Bofferding!

To the untrained ear, an exclamation such as Bofferding! is comparable to exclaiming codswallop! or nonsense! in the presense of idiocy. However, to a person with trained ears (such as mine, as of yesterday), Bofferding is a delicious, award-winning word that instantly makes the need to find the closest bar and sit down for a while significantly more urgent. As I learned yesterday, Bofferding is a scrumptious Luxembourgish beer.


It was while I was riding on the Petrusse Express, the classic tourist train that gives a short but informative tour of the city to anyone willing to bear the embarrassment of actually riding it, that I learned that Luxembourg, apart from fabulous wine, also makes excellent beer. A section of the audio tour included reviews from people in many languages from many countries, and naturally, the only English speaker included was a Canadian that said, "Hi, I'm from Canada and I like Luxembourgish beer." My first reaction was, REALLY?! After seeing this amazingly gorgeous city, with over 100 bridges and a forest-filled valley running right through the middle, all you can think about is the beer? Once the shock of confirming my hunch (that Canadians rank in the top 3 in the world for drinking beer, behind only the Germans and the Irish) had passed, I realized that a) I had never tried Luxembourgish beer, and b) I didn't even know Luxembourgish beer existed.


A few hours later, on the bus ride back to Germany with my sunkissed cheeks and my bag full of Bofferdings, I felt satisfied that I had indeed had an excellent weekend in Luxembourg.


EDIT (20/8/10): I forgot to mention the little...how shall I put it...excitement, that occurred while I was on the above-mentioned tourist train. As you may or may not know, I hate being labelled as a tourist. Being a foreigner is fine (and pretty much the story of the last 3 years of my life), but I don't want to be defined as an obnoxious tourist. That being said, it should now be clear that going on this tourist train was a big step that I really didn't want to take, and I probably won't ever take again. The train itself actually convinced me of this: I got on, I actually started to enjoy it...and then the train broke down. I am not even kidding. One of the wheels snapped clean off the axel, and we had to wait almost 30 minutes for another train to come and get us. The irony of the situation was so funny and so not funny all at once. END EDIT.

RANDOM LUXEMBOURGISH FACT: Apparently all Luxembourgers (Luxembourgians? The Luxembourgish?) are trilingual - French, German, and Luxembourgish (it sounds just as weird as the name). Walking down the street, I noticed that every store window is in a different language. For example, a grocery store's windows were in French, the travel agency next door was German, and the windows of the apothecary beside that appeared to be written in jibberish (alas - Luxembourgish!). What I don't understand is this: if everyone speaks 3 languages, how do you decide which one to actually use?