See the beautiful old cars participating in the Fiva World Rallye (Friday to Sunday, different locations all over the country). Some teams came all the way from Japan!
Enjoy the famous “Nuit des Lampions” on Saturday evening in Wiltz. Update: See some of my photos here.
Visit the companies participating in “Le week-end des portes ouvertes“, e.g. the SNCT.
Have a nice weekend!
Update: Bistro Viva has unfortunately closed. The location is now a bakery/cafe (part of the adjacent supermarket).
However, you can hire the former chef to cook in your kitchen!
Trier might be Germany’s oldest town, but it’s certainly not the most vegetarian-friendly one. That’s why I was glad when I found out that a second vegetarian restaurant has opened in this city of 107000 people.
Located in the “Biomarkt Grotzfeld” health food store, “Bistro Viva” opened on March 31, 2014. It has about 40 seats with 15 located at the counter.
Lunch is served from 11h30 to 15h00 from Monday to Saturday with breakfast available earlier and cake and sandwiches later.
The lunch menu changes every day, but you’ll generally have the choice between a soup (also available as a starter), a dish with lots of salad and a salad-less dish. Vegans will find something to eat too, though they might have to ask.
If you think this all sounds very similar to Trier’s other vegetarian restaurant “Oh! Bio Mio”, you’re right. It’s no coincidence, since the chef used to work at there until October 2013. One of the former waitresses also joined him at his new job.
Located at Saarstraße 10, the restaurant is outside the pedestrian zone, but still very accessible by foot (about 1km from Trier’s iconic Hauptmarkt or 1.6km from the Porta Nigra). If you’re arriving by car, you’ll be glad to hear free parking is available just outside the door (for customers only). This map shows the entrance to the parking lot.
For further information, please visit the restaurant’s website (only available in German).
Update March 8: You can now find it on happycow.net, too.
Things are not running smoothly in Luxembourg at the moment. Here’s what happened in the past few weeks alone:
It might still be too early to say that Luxembourg’s new government is failing, but it sure looks like it could use a hand. Some citizens are already trying to help, like the two engineers who presented the latest alternative to the tram a few weeks ago. It’s a cable car and yes, its five huge pylons would probably destroy the city, too, but at least these people are trying to solve one of Luxembourg’s major problems instead of just complaining.
It would certainly be easy to make fun of this idea. I mean, is there any mode of transportation that hasn’t been suggested yet? Since nobody liked my Lux-MRT, how about artificial canals and gondolas? However, now’s not the time to be silly. So I recently spent a few minutes thinking about these issues and can now happily announce that I’ve solved them.
To understand how Luxembourg can be saved, let’s take a trip to Rio. Have a look at the cable car to Sugarloaf Mountain:
Notice how it doesn’t need pylons because of the height difference between sea level and the top of the mountain? Of course, the situation in Luxembourg is quite different and it won’t really be possible to build such an impressive monolith on Kirchberg plateau. We could, however, use all the construction waste that has nowhere to go to elevate the station at Kirchberg far above the level of the train station. This would greatly reduce the number of pylons required for the cable car.
“But what about all the buildings on Kirchberg? What about the banks? Won’t they be buried under a giant mountain of rubble?” Well yes, but here’s the thing: with banking secrecy gone, we won’t really be needing them anymore. Whatever remains of the financial sector can certainly be relocated back to Boulevard Royal.
“But who would want to use the cable car then?” Tourists, of course, just like in Rio. They’ll all want to visit Luxembourg to see the world’s largest man-made mountain. Austria abolished banking secrecy, too, but at least they still have the Alps. It’s only fair that we divert some of their tourists to Luxembourg. Just think of all the Dutch people! You can almost hear them packing their caravans already.
There you go, I just solved all of Luxembourg’s recent problems in one fell swoop. Come back again next week to find out how we can save the European Union.