Schwätzt Du Lëtzeburgesch?

My landlord Euan graciously invited me out to dinner with him and some friends after he stopped by the house yesterday to help organize the installation of my TV.

A group of us met at a pan-Asian fusion place near Xujiahua called “Oriental.” It was a multi-culti expat assembly – a German guy who spent his childhood in Hong Kong, his nominally British girlfriend (“I’ve never actually lived in the UK.”) who grew up in Malawi, Saudi and Bahrain, an incredibly charming Australian/Chinese woman working for a steel company, a couple of ABC entrepreneurs and a recently arrived university grad who just started a job in the Shanghai consulate for Luxembourg.

“What language do they speak in Luxembourg?”

“Luxembourgish.”

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding.”

I always thought Luxembourg was just a pinpoint on the map whose sole purpose was to be a geo-political punchline. Now I found out it was a country with its own language. It's like Jersey City had its own dialect.

The German guy chimed in: "The petrol is much cheaper there than in Germany." Surely a point of patriotic pride worthy of inclusion into the Luxembourg national anthem.

Apparently Luxembourgish is a pastiche of Flemish, German and French. Though she was a citizen she didn’t speak Luxembourgish, but as a new employee of the government she was encouraged to take lessons.

“Where do you find a Luxembourgish teacher in Shanghai?”

“On the Internet.”

Of course.

Later we went to a bar in Xuhui. It was a concession-era home turned into a sleek nightclub space packed with foreigners and rich Chinese. I didn’t stay out too late. I had intentions of getting up early and going to Ikea today, but when I got up this morning the weather was too beautiful to squander it in an endless indoor maze of crap home furnishings.

Instead I had some breakfast, got the satellite TV hooked up (50 full channels of wacky game shows, costume dramas and completely inane sports like womens’ badminton) and then sat on my upstairs terrace and reviewed some of my Mandarin homework. It was, in every way, a good day.