Gallivanting Geismom: A Day of Exploration

Sunday was yet another gorgeous day here in Luxembourg. After breakfast we attended Mass in the huge Gothic Cathedral of St. Willibrord. It was in Latin, as it had been last week's in Vienna, so we felt that we could at least participate a little. One thing of particular interest is the number of altar servers. Picture this: 6 on either side of the priest, wearing long white robes, the tallest nearest the priest and the shortest on the end., standing with their hands folded and tucked into the opposite sleeve. They face the congregation and, as a result, the huge sanctuary is spanned from side to side,

short to tall, priest, tall to short.

I don't know the significance, but I thought it was pretty impressive to see so many young people serving during Mass.

St. Willibrord offers 3 masses on Sunday morning, with the last one being said in Portuguese. Apparently nearly 50% of the population here in Luxembourg is Portuguese. This old church has beautiful bells in a tower that are rung not only while welcoming the people to church, but also during the consecration. That, in combination with the pipe organ and a choir chanting the Latin responses echoing through this huge Gothic Church really added to the unique experience .

After lunch, Ernest greeted us in town and we headed to Irrel, which is only a few kilometers from Echternach, on the German side of the Sauer River.

There is a huge museum devoted to the Westwall bunker strategically dug into a hill above the town. We arrived to find Mike already on site, ready to go through and explain the strategy of this amazing museum.

In 1937, Hitler apparently ordered the building of these type of bunkers along the German border. It took two years to complete Westwall, and consisted of 3 floors, including living quarters, a kitchen, bath, etc. It seemed like no detail was missed regarding the strategic function of this bunker. I could not believe all of the rooms and details that were incorporated in this bunker. And it was HUGE!

What is of real interest is that this particular bunker was never actually used to hold German soldiers during the war. Hitler moved his forces to the Ardennes and this bunker was too far south to be of any strategic value when the Allied forces began their offensive move through Germany in February, 1945.

That is Marty only about 1/3 of the way through this tunnel leading to another wing of this bunker.

The French were responsible for going through Germany and blowing up these bunkers, and although this particular bunker did have damage done, the two floors below the surface were never touched by the explosion, so it was decided to restore the top floor and turn the bunker into a museum so that people could see exactly what some of these bunkers looked like. Amazing, to say the least.

After leaving the bunker, we stopped at a local “Wasserfalle” where we found the parking lot loaded with cars. Quite to our surprise, we found ourselves being “lifted up” in Ernest's car after he pushed some sort of button to lift the chassis higher so as to not scrape the bottom as he drove through some rough road to park in a field. Amy and I, who were in the back seat, just looked at each other in amazement, having no idea that such a feature existed on a car.

Before taking off, Ernest pushed a button again, and the car lowered itself down to the standard driving height. By now it's probably obvious that it doesn't take too much to entertain me.

The “waterfall” reminded me more of “potholers” that we had seen in the Adirondacks,. No drop in height, but certainly a lot of strong whirling water. The area there is quite beautiful.

Mike decided that we needed to see one more natural phenomenon prior to relaxing for the evening. So we headed to Berdorf and soon found ourself parked and looking at a stairway that led up between two giant rocks. We climbed up steps about two thirds of the way, and literally climbed a metal ladder to actually get to the top. I'll admit that this was certainly a first for me. I can't quite figure out why anyone felt the need to put a staircase in between these two rocks, as we walked down around the rock to get back to the car.