Friday, June 18, 2010

Luxembourg- the lights are on but nobody's home!


Luxembourg is the financial hub of Europe. A small very green and pretty country but ask anybody you meet where they live and odds on the answer will be either France,Belgium or Germany. With 150,000 people commuting into Luxembourg on a daily basis it's clear that nobody actually works and lives here and am not surprised!
Shops close at 6 pm,restaurants open for dinner at 7pm and don't even think of trying to find an American chain of coffee shops for a tall macchiata with a dash of anything whether low fat or otherwise in the centre because it's not happening (unless you class McD's as a suitable substitute and I don't)! Is it any wonder that people finish work and get the hell out of Dodge? Even pedestrians get a hard time in favor of the money people in their German precision engineered cars- black only please!
In 2009, only 900,000 tourists came to Luxembourg. To put this number into perspective 9 million people came to the the Isle of Wight last year! Now maybe the country is so rich that they do not need to change and they are happy with the status quo but as any good farmer will tell you - never put all your eggs in one basket!
So come on Luxembourg, wake up and smell the McDonalds coffee, you are missing a trick here. Go mad, leave the shops open until 7 pm, serve Spag Bol at 5.30pm- what's the worse that could happen? Just maybe that visiting English businesswoman would have paid 750 euro for a Lancel handbag and then settled down to read her Daily Mail over a glass of Pinot Grigio and a Caprese salad instead of retiring to her hotel room with a packet of maltesers!
P.s to the shop that only stocks womens clothes in sizes 6 -one size does not fit all!

1 comment:

  1. Interview with one of my friends....found mama bird and say anything pretty good blogs...and the front page story on say anything was great too.
    http://dee-theredheadedstepchild.blogspot.com/2010/06/mama-birds-nest.html

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