After a stressful 6 months of studying and stressing about this test, here we are. It’s over and yet we have no closure and no results. Somehow, I’m ok with that, as the relief of not having to worry about it has washed over me. Today will be a short day because I spent the first half taking this test, and the second half was spent recovering from the test.
After the test, I went back to my room, and just spent a couple of hours on the computer. Working, sending emails, just trying to give my mind time to calm down and not continue rehashing the 10 minute test. The questions they asked seemed so easy. So like… either it was easy or I am so bad at this I don’t know it was hard. I waited around until I got hungry, before going to a fancy place I’d been scoping out for a few days, but hadn’t yet been hungry enough to eat there. The item that caught my eye on the menu was a dessert, and I wanted to be hungry enough to have a meal and a dessert. Today, I decided, was that day.
Lunch
The restaurant is called The Grand Cafe and is owned by a chain (of 4) restaurants called Red Beef. Walking by, it looks like a French restaurant. Online, Google translates the website to “Big Coffee” instead of Grand Cafe, so it looks like a place for coffee, not a proper meal. So you could easily overlook it. I settled in for a late lunch at around 2 in the afternoon, again trying to avoid needing to eat during my 7-9 p.m. class. They specialize in beef dishes, with a variety of options for carpaccio, tartar, burgers, and steaks. I opted today for the lunch special, which is a ribeye steak with salad, fries, and grilled vegetables. I also ordered a Simon pilsner. The beer was delicious for a light beer. It was crisp and cold with that rubbery pilsner flavor I distinctly remember from Prague. I enjoyed it quite a lot.
Then came the meal. The steak was a nice cut of ribeye, appropriately reasonable lunch size, seasoned minimally with some big crystals of sea salt for presentation. It came with a sauce and I chose the au Poivre sauce, which was creamy and peppery, but not as bourbon-forward as Joe makes it. The fries were fries, and the salad was butter lettuce with my first cream/yogurt based salad dressing. Almost all salads that I have had so far come drenched in olive oil and vinegar. I love those things, but also, I don’t generally care for a pool of olive oil at the bottom of the salad bowl. The creamy salad dressing was great, if also a bit heavy-handed.
Drinking fancy espresso 
Oh…. I forgot to put the sugar in. Too many selfies 
Mmmm, sugar 
Now coffee is delicious
And finally it was dessert time. When we were in Reims, France doing our Champagne tasting tour in April, we had lunch at a little cafe. When we walked in to be seated for lunch, there was a dessert case in the front with maybe 5 giant bowls of a dessert, and I had no idea what it was. I asked the waitress and she said she would hold one for us, as they only make them in the morning and once they sell out, they’re gone. So the 5 of us shared a giant Îles Flotantt, which is a bowl of creme anglais, upon which a poached ball of meringue floats, and the whole thing is topped with a hard caramelized sugar. This checks all of my dessert boxes, as I love anything that’s dairy/vanilla forward, and anything with burned sugar or caramel. I had never heard of it before that day. I didn’t even know what it was called. But last week, before I left, YouTube started suggesting videos for how to make it. So I watched one, and realized it was the thing we had eaten. Thanks, youtube. So now I know how it’s made, and I will eventually make one when I return home and have a kitchen. But for now… At least I know what it’s called and I was able to identify it on a menu and come back and order it. I even asked the waiter about it when I was seated to be sure that they hadn’t sold out for the day and he looked at me very confused and said “That’s for after?”. I guess this place doesn’t sell out of them. So long story short (never~!) I ordered one and it was promptly delivered to my table with a little espresso. It was… ok. For some reason, they sprinkle toasted almonds all throughout the creme anglaise and it adds a lot of bitterness. I feel like the burned sugar has a sufficient bitterness to offset the delicate meringue without adding a whole different texture and flavor profile. So. B- I guess.
After lunch, I stopped into a little bakery called Cocottes. Since my class is ending so late and I’m so exhausted today, I think it will be a good time to try other options rather than eating at a sit-down restaurant for every meal. They have to-go sandwiches and prepared salads (you can also eat there, but I am stuffed), as well as tons of desserts and fancy cakes. This is what drew me in, as I was walking by and there was a window full of cakes, sold by the slice. All different kinds, raspberry, strawberry, chocolate. But the chocolate one got my attention. It’s a chocolate cake, not too dark like a devil’s food cake, 2 layers with white cream/frosting in the center. And the top is decorated with frosting and other cookies and chocolate macarons. This seemed too decadent to pass up. So I ordered a slice of the chocolate cake and a quiche Lorraine to take away. I think this will serve as a nice dinner after my class tonight.
