harvests, your biggest problem would have been the spike in robberies. For the people on the road (the have-nots) would be breaking into the properties and holdings of people who had something. I imagine there must have been pitched battles going on between these two sets of people, with the property holders going to the local strong-man, askiing for protection in the form or armed guards around their properties.

In my mind, this was a protection racket, not unlike the mafia. The reason why I say that is because the payment for this protection was extortionate. It would have been one thing if the local strong man had asked for only a few things, or “whatever you can afford.” But they did not. They basically asked for a pound of flesh. 

Here is a list of what the owner of one hide had to give the local strong man as a yearly payment. (A hide is enough land to feed one family.)

1 vat of honey

30 loaves of bread

1 container of Welsh ale

3 containers of clear ale

1 goat

1 goose

1 hen

1 wheel of cheese

1 container of butter

1 salmon

2 pounds of fodder

10 eels

If you were literally hanging on by your fingernails, one step away from total ruin, starvation, and disease, would you have been able to afford all this? I can imagine the local strongman coming up with this deliberately extortionate list, because if the person failed to pay, that meant they had to give up both their liberty and their land. Sure, the King agreed to protect them from armed robbers. But, in return, they faced a life of indentured servitude. 

Historians now believe that this is how the Kings of England emerged in this period from around 550 to 600 CE. In the beginning, there were probably a score of kingdoms, that finally became whittled down to just seven ~ Northumbria, Mercia, Wessex, Essex, East Anglia, Sussex, and Kent.

If you have always wondered how England emerged from the collapse of the Roman Empire, this book is for you. It provides a fascinating account of Anglo-Saxon Society from its formation in around 430 CE to the Norman Conquest of 1066 CE. 

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A rainy afternoon in the Grund neighborhood of Luxembourg City

Today, I decided to go to a really great bakery that was mentioned online. The one I chose is called MAMA according to those reviews, but its actually a complex of things that might include a shelter, a commune and a bakery. It’s called Mama’s Shelter on Google Maps.

And so I walked to the Place de Paris and took the tram in the direction of Luxexpo, and got off at MUDAM in the Kirschberg area. It was very easy to find. Once I got there I discovered that they not only had great bakery items but also sandwiches! Am going back tomorrow morning to buy 1/2 sandwich, a pastry and another Napolitan.

After that, I took the tram to Hamilius and had an early lunch at La Brasserie, arriving by 11:30. This time, I had the a la carte menu, but it was marvelous. Gazpacho done the Spanish way (with a wide black straw), a Quiche Lorraine and salad (and french fries, which I ignored.) I ended the meal with one sccop of caramel ice cream.

Because I had that wonderful pastry with me, I walked back to Hotel Perrin to leave it safely inside my room. Just as I arrived, the housekeeper arrived to do my room, so I waited the ten minutes it took her to do it.

Then I walked to the station (Gare Centrale) found Quai 1 and got on bus number 14 in the direction of Cents, Waassertuerm to take me to Grund, the low-lying area of Luxembourg City, right by the Alzette river.. I got off at Dinselpuert, because that’s where Google maps told me to get off. However, I was very far up from Grund, so walked down the hill, the way the bus had come. Soon I heard the sound of running water, and leaning over, discovered a path that led down to the Alzette. 

Of course I shouldn’t have done this as the path was way too steep for me, and it didn’t help that it had been partly washed out during a recent storm. But once I got down to the river, I could see the Bock Casemates by looking up. I took some photos, and tried to orient myself to where the violet statue of Melusina was. Naturally, I walked the wrong way. But once I discovered that, I walked back and enjoyed walking along the bank opposite the statue, until I was stopped by roadworks.

So I crossed the old bridge, and found myself climbing up and onto a road that was going to take me up to the Bock Casemates. Peering back at where I’d come from, I discovered I’d missed a bunch of stairs leading down to the bank of the Alzette, on the other side from the old church.

