Müllerthal, Luxembourg

Monday, July 30, 2012

Today we stayed all day in northwestern Luxembourg.  The Hotel Scharff in Berdorf provides breakfast with yummy bread, homemade jam, yogurt, several kinds of cheese and meat, even cereal if you want it.  In late morning we headed for the camp near Scheidgen where JD and Rachel's family spent many weeks in the summer.  It took us a while to find it, but the drive through the country was beautiful.  Today was very cool; we left our jackets on all day.  The sun shone almost all day, and the sky was filled with piles of lovely clouds against the blue.  It has been raining a lot here and everything is very green.  In some places, the moss even grows on the trunks of the trees.  

The camp at Scheidgen is in an area of Luxembourg called Little Switzerland or Müllerthal.  The land is rough with small but steep hills, lots of very large rocks, and steep-sided valleys.  It is not vastly different from some places in southwest Virginia.   We walked into the woods to the place where the camp community gathered around a campfire, in a small area under an overhanging cliff (see photos below).  In 1994, JD brought me here and told me about the campfires.  

           

He had many good memories of walks in these woods, and good times at camp.  At the campfire, we rearranged the scattered rocks into a large oval ring, then scattered and buried quite a few of JD's ashes in the center of the ring.  This campfire ring is visible in the left center of the photo at right above.  

 Then we walked on through the woods to the creek at the bottom of the valley.  

I thought some of you gardeners might appreciate this photo of two of the many giant slugs we saw in the woods!  Cute, aren't they?

We drove into the town of Scheidgen to the Mennonite meeting house at the edge of a farm, and ate our packed lunch in the garden at the farm there.  Then we drove to the Schiessentümpel, the waterfall in the photo.  

We had to hike a little way to it, and climb up and down over many stone steps.  This is a fairly popular tourist place, one of the features of Müllerthal.  JD took me here when we were in Luxembourg in 1994, and told me about visiting here as a child.  

Then we headed back toward Berdorf, stopping at the Werschrummschlüff, where the huge rocks have tall cracks between them (photo at right with Daniel walking throughout the crack), just big enough to walk through, and a large rock called "preacher's rock" hangs over the highway.

We returned to the hotel earlier than usual this evening, and had dinner made by the hotel.  It was scrumptious, and the presentation was awe-inspiring.  We kept saying "wow!" when they brought our food.  We began with a 3-piece appetizer of a small bowl of something like sweet cucumber mint soup, soft cheese on a small piece of hard bread, and some sort of paté on a spoon.  Then came the main course, which we individually chose - vegetable quiche for Daniel and me (pictured here), steak with mushroom paté and a veggie egg mold for Hans, and a very attractive peasant salad for Rachel. Then we all ordered dessert - a French version of a hot fudge sundae for Rachel and Hans, a strawberry "cake" (way too plain a word for such a dish) with raspberry chocolate sauce and a dish with two tiny scoops of delectable ice-cream (one each of raspberry and mango) for me, and hazelnut ice-cream for Daniel.  It was a superb French meal!