The joy and sorrow of saying goodbye

This has been the week of saying goodbye, even more than once. Finally, I am sitting in the train after struggling with all my heavy luggage at the station. Of course, I brought far too much stuff but isn't it impossible to put your whole life into two bags? I backpacked already a lot but never stayed so long in one place, that's why I was surprised that I need (I wouldn't say I really need all of it but you all know how hard decisions can be while packing bags for a long trip) so much things in life.

To visualise, I took a picture of my neat piece of work. Task for you now is to imagine searching for the right seat in an overcrowded high-speed train with all those bags. And as always out of luck when it comes to things like that, most of the time my seats were located on the further side of the train not to mention that I had three train changes and sometimes just 5 minutes to catch the next connection. Thanks to all the friendly people who helped me (mostly after asking if I took my whole household with me).

My mind was racing. While thinking about past, present and future I saw all those people in the train and thought about what might be their destinations. Sometimes it's funny to make up stories about the people you see in the train, all those strangers you'll probably never see again. The business men, families, single travellers, commuters... But actually what I had in my mind was the faces of my family and friends. Not in a sad saying goodbye way (because I am looking forward to the future) but rather in a different way than usual. I'm gonna miss all my loved ones but I am also really happy to explore new things, go on adventures and see different places. An end is also a start. For me, now is the start of a new chapter in life.

Finally, I arrived in time at Gare Central in Luxembourg City. It was a Saturday afternoon and the streets were pretty busy. I didn't expect so many people around in a city with just 1/5 of the population of my hometown but I guess lots of them are commuters. Luxembourg has thousands of people coming everyday from the bordering areas. And one of the first things I recognised was that French is the most common language here. So, problem solved when it comes to the question what language to chose when you speak to natives. Anyway, my supervisor was really friendly, took me to a supermarket and showed me around a bit in town. After arriving at home I could choose a room and shortly after I already began to make myself comfortable. It is a shared house and currently 4 persons are living here with me. I have met just one of them so far but I am sure the others will show up soon. Afterwards, I realized how wrecked I was cause of the long journey so that the day ended soon after unpacking my bags. However, in my mind I had already made some plans for the first Sunday in Luxembourg.

I slept like a log and woke up pretty early in the morning. It's been a cold night and I was kind of surprised that the summer came to such an abrupt end. I always hate getting up early when the weather is as cold, damp or rainy as it was this morning but then again I was too curious to go back to sleep. My plan was to visit Luxembourg City and one of my housemates, the only one I knew so far, a really friendly Chinese Girl, took me with her to town and I did some touristy things like taking pictures of every exceptional building or square I could see and I strolled around a bit. Accidentally, today was also a shopping Sunday which means the stores in the city centre are open and I also found a nice and pretty huge flea market with typical old things like clothes, vases or tableware. It was a nice atmosphere and the people in general seem really friendly but I am still a bit confused about the language thing. In the afternoon, I entered a cosy looking café to buy a hot drink (I was freezing the whole day just because I am still refusing that the summer already came to its end and I don't want to wear thick clothing) and again I could here plenty of different languages everywhere. As long as my French is not that good I prefer to speak English. My supervisor said that I could also use German but it took me just 2 days and I already made strange experiences with that. I admit that there are people speaking German as well but some are not able to understand and speak just French. In that case it always gave me the impression of being impolite because I expected them to speak German. So, next defined goal is to improve my French but for now I am saying goodbye... of course not without showing you some of my first impressions of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg :)