Duchy Delight

Frankfurt

Before leaving Brussels I checked out the comic strip museum - the first and conceivably only strip I´ll get to see on this trip. Having done Holland and Belgium I decided to go for the Benelux hattrick and grab a train to little old Luxembourg. And I´m very glad I did, the capital city (called - you guessed it - Luxembourg) is a real treat - clean, quiet and spectacularly beautiful at every turn. I can´t imagine there´s a more dramatically situated capital anywhere in the world. It´s a bit pricey, but a helpfully vague man in a newsagent gave me five euros too much change so I had a couple of free beers in a cosy bar I found underneath the old fort walls which dominate the place. Walking back to the hostel the walls were all floodlit and they reflected perfectly in the river. And I was the only person there to see it! Makes me wish I´d brought a better camera.

The Grand Duchy may have a lot to recommend it, but ease of internet access isn´t one, which is why I´m writing this in Frankfurt. Got up this morning with the vague intention of heading to Stuttgart, but after getting over the German border (on crossing said frontier it immediately began to rain) to Trier the only trains were heading north. So I took a slow local one up to Koblenz, and enjoyed two hours of more lovely scenery with the Rhine running alongside the tracks and vineyards all around on the steep slopes. Got another train over here, but to be honest I don´t really fancy staying so I´m off to Munich on one of those high speed trains in search of a party. All this solitude and scenery-gazing can only be satisfying for so long.