Earlier this month, I had a real vacation. After needing to cancel two vacation plans in October and November, a real vacation finally happened. I was able to leave Berlin and spend some time away from my home for a week. This time, I went to Luxembourg and spent a week. Amazing!
See, my trip to Saxony in September 2020 was the last time I spent the night outside of Berlin. After that, the pandemic situation started getting worse, and Germany went into its very long second lockdown. Only after 9 months and 2 vaccination shots later was I able to get out of the city again for a considerable amount of time. See, as the situation started improving, I was monitoring how things are in the EU, focusing on Germany's neighbouring countries. I definitely didn't want to travel far, at least not yet, so I was trying to figure out my options within the EU. Making a vacation within Germany was not (yet) an option, since hotels were still forbidden to take in guests that were not travelling for business. So I checked out options outside.
Luxembourg became an option, due to several things. It seemed that hotels are open to anyone, not just to business travelers. There is also no requirement to provide a negative PCR test, if you're traveling by land. Cultural institutions such as museums are open. And Luxembourg is not categorised by Germany as a virus-variant area. This means that I could take the train (which I haven't done in a while), have options to do, and not have entry restrictions when coming back to Germany.
As much as I would be vaccinated already when I am in Luxembourg, I opted to do socially-distant activities. So I actually planned to do 4 days of hiking interspersed with 3 days of sight-seeing. I tackled the Mullerthal Trail in Luxembourg's northeastern corner. And the weather was generally cooperative. I hiked almost 70 kilometres altogether, which was great. And the views were amazing too. And in between, I was able to visit other towns such as Vianden (to check out the castle) and Esch-sur-Alzette (to check out the steel factories). I also explored further areas of Luxembourg City which I haven't touched before. This is actually my third time in Luxembourg: the first time was in 2013 for a brief (2 nights) visit and the second time was in 2019 for business purposes. I realised that until then I have only remained in a very small area of Luxembourg, between the train station and the Ville Haute, and I haven't ventured out of it until now. But Luxembourg actually is a fantastic country to explore, and I definitely had fun during the week I was there.
So yes, of course there would be pictures. Stay tuned.