I made my way back there, and voila! found myself next to Melusina. Now I had to find a way out and then get a bus as it was beginning to rain. I walked straight to the “main road” (a cobbled street) and spied a bus stop opposite marked Stadgronn Breck, and indeed there was an old bridge nearby over a charming stream. However, by this time it was pouring rain, and this bus stop was not in service due to road works. I took a photo of the path of the 23 bus, which should have stopped there and decided that if I followed the road over the bridge, and kept following it, I would find the bus stop at Rumm, which the bus had used earlier.

So, with only a flimsy umbrella for covering, I walked over the bridge, turned left and made my way along the road, avoiding cul-de-sacs. At one fork the road narrowed as it turned right, while the wider left fork seemed to go to a main road. I walked left and soon saw a bus in the distance. Wonderful! I found two bus stops across from each other and met a group of women (I think a mother and at least one daughter and possibly a school friend) and I asked if any of them spoke English. I told them I wanted to go to the station, and the young teen quickly found out that I should use Bus 14. I looked at the schedule and yes, it did go to the Gare Centrale. Then I finally saw the sign of the bus-stop. I had made it to Rumm.

It took about ten minutes for the bus to arrive, but when it did we all piled on. Somehow I found a seat and was able to sit comfortably for the ten or fifteen minutes it took the bus driver to get us to the Gare Centrale. By that time, the rain had stopped, so all I had to do was to walk back to the hotel.

What a day! I hadn’t planned much, but I had seen a lot.

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THE PLAYERS by Minette Walters

THE PLAYERS by Minette Walters is so cleverly told. The first chapter,opening in April 1685, is told by a narrator, referred to as The Watcher. This person is clearly a British spy who spends hours watching the house in The Hague where the Duke of Monmouth – Charles II’s illiegitimate son – is living. When, finally, he meets Monmouth, he is greeted as a friend. It turns out that both men know each other well as they fought together some six years earlier in the 1679 Battle of Bothwell Bridge. But now, King Charles II is dead, and his eldest son Monmouth is planning to go to England to claim the throne. 

The second chapter takes places several months later, in July 1685, just after the Battle of Sedgemoor, in which Monmouth’s rag-tag army is defeated by forces loyal to James II, Charles II’s younger brother who is now King of England. Monmouth tries to hide in a ditch that runs beside a pea field. But he is discovered at dawn the next day. Just as he is found, a mysterious parson appears, who is able to converse (in an understone) with Monmouth in Dutch, which turns out to be Monmouth’s native tongue as he spent his childhood and formative years in the Netherlands. The parson tries to help Monmouth, even hinting that he is just an impoverished serf. However, Monmouth spoils everything by admitting that he is, in fact Monmouth, with a bounty on his head for £5,000 (an enormous fortune in 1685.) After the local magistrate rules that he is in fact who he says he is (Monmouth famously bore a striking resemblance to his father Charles II) he is hustled off to the Tower of London, where he is executed several days later.

In the third chapter, we learn that The Watcher, is the same person as The Parson, and that he is actually the Duke of Granville, a local grandee in Dorset, where this novel is set. Anyone who grew up in Britain, probably had a history class of The Bloody Assizes of Judge Jeffreys. My history teacher had no trouble expressing her disdain for Jeffreys, and the horrifying punishment he meted out of hanging, drawing, and quartering. I haven’t thought of this for years, and I must say I appreciated Ms. Walter’s more even-handed approach to Jeffreys. She points out that Jeffreys was bound by his oath to King James II and was forced to flollow his instructions. Ms. Walters places the blame for the horrifying events of te autumn of 1685 at James II’s feet, and shows how his vindictiveness eventually led to him being kicked off the throne of England three years later.

And then there are such wonderful characters. In this novel, we have three main characters ~ the intriguing Duke of Granville, who is an expert spy., his mother, the incredible healer Lady Harrier, and the woman who becomes his wife, the brilliant lawyer Miss Althea. It is so wonderful to read about vivid female characters who imbue this tale with so much vivacity. If Granville himself were not so brilliant at disguises and deception, he would be boring by comparison. But of course he is not. I have never heard of this author before, but I now consider THE PLAYERS to be a gem of a novel!

