Life as we know it

The past few weekends have been pretty slow in the “fun” department for Agnes and me. So we felt this would be the perfect opportunity to write about life as we know it....Luxembourg style.

The goods, the bads, the differences, etc.

Things I really miss are Mexican food, ESPN, baseball games, mass spoken in English, and good radio stations. Things Agnes really misses are good Mexican food, Sushi and pedicures.

Differences....there are lots of them! Besides the obvious (we are in Europe, very little English is spoken outside of work) some differences worth noting are:

* The very, very French culture. People have their croissants and cafe's and sit around and look proper, and everything is clean and in its place. Most shops close for lunch hours. On Sunday, everything closes down except a few gas stations and a few restaurants. Otherwise, grocery stores, clothing stores, etc, etc are all shut down and it's like a ghost town.

* People drive very expensive cars. And I mean EVERYONE drives really nice cars.....the cabbies are rollin’ in $40,000 Mercedes and our secretaries at work are driving BMW's. No joke. In all honesty, I drive a Saab and it’s basically the equivalent of a rusted out Pinto with the confederate flag in the back driving through the Knob.

* Luxembourg has really good beer. They basically have the best from Belgium, Germany, France and Holland available all the time, plus the four main Luxembourgoise beers, each of which ain’t too bad neither (there's my Lindenwald english coming out!). My favorites are Leffe Blonde (Belgian) and Erdinger (German). They are both wheat (or weiss) beers that are a little heavier and have a lot of flavor. My favorite Luxembourgoise beer is Diekirch, which tastes most like Budweiser.

* The wine is very high quality and very very cheap. You can get a bottle of decent Burgundy or Pinot Noir or some other good French red wine for 2.50 euros (about $3.00). The other night we found Luxembourgoise Reisling Grand Cru (the best of the best in the Reisling category here) for 6.40 euros a bottle. Overall we’ve drank our share and have only had one bottle that we didn’t like. The most expensive stuff is the American wine!

* Bottled water is hilariously cheap. For the store brand, a 6-pack of 1.5 liter bottles is about 1 euro. That’s 9 liters of drinking water for 1 euro (about $1.25). We usually spring for the brand name, which runs about 1.20 euros. That’s just the way we roll…big spenders.

* No one knows how to line up for anything. At first I thought people were just rude, but now I realize, it’s the way they learned. Everyone just kind of assumes that if you push toward the front of something, you will eventually get in, get served, etc. You’ll line up for something and people will literally walk up and stand like 2 cm in front of you with their back to you, like you were taking their spot or something. I’d say that, above all things here, has taught me the most patience.

* The public buses are really clean and really nice. The bus drivers never pay attention to if you pay or not. I think 80% of the city rides on the buses for free.

* Everyone recycles. Plastic bottles, glass bottles, boxes, toilet paper, underwear, batteries, ovens, EVERYTHING. They are very energy and environment conscious (sp??) here.

* There’s no air conditioning in most places, including our apartment and my work office. Can I tell you how much I sweat in a day?? These days it’s been a heat wave…like 95 every day. It’s all because of global warming, which, as every European knows, is George Bush’s fault (just like the reason why France lost the World Cup and Floyd Landis tested unusually high for testosterone and Israel is attacking Lebanon and the dinosaurs are extinct…those were all his fault too).

* All runners wear spandex....it's like a law. A very "Richard Simmons/Lance Bass-ish, makes Matt uncomfortable, makes Agnes giggle" law.

* All the buildings have really small, cramped elevators. When you get in, you have to wonder if you will be able to get out or if it will break down on you and the other two people in there because you’ve overloaded it’s capacity.

Work for me has been going okay. I have been working my long days but I don’t mind since we’re able to travel pretty much whenever we want. I do have to say that this office is a lot different than in Chicago. People just don’t seem to want to take any responsibility and they will spend more time looking for a short cut than they would have taken had they just done things the right way from the beginning. Now that’s good because it makes me look good when I actually do things the right way. It’s bad because they give me a lot more of the “messes” to clean up. They've given me my own portfolio of clients to manage now, so I'm looking forward to those jobs starting since I can do things my way.

Agnes has been keeping herself busy with lots of little jobs. Not only is she taking care of me, she is taking care of her new best friend, Sabastian. Sabastian is the 5 year old boy that she babysits for. The family has been a great connection for Ag as they have really bonded and she enjoys working for them. When she is not sitting, Agnes has been doing a few random apartment cleaning jobs and doing some work for her company back in Chicago.

So, that is all for now. We are off to Amsterdam this weekend. We will be blogging about that next week!