Discovering Luxembourg.

The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg is today’s topic of note. It started because the English Women’s football team were playing the Luxembourg women’s football team only around twenty miles from here in my home city. (I watched it on the TV and am pleased to report that we won 10-0, which is no more than we were expected to win by. We’re playing the USA in October, and that promises to be a much closer encounter. But anyway…)

I decided I ought to get to know at least where Luxembourg is situated because I’m ashamed to admit that I was ignorant of the fact (although I did make a guess and was proved to be just about right.) And then I decided that I ought to know a little more about the place because I remembered watching a YouTube video in which a Luxembourger was complaining that when he went to America the customs officer hadn’t even known that such a country existed. So what did I learn?

Well, for a start it used to be a lot bigger than it is now because the French, the Germans and the Belgians kept stealing bits of it over the course of history. I also learned that it has a population smaller than several British cities, which goes some way to explain why their women’s football team gets beaten 10-0 (twice this year) by England. I learned that some of its Dukes shared their title of Grand Duke of Luxembourg with even grander ones like Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia (I imagine most Americans think Bohemia is a seedy area in downtown Manhattan, but I suppose you can’t really blame them so I’ll try not to. Damn – ending a sentence on a preposition again. Must try harder.) And I learned that their principle language is called Luxembourgish, the sound of which reminds me for some reason of those liquorice laces which I used to so like as a kid. In short, Luxembourg has a more impressive profile than you’d think when you look at a map and see it tucked away down there between France, Germany and Belgium.

So hello Luxembourg. Nice to meet you at last.

And thank you for Radio Luxembourg which I used to listen to in bed via my little transistor radio when I was a kid. We all did, you know, largely because we knew there was something naughty about it, even though we didn’t know why. And that’s something else I discovered tonight. It was because the BBC had a full monopoly on UK radio broadcasting in those days, and so Radio Luxembourg was regarded as something of a dastardly pirate of the airwaves.

And all this because of a football match. Who says football is only a game?

(I jotted this post very quickly, by the way, because I didn’t have much time tonight. Two hours of watching the TV – and a football match to boot – is almost unheard of for me, but there you are. And the one sad note was that the Luxembourg goalkeeper looked somewhat distraught at the end of the game, and her only a teenager. What more can I say? Oh yes, I might also mention that, as far as I know, my blog has never had a visit from Luxembourg during the whole of its twelve years on the www. Whose loss is that, I wonder?)