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How to Purchase a Suitcase in Luxembourg City

On arrival at the Hotel Perrin in Luxembourg, I discovered my large suitcase had a hole in it. True, it was not an enormous hole, but I was facing two flights on Thursday (Luxembourg to London and London to Manchester), and I was afraid that the hole might get worse and all my belongings would spill out. 

I poked around on the web for a place in Luxembourg that sold suitcases at a reasonable price. The first shops to surface were leather goods shops in the Haute Ville. Obviously, I wasn’t going to go there as their prices would be eye-watering. Eventually, I found out that there was a place called Auchan. I looked it up and it seemed to be a shopping center in the Kirchberg neighborhood of Luxembourg (a high escarpment where all the EU buildings are located),and I would need a tram to get there. That seemed extremely doable, but what worried me was that I might have to spend as much as €400. 

After lunch, I took myself there, accompanied by my broken suitcase so that I would have a good idea of the size of suitcase I would need to buy. (I need something concrete with me as I am very bad at estimating size.) 

Of course, it was absolutely massive. Fortunately, I found a couple of women standing behind a counter and in my poor French I was able to ask them for a store that sold suitcases, and they told me I needed to go up a level. What I actually discovered was that Auchan is an enormous store located in the Kirchberg shopping center. The lower level is a grocery store, and the upper level (where I was) looked exactly like Costco! (For those of you who don’t live in the United States and are not familiar with Costco, I will just say that it is a chain of enormous stores, so large that it is like being in an aircraft hanger, where you buy everything in bulk at budget prices). Like Costco, Auchan had flat screen TVs, clothes, all kinds of things for the kitchen, dining room, bedroom. 

Eventually, I found the aisle that sold suitcases. Of course, I couldn’t find exactly what I was looking for as Auchan doesn’t do soft-sided suitcases (which I prefer). So I had to buy one that was hard-sided. However, because I had my old suitcase with me, I was able to match the size and shape. The reason why I picked this particular one was that it was listed at €99.99 with a 30% discount. So I actually managed to get a new suitcase for €70! I checked the labels, and discovered it was made by Airport (which I had heard good things about online) and had had a number of tests done to ensure durability. 

And so I bought it, thrilled that I had found something that seemed to be durable and well-made for a bargain price!

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THE SISTERS OF SEA VIEW by Julie Klassen

Set in 1819, just after Jane Austen’s death, THE SISTERS OF SEA VIEW takes up where SANDITON left off, with the issue of those increasingly fashionable sea-side resorts. Author Julie Klassen has great fun talking about sea-bathing and we even have one incident where a rogue wave sends a bathing machine tumbling into the sea.

So when the Summers sisters are left impoverished upon the death of their father, it seems extremely sensible for the eldest sister Sarah to open their seaside home in to visitors. However, instead of the elderly invalids they expect, many of their guests are eligible young men. And so begins this series of three novels, in which at least one sister will be taken to the altar. 

I found this novel absolutely charming, and oh, what a wonderful idea Ms. Klassen had of resurrecting the odious Mrs Elton from Jane Austen’s Emma. In this volume, Mrs. Elton becomes one of those tiresome guests with a never-ending stream of “special requests” including an expensive dinner for all of the notables of Sidmouth, the village in Devon where the novel is set. 

But what is so delicious is the way in which Mrs E. is exposed as a fraud. Emily Summers, the budding writer, actually contacts a woman in Surrey, where the Eltons reside. Imagine my astonishment on being told that this lady – I believe her name is Mrs Jane Lewis – lives at Hinchley Wood near Esher, Surrey!

Why am I surprised? Because it is an obscure corner of Surrey, where I happened to live during my teens. The Hinchley Wood I knew in the 1970s was a compact suburb adjacent to the much older (and prettier) village of Esher. Of course, Hinchley Wood came into being with the opening of its railway station in 1930, placing it on the Waterloo to Guildford line. After that, the place boomed with (according to Wikipedia) 750 houses being built between 1934-1935. My family lived in the newer part of the village, on a very pleasant housing estate just off the Kingston By-Pass in a four-square house that was built in 1958. 

