LUXEMBOURG III

Looking back to the beginning of my time in Luxembourg and thinking about it , I would say that several things, which I considered in the beginning as unusual, became more and more normal over the time I stayed in the Grand Duchy. At the beginning of my stay in September 2020, the situation regarding COVID was quite relaxed in Luxembourg and in the rest of Europe. This can be seen by the fact that there were just very light restrictions in most of the European countries and as well in Luxembourg. Nevertheless, it was for instance necessary to wear a face mask all the time in supermarkets and trains, but restaurants and bars were still open. In the meantime, in Liechtenstein, there was simply a facemask in the public transport required. This was why it felt in the beginning quite uncommon to wear the mask more frequently than I was used to in Liechtenstein. Therefore, I caught myself forgetting sometimes the mask in the beginning. Getting used to this frequent maskwearing I started realizing that after a while I even forgot that I wore the mask and finally just took it off after arriving at home instead of removing it directly after leaving the bus or supermarket. A second thing I recognized during the time was the usage of different languages with the same person within a short conversation. This occurred to me for example once when I needed to interact with the local administration personally. The person I spoke to was Luxembourgish speaking while I was not able to speak Luxembourgish the person knew it and therefore, I continued speaking German. As both languages are rather close to each other it is for both sides no major problem to understand the other language. But still, I found this situation quite interesting as it showed me that there is sometimes not even the necessity to fully learn and speak a language and being able to properly communicate and understand each other. Generally, I would say this possibility of choosing the languages in a conversation enables to find easily the right words in a conversation and creates the opportunity to speak about even more complex topics by using languages that are not spoken on a higher level. Another development which I experienced during my exchange semester at the University of Luxembourg was the increasing fluency in English. Mostly at the beginning of my stay in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg I needed to search for words during usual daily conversations. But over the time of the semester, engaging in conversations with people, I have got the impression that the standard set of my vocabulary in English has become more consolidated so that daily conversations are going rather fluently, while the need of searching for vocabulary during this kind of standard discussions decreased over time. Summarizing the time in Luxembourg I would say that even if the country is in terms of culture not that far away from Germany, where I am from, it differs quite a lot in terms of internationality and the resulting side-effects like the widespread multilingualism in the country, with a general language basis of at least three languages – Luxembourgish, French, and German. Additionally, the country’s population consist of nearly fifty percent foreigners which is beneficial and also a major reason for this vivid international environment. For this reason, I can highly recommend Luxembourg as a country for spending the ERASMUS semester, even as it might not seem as appealing as Mediterranean countries in the EU. But this very special European spirit in Luxembourg makes the time there to a great experience.

Daniel Vogler