Ryan's First Week (now with pictures!)

Following the lead and suggestions of a few of you I've decided to keep an online diary of my adventures living here in Luxembourg. I hope to keep this up-to-date with notes and pictures of the fun experiences and significant events of my time abroad, so for the 2 or 3 of you that would actually care you can check back in periodically and see what a mess I have become. These first few posts will be a bit of a catch-up on what I am doing and my new life here, but after that I promise it will be a tiny bit better. Oh, and this first one is a bit long, and for that I apologize.

So my adventure started after taking off from Seattle on Monday, August 28th. After the extreme exhaustion of the past week and staying up until 4:00 in the morning and getting only 2 hours of sleep the night before my departure, the flight to Amsterdam (then to Lux) seemed quick and was full of sleep. A big thumbs up though for the video on demand in each seat…significant upgrade over having to watch whatever crappy movie the airline decided to show, when they decided to show it.

Well after getting in the next few days were a blur. I only had 2 days to get things together before starting work on Friday, so I scrambled around trying to find internet cafes or a wireless connection (there are really no functional wireless places here, very disappointing), I was driven around for ½ a day looking at apartments, and I spent time just walking around the city trying to getting to get acclimated. The weather was fairly crappy, much like Seattle in the fall, but I avoided any major rain showers during my walks so I guess that was good. Yeah, I am already talking about the weather, what a loser.


While I was busy, the walks I took were amazing. I was staying in the ‘seedy’ section of town in Gare (seen here on the left from my hotel room...it is the main train/bus station area), which is kind of like the seedy section of Disneyland, as Luxembourg has like a 0% crime rate and everything is really clean, and it was only a 10 minute walk to the Centre.

On my walks into the Centre I could cross either of 2 bridges across the Petrusse Valley (home to what has to be the worlds least imposing river), which is not in fact much wider than my foot anymore:

and 1 of the bridges is actually still the largest stone arch bridge in Europe. Yes, I have been reading my tourist guides....

As I walked in, I saw the Beck Bastion, which is part of the remnants of the old fortress:

(and the view from Beck Bastion back at the other bridge which isn't the largest stone arch in Europe):

All in all my personal walking tours were a great way to see the main city for a few days (photo below looking down unto Grund, home of several good pubs), and in a stunning upset I actually consumed at least twice as many cups of café au lait as I did diet cokes during this time. What might not be surprising is that my first real big purchase was an iron and an ironing board. I figured with all the suits and stuff I would be wearing it would be a good investment, and I am a fan of ironing so why not. Of course I didn’t think about the fact that I would have to carry the fracking ironing board with me (along with 5 heavy bags) as I changed hotels and eventually moved to my apartment. I think I gave some people on the street some good laughs.

The big and very good news for me was that I was able to find an apartment before I started working. I used a ‘relocation specialist’, who was worth every penny (although technically I am still not sure how many pennies that will be), and I found a cool 1 bedroom, furnished place in the fashionable neighborhood of Belair. I was surprised to find out later when describing the location to the people in the office, that it is also about 50 yards from a fairly popular dive-type bar (the other night I had the first of what will probably be many beers there). I was not able to move in until the 11th which was disappointing, but to have found a furnished place that I liked so quickly was a bit lucky, and I am just really digging being out of a hotel and starting to lead a bit of a normal life. I will have a separate post on this shortly, so for now all you get is the view from outside the building (mine is the one in the middle with the satellite dish):

Well after all this I had my first day of work on September 1st. It was actually an ‘induction day’ for about 125 new hires for EY: only about 20 of which were higher than 1st year staff, only about 15 of which didn’t speak French as their primary language, and only 1 of which was American (yup, me). The good thing is though that the language of the office is English, so everyone has to speak it. But the downside is that while I can engage in a conversation in English well enough 1 on 1, all the sudden my table would go into a big group discussion in French and I just had to sit there twiddling my thumbs and feeling like a tool. Everyone though was really nice, and I think it helped that I was coming in as a manager so several people already started to kiss my butt a little.

The best part of the day was meeting up with a group of Irish kids who were starting that day as well and who knew the guy in the office who was from Chicago (and whom I had been talking with over the past few months). We all went out to a great dinner at a Brazilian steakhouse, and then hit the town in search of pints of beer. Our search went well, and after a few stops we ended the night at an Irish pub called The Pyg (there seems to be a large Irish population here), and a few hours later after wondering 15 minutes the wrong way, I eventually made it back to my hotel room around 5:00am. Nothing like a little early morning walk to end your first Friday in a new city/country/continent.

So that is all I have for my first post. There will be a few additional posts on my new home, not to mention the fact that starting this weekend my European travels really start so hopefully there will be lots of good stuff from that. Probably not, but I can always hope. Cheers.