But in 1819, when the novel was set, I doubt there was much of anything there, certainly no village. Indeed it seems that Hinchley Wood possesses only one listed building, dating to the 16th century. Naturally, it is a farmhouse. 

In any event, Mrs Lewis confirms Emily’s suspicions that the Eltons are not only odious but name-dropping frauds. I am delighted that my modest suburb is involved – however fictitiously – in the come-uppance of the snobbish Mrs. E. 

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A Trip to the Laundry

Because today was Monday (meaning that all the museums were closed) I decided to use this day to do some errands. By now I’d been in Europe for about three weeks and was badly in need of a laundry. So Monsieur, the older gentleman who ran the Hotel Perrin where I was staying in the Gare quartier of Luxembourg City, directed me to the Bubble N Lock Laundromat, which was a few streets away.

When I arrived, far from being a place where people actually do the laundry for you (as I thought he’d said) it turned out to be an unmanned laundry where the instructions were all in French. 

But I was so lucky! As I entered, there was a young man taking his clothing out of the dryer, and on seeing my look of puzzlement, he hastened to help me. My French is not good, and his English was lacking also. However, he managed to explain everything to me in Franglish, and so I was able to do my laundry. It took me all of the morning.

While I waited for my clothes to dry, I amused myself texting various friends. And so, the time passed quickly enough.

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A LETTER OF MARY ~ MARY RUSSELL & SHERLOCK HOLMES #3 ~ by Laurie R. King

I really love it when authors use punning titles to introduce their works. A LETTER OF MARY is so aptly named, for this novel ~ the third in the Sherlock Holmes Mary Russell series ~ opens when Mary receives a letter. It is from Dorothy Ruskin, a woman she does not know well, an emancipated, forceful woman who dresses in pantaloons and does archaeology in Palestine. But she remembers Mary from a few years back, and now she is coming to England and would like to take tea with Mary and her husband ~ the famous and brilliant sleuth Sherlock Holmes.

While visiting Russell and Holmes, Dorothy Ruskin leaves them with a Renaissance-style box which enfolds an ancient parchment. And this is really the LETTER OF MARY that the title refers to. For it seems that the parchment is truly ancient. Dating from 70 CE, when the Romans destroyed the Temple of Solomon, the author of this letter writes that she has to flee  Jerusalem. But before she does so, she places this parchment in the hands of her granddaughter Rachel to take to the author’s sister, the child’s great-aunt. But what is so astonishing is that it is written in Koine, a type of Greek, by a female author, who refers to herself as Maryam or Mary of Magdala, the Apostle of Jesus the Anointed One.

As this novel is set one hundred years ago, in 1923, when women had only just achieved the vote in England and the United States, and when emancipated women were a new thing that some people were having a very hard time getting used to, Mary Russell holds back on making it public. 

In the meantime, Dorothy Ruskin is killed by a runaway car, and Holmes and Russell spend the rest of the novel trying to nab her killer(s).The author has great fun in playing out the whole sleuthing thing. And like Jacqueline Winspear, the author of the Maisie Dobbs series, Laurie R. King has her characters complain about how boring and tedious the sleuthing life is compared to “the nonsense written by John Watson” or what happens in the typical novel.

If you enjoy period dramas, especially those set in the 1920s and 1930s you are in for a treat with this volume. 

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A Rainy Sunday in Luxembourg City

Today was a grey day with gentle rain falling at times. After yesterday’s all-day tour, I took the opportunity to spend the morning catching up on things, making a 1pm reservation for a restaurant that was right next door to the Lëtzebuerg City Museum on the Rue du Saint Esprit. 

I walked from the hotel to the Avenue de la Gare, and then to the Place Wallis expecting a tram to pick me up. But when it didn’t arrive I looked up to see the street blocked by two huge trucks and a crane. There was some electronic announcement flying by on the message board, but as it was all in French, I didn’t really understand it. And so I decided to walk.

