I continued my Luxembourg adventures yesterday by visiting the capital city, which is unimaginatively also called Luxembourg. Their lack of thought is compensated by the simple wickedness of the city itself, which feels a bit like York except everyone speaks French. Plus, in comparison to Neuerburg it felt like switching from sniffing a finished glue stick to overdosing on LSD. Neuerburg wishes it could do the catering for Luxembourg's parties.
An example of Luxembourg's tasteful modern art.
Wish I'd seen the lower town on this sign at the time. "In South-Western Luxembourg, born and raised .."Hopefully I'll be back there before too long; I'm back in the 'burg now, which means the seat tray is back in the upright position and life is stationary once again. I did a couple of hours assisting today, which was alright, and then met a tiny child in the staffroom who had more interesting conversations with the teachers than I've achieved in 2 months here.
I also got an email from the demi-goddess of Leeds University herself, Angie Willshaw, telling me that I'm one of the last people not to have received my grant because the all-important form which I sent back at the beginning of this month is MIA somewhere over the English channel, presumed lost.
I consider this partly the fault of a lack of clarity on the part of Neuerburg's Post Office. A sign on the door politely explains that it has been shut since 2003; the replacement is a stamp machine outisde and two post boxes. This is the crux of the problem - is there a difference between the two post boxes? The instructions on each one are the same, as are the pickup hours, yet one is bigger than the other. Is one a postbox specially for international post? What even warrants two postboxes in this god-forsaken town? I hardly think vast amounts of overflow post are an issue in a town of 1800 where the currency is seashells and vegetables.
My conclusion is thus: One postbox is for normal post, international or otherwise, and the other one is for suicide notes and pleas for a functioning public transport service. Or a Search and Rescue Helicopter. The latter is presumably the larger postbox.
Whether or not this is the case I have no idea; Angie, if by some Christmas miracle you read this, then please send the money on now because you know I've made the effort, even if the document isn't physically in your hand. That'd be swell.
I see there's also some fun stuff springing up on the VLE; apparently there's some variety of "weblog diary" which we have to periodically update, which is a steaming pile of gay. This is particularly so because of its reasoning; there's considerable emphasis on 'the lecturers will not read these entries, nor will they be accessible to other students. This is mostly for you so you can look back and re-live all your year abroad experiences in the future.'
What's the point in that? I have this blog here, as well as several thousand photos. If I want to return and revisit my meaningful experiences in this country years from now, it sure as hell won't be by reading through my poorly written German blog entries that I wrote out of obligation for University credits. The first entry was meant to be enitled something like "6-week milestone". Looks like I'm writing that one retrospectively.
The other fun activity is podcasting, which suggests only one thing: The man with dreads may be in the far East, but he's still pulling the proverbial strings. God love 'im.