Walking home
I walk home, exhausted and now full. The Place d’Armes is also full of stalls for the Christmas markets and they are being decorated a bit more each day. It’s fun to see it evolve. I walk past one stall advertising spaetzle with foie gras. I will be having one of those. And some guys hanging lights on another stand. There’s heavy equipment setting up a giant tree as well. Even the Gëlle Fra is overshadowed by what I think will be a giant carnival ride. It amusingly gives me the impression that Luxembourg is an entire country that operates the way my office does: always a reason to celebrate something. When we were here in April, some of the same stands were in the Place Guillaume, as well as beneath the Gëlle Fra. I haven’t actually seen these public squares empty, just space, but always with a festival. I don’t even know what was the cause for the April celebrations. Once I get home, I spend some more time writing, working, and napping. I actually just spent the rest of the afternoon in my room, laying in bed, on the computer.
Setting up the Christmas market 
Spaetzle with Foie gras! 
The Gëlle Fra is a bit overshadowed by an incoming carnival ride
Class
I attended my class again tonight, and it was equally interesting. We learned all about the rights of people as individuals, the rights of employees, and the rights related to people within society and their homes. Not as much interesting case law, but we did start the class by diving right in to: Are unborn children a ‘person’ under the law? and both the European courts and the Luxembourgish courts have ruled that no, they are not. Neither case in the class involved abortion as a specific topic. We learned that slavery is illegal, but the case law he cited was not the impetus for the law against slavery, which already existed and, in my opinion, it only served to further regressive stereotypes. So that one was a miss. I learned weird things like fortune-telling is legal, but doing it for money is not. Prostitution is legal, but promotion of prostitution and recruiting others into prostitution is not. Same-sex marriage is legal. And there are ~900 cases of domestic violence investigated by the police per year. We also went over kind of the Miranda rights of Luxembourg: the restrictions around search and seizure of property, the rights of the police to detain you without a warrant, etc. It is clearly much more focused on the rights of the individual than on the rights of the state. OH… and we also learned that they are rolling out Police body cameras next year. But this is in order to protect the police from being attacked, as there are (I forget the number) cases every year where police officers have to get prophylaxis because they are stabbed with a knife or needle. So that’s different. But in his explanation, the guy said that the police will have to wear it visibly, and announce to everyone before they turn it on, and can only turn it on in certain circumstances. And then it records also the 120 second before they hit record. So that will be some challenging legal hurdles, because the only way to do that is to be constantly recording, saving at least the last 120 seconds, which essentially amounts to constant surveillance, which is prohibited. So…. it will be interesting.
Inside the school 
The outside
Luxembourg on the whole is shockingly, intimidatingly clean and organized. The INL, where I took my test today is just this immaculately clean expansive building of classrooms and tile floors. There’s never anything out of place. Same goes for my Air B’n’B house. Everything is in its perfect place all the time. There is a full time housekeeper here, and every piece of furniture is cleaned under and behind. You’ve seen photos of the bathroom. Nothing is stored where it can be seen. My room is definitely the messiest place in all of Luxembourg right now. (There is no closet and while he cleaned out 3 drawers in the chest of drawers for me, that’s hardly enough for 1 month’s worth of clothing.) The place where I take my classes in the evenings is also sparkling clean. And it’s a high school. There are teenagers here, using the lockers on the walls. And don’t get me started on how the lockers are chic and clean and flat and don’t have papers and stickers on them. Everything is huge and open and precise. It’s just unsettling. Very Stepford-y.
Dinner at home
After that, I walked back to my room, where I am now. And I tucked into my little quiche that I purchased earlier today. This is actually a quite nice routine. Having someone set up breakfast for me; lounging in bed and working until I’m hungry for lunch. Having a big, delicious, multi-course lunch, and then a kind of small snack before bed. I just ate about half of the quiche. I think I’ll eat the other half tomorrow after class. It’s good, heavy on the ham, so quite salty, which honestly, I’ve mostly complained about things not being salty enough here, so I’m ok with it. It’s not super heavy or oily, just a nice quiche.
A quiche 
Chocolate cake with a macaron 
2! layers of Mousse
And then I ate half of my chocolate cake. Oh my. It was delicious. Like, just perfect. Well, perfect less 1 thing. Amidst all of the flotsam on top of the cake was a black cherry. That’s a strange thing to hide in al all-chocolate cake. There was no other cherry flavor, no cherry jam or anything, so I let it slide. The cake is actually 3 layers of cake, with chocolate mousse between the bottom 2 layers and white mousse between the top 2 layers. The cake is light and spongey and the mousse is equally airy. It’s a nice amount of chocolatey — not too bitter, but not overly sweet. And there are chocolate shavings sprinkled on top and maybe inside the mousse that give little bursts of chocolate flavor as well as a nice crunchy texture. Overall A++ would buy again. Then again, they have so many cakes I can’t even decide if I would have this one again or pick a new one. Decisions….. Anyway, I ate the cake and the quiche in bed and am now still in bed. It’s almost 10 p.m., and I have a conference call to dial in to. Then it’s off to sleep for me. Thanks for following along. This has been quite the day.