Fortunately, Luxembourg is a small city and it was only going to take 15 minutes. I continued along Avenue de la Gare, crossing another bridge over the gorge, and then turned right onto Rue du Saint Esprit. This street is in the old part of town, and so it changes direction every so often. However, Google maps did a good job of keeping up. I left at 12:36 and arrived at 12:50, ten minutes early, so I took some photos, then went into the restaurant.

Brasserie L’Hetre Beim Musee was a bit fancier than I expected. But they offered me a seat at the window. It took me a long time to decide what to order, because the restaurant was pricey and I didn’t want to pay too much. Also, I didn’t know what the portion size was. On the other hand, I was pretty hungry having had nothing to eat since 7pm the night before. So I compromised on a smalll portion of Ceasar Salad, and some grilled fish. I also ordered a small glass of wine, and a small bottle of water.

The Ceasar Salad was very good, but also very rich. I tried to eat as little of the creamy sauce that I could possibly manage, and realized (too late) I could have gotten by just on this dish. The grilled cod was beautifully cooked, but everything was bathed in butter, which is far too rich for me. Again, I tried to eat in such a way that I wasn’t imbibing too much of that buttery sauce.

After that, I paid the bill and left. It was then about 2pm, and I decided that since I hadn’t had dessert, that I would get a pastry from a shop nearby. I had to walk all the way to the Grand Rue before turning right onto Rue des Capuchins. I found it in the first block on the left-hand side. I bought one chocolatey thingy to have later, and walked back to the restaurant so that I could visit the museum next door.

The Lëtzebuerg City Museum is described as a place that illustrates the thousand-year-old history of Luxembourg. (Lëtzebuerg is Luxembougish for Luxembourg City.) However, I did not find that to be true. Getting into the huge glass cage of a lift, you descend to the bottom (Floor 0) and are met by a copy of the original document of 963 in which Siegfried of the Ardennes acquired the feudal lands of Luxembourg. The first thing he did was to build a castle, named Lucilinburhuc (“small castle”), on the Bock Fiels (“rock”). There is a lovely legend that Siegfried married a mermaid called (of course) Melusina. One stipulation of their marriage vows was that Melusina would have every Saturday to herself, in which to enjoy her privacy, and that her husband Siegfried could not be with her that day. Naturally, Siegfried grew curious and jealous. He found his wife in a bath, with a tail, and realized he had married a mermaid. But it was too late to apologize, for Melusina vanished. (Some versions of this legend say she jumped off the highest rock in Luxembourg to her death in the Alzette river below.)

After that wonderful document, things went rapidly downhill. There was no continuity in the narrative whatsoever. Floor 0 didn’t have much to see, so I went up to Floor 1, where I was yanked into 1684, a very bad year for Luxembourg, because that is when the Marquis de Vauban (1633-1707), Louis XIV’s chief military engineer, lay siege to Luxembourg and took the fortress. Moving up to Floor 2, we were yanked into the early 20th century, with the resignation of Grand-Duchess Marie-Adelaide and the ascension of Grand Duchess Charlotte. The rest of the exhibition was about the horrible time Luxembourg had during the Second World War when it was occupied by Germany from 1940 to 1944. Floor 3 (the street entrance) didn’t have anything of note in it. The space was taken up by the information desk and the cloakroom where there were lockers for your backpacks.

So, all in all, the museum was quite a disappointment. The only good thing about it was that it was free. And so I decided (after that heavy lunch) to walk all the way back to the hotel. When I got there, Monsieur, who runs the hotel was insisting that the man standing at the counter hadn’t paid his bill. The man got on his iPhone to his wife, who confirmed this, so he drew his card out of a shabby wallet and paid. Then walked quickly off, together with two other young men surrounded by luggage. 

“Ciao,” called out Monsieur, smiling benignly at their backs. 

They replied in kind. This was somewhat surprising since the whole of the previous conversation had been going on in French. But this is Luxembourg, the Land of Many Languages.

Then I went up to the counter and asked him about doing my laundry, and he showed me where to go. But it seemed from what he said that they do it for you. He said there were two places and that they both open at 7 am. But Google could only find one for me called Bubble N Lock Laundromat at 12 Rue du Fort Wallis. 

I will find out tomorrow.

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