Preeti Verma Lal
Luxe Time
The city of Luxembourg throbs with history, drama and a touch of glamour
The machine is finished. It goes no further….” the driver said, his throaty inflexion adding to the purr of the dying engine.
The train had hissed its last breath somewherebetween Frankfurt and Luxembourg.
“Go to next stop at Trier, Germany’s oldest city. Or run to the next platform, that red train goes to Luxembourg,”he said. I looked at my Eurail Global Pass, the 6x3 inch beige pass with my name in sans serif which could take me to 21 countries, but before I could throw a dart on the map, I remembered the silver screen’s dainty girl with a pearl earring and the brusque Shylock who once walked the cobbled pathways of Luxembourg city. Sacred relics dating back to the time of Christ were waiting next door at Trier’s cathedral, but that frosty morning was all about pizzazz Hollywood-style.
I hopped on to the red train. “Look beyond the bridge. There’s the gleaming blue roof of the restaurant where Scarlett Johansson celebrated her 18th birthday,” said Steve Lyons, our guide. We craned our necks and leaned over Corniche, the scenic promenade built by the French and the Spaniards in the 17th century. All I could see was the Holy Ghost Citadel and the lower town of Grund. But no blue roof. Scarlett is famous in Luxembourg for having played Giret, the fictional muse of Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer in Peter Webber’s The Girl with a Pearl Earring.But she is not the only one. Hollywood stars are regular visitors to Luxembourg. “You have Bollywood, we have Luxywood, where a million movies have been made. It is a film city,” said Lyon.