the next chapter of John X in Europe:

Crab larva migrate, did you know that? Evidently the adult crabs eat
anything, including their young ‘uns, so the larva get the hell out of
Dodge, sometimes migrating hundreds of kilometers away only to return
later when they’re old enough to fight back. (When I say crabs, I mean
crustaceans, not the “Quick, sell me every drop of blue shampoo you have
and make it snappy, I’m dying over here!” kind of crabs.)

This is what I learned from Katarina at breakfast on my last morning in
Luxembourg. K and I were enjoying some different cheeses on bread, orange
juice, and coffee while the maid cleaned up nearby. It’s not known how the
crabs know how to get back home after they grow up, but somehow they
sussed it out. I salute their sense of direction, their survival
instinct, and their tasty flesh.

A river runs through Luxembourg City, and I followed it to the city
center, walking a mile or so until I met Brigitte at a little bar. She
was finished with work and we’d decided to walk around town a bit before
flying home. The bar was right on the river and had a deck, so we sat
outside and watched the ducks swim and quack and sometimes take flight
from the river. We were surrounded by very old buildings—and a hell of
a lot of construction cranes. I bet every crane in Europe is in
Luxembourg City. I took a lot of pictures and there’s a fucking crane in
every one of them. Praise Allah, may his digitally manipulated
mever-depicted image be praised, for Photoshop, because I’m cutting those
cranes out of my pics.

Luxembourg used to be a country of poor farmers, but now it’s the country
with the highest per capita income in Europe, thanks to a booming banking
industry and the presense of EU agencies. Even the farmers are rich now.
It’s a long story of how they managed to hit the jackpot in this way, but
it’s somewhat analagous to the way a bunch of desert nomads found
themselves sitting on huge pools of sticky black liquid every wants and
needs these days. In other words, they lucked out. And hence the building
/ renovation boom in Luxembourg City.

The highlight of our walkabout was a visit to the casements, a wall/tunnel
system overlooking the river and the picturesque city center. The thing
started with construction of a castle in 963 and through the centuries it
was built up and extended and modified. It’s pretty impressive to look at
old structures in Europe like these casements, the cathedrals, etc. and
remember that they did it all with no power tools, no heavy equipment,
and they did it so well that hundreds of years later the structures are
still sound. Wonder if my house will still be around 500 years from now?
If I don’t get around to painting the fucker, I doubt it.

Here’s a good place to check out Luxembourg on the Web:
http://www.lcto.lu/

Had a great lunch, dining outside in the city square. A salad with crisp
green beans, lettuce, tomato, tuna, eggs, and anchovies.
—
Back at the house we sat outside conversing awhile with Claudia and
Katarina. They generally spoke English as a courtesy to me, but easily
slipped into German when chatting with each other, or French when
chattering with the maid, earlier in the day. I don’t want to make too
much of this bi- or tri- or quad-lingual thing, but there’s something to
be said for learning to speak other languages. It’s great excercise for
the mind, for one thing, and a great way to explore new ideological /
intellectual paths. There’s a joke: What do you call someone who speaks
many languages? A polyglot. What do you call someone who only speaks one
language? American.

Then it was time to leave. They’d been gracious and generous hosts, and I
appreciated the chance to actually live with a foreign family in their
home for a few days. Mind expanding.
—
We got back to Vienna about 11 PM. By the time we got home, had a couple
of beers, watched some late night television, and were ready for bed it
was about 1 AM. This sort of schedule–flying somewhere, working a couple
of days, flying home late in the evening—isn’t unusual for Brigitte. I
went with her once to Strasbourg, where the travel is a bit more daunting
(fly to Stuttgart, take the train to Kehl, take the bus to Strasbourg, and
do the opposite on the way home.) It gets complicated if a plane, train,
or bus is running late or if a meeting runs late and you fear you’ll miss
your plane. Try doing it for 25 years. B’s family seems to think she has
it easy, but the travel alone can be a cluster fuck, not to mention the
actual work of simultaneous interpreting. Try listening to an official
talk a hundred miles an hour in a thick Scottish or Irish brogue, and
spit it back out in German nearly simultaneously. It ain’t easy. But it’s
all part of keeping the world from becoming another Tower of Babble. Not
sure if they’re succeeding or not, but believe me, a lot of people are
trying.