Introduction to Luxembourg!

Figure 1: A humble photo of Luxembourg.

Friday morning, we received a lecture on the medieval history of the former “Southern Netherlands”, today’s Belgium and Luxembourg. We then visited the Luxembourg City Museum, explored fortifications of Castle Luxembourg and visited the Luxembourg Modern Art Museum.

Today, Luxembourg is the international banking centre and stronghold of European unification. This city’s influence unquestionably extends beyond its national borders, especially since the foundation of the European Union is found in this small country. It remained neutral in the midst of wars in order to protect itself against the greed of neighboring countries. It finds its national identity from halting foreign annexation ambitions. Even though it is a very small country, it is conveniently located in the heart of Europe. It is right between France and Germany, so its position is very strategic since it provides an easy way in between two countries, but because of its location, Luxembourg has gotten tangled up in other countries affairs. The Luxembourg City Museum states that this “small town became a crossroads to Europe.”

One of the mind-boggling characteristics of this nation is that there are three official languages, one of which is Letzebuergesch, which is a language that only exists within the country. There is no official language for the official activities that go on, namely the state, school, and the church – the “three institutions that call for an interesting analysis of linguistic practices (Reader 182).” Since no language can be the official language, French, German, and Letzebuergesch are omnipresent to varying degrees in the workplace and that used for publication and communication purposes, on both a formal and informal level. During lecture, we learned that children start learning Letzebuergesch in primary school. In middle school, they start learning German, and in high school, they learn French. This education system is ideal if the child is intelligent because then they would graduate high school being fluent in three different languages. However, not everyone has that intellectual capacity, so Luxembourg has the highest high school dropout rate in Europe, but because there are few people who can be fluent in all three languages, never deny a job offer in this country because the salary will be very satisfying.

Figure 2: Blinky Palermo, Sans titre, 1968.

I ran into the most expensive piece in the Luxembourg Modern Art Museum. Ironic don’t you think? How such a simple looking piece can be the most expensive. Turns out the piece was made by several thousand pieces of colored tissue paper, which suggests that this piece took a lot of time to complete. If you love someone, you’re going to spend a lot of time with that person. You may even spend a lot of time doing something for them, just to impress them a little bit. Love is a very simple but complex emotion to express through art. The artist, Blinky Palermo, wanted to portray love through serene blue-ish, turquoise colors. I appreciated this piece because of its simplicity. It is a very abstract way to express love, but at the same time, anything can be made simple should one think of it simplistically.