Don't Order Octopus at the Bowling Alley
November 27-29, 2019
In the same way that going back to the Pacific Northwest to visit friends and family isn’t really a “vacation” to us in the traditional sense, so too do we now consider Luxembourg more like a second home than a travel destination. With this our third trip to the small country and second consecutive year celebrating American Thanksgiving there, we have now visited Luxembourg more than any other American in history - and most Europeans - solidifying our place as great international explorers in Luxembourg’s storied and revered history.
Yet for all of our travels, this was the first time we had ever gone to check into our flights and found that one of us simply didn’t have plane tickets. We’d bought them separately to get a cheaper fare, and somehow Mazz didn’t actually end up purchasing hers, though she was positive that she had. Luckily, even less than 24 hours before we were scheduled to take off it was still only about an €80 round trip, as most Europeans are still unaware that flying to Luxembourg is technically a thing they can and might like to do.
Our lovely friends and hosts Spritzboi and Jessica had already taken care of acquiring all the materials for the feast the following day. We all agreed that the meal we made the previous year was perfect and required no changing, so we just went ahead and used the same grocery list that was copied and pasted from much earlier in the text thread. Out of reverence for that glorious meal, the blackboard in the kitchen with the menu printed on it hadn’t been cleaned off or altered since our previous visit. Though groceries were covered, the one thing we definitely needed more of though was wine, so we consulted Raisin, the natural wine app we use when traveling, and asked Spritzboi to take us to a shop called Ze Cave Nature where we loaded up on French natural wines for the coming days. Most of the natural wine we drink in Berlin comes from Germany, Austria, and to the east, so we were excited to try some new varieties.
Spritzboi and Jessica were especially excited to take us on a “surprise date,” an activity they had initiated while dating where one of them would plan an extravagant outing and surprise the other with the adventure. We entered a nondescript bar simply called Café des Sports and found it populated with numerous Portuguese men, all of whom were eating beans. The bartender brought us to the back of the bar and through a corridor to an isolated room and flipped on the lights. It was a private Luxembourgish bowling lane that smelled strongly of thrift store (“Muffeg,” as Spritzboi would say) with a table set up specifically for us. We each chose a dish and soon found that we had ordered at least twice as much food as we could possibly eat. Mazz received an entire octopus that was cooked entirely wrong; Kirb ordered a steak medium and received an over-well-done slab of beef the size of a car steering wheel. We were astonished to find the quality of Portuguese food lacking in the Luxembourgish bowling alley (though the garlic shrimp that Jessica ordered were quite good).
Really though, the food wasn’t the reason we were there. Again, our hosts had brought us to a true time capsule of European sporting antiquity; all wood and handmade with the walls covered in trophies and team bowling photos from decades past. The thin launch area in Luxembourgish bowling - or “Kehlen” as our hosts had taken to calling it this year - makes the game significantly more difficult than American bowling, and throwing the ball hard doesn’t seem to have any added effect of knocking the pins over more efficiently. Soon, Kirb found that granny-style bowling suited his gameplay the best, realizing that smart placement and a little luck was the best strategy. Mazz was the only one who got a strike the entire evening, because when it comes to luck in games, she is usually the victor. As we did the previous year, we came home late and made a pumpkin pie all liquored up to save time and oven space the following day.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Luxembourgish breakfast rules. Spritzboi always pampers us by getting filet américain from his favorite butcher shop to go with kochkäse and fresh bread. Only in Luxembourg do we eat steak tartar for breakfast, and every time we do we remember how truly excellent it is as a breakfast food. We spent Thanksgiving Day leisurely prepping and cooking the dishes, taking turns in the kitchen, watching the Macy’s parade live from New York in the living room, and jamming out with headphones in the digital band practice room. Eventually everything came together and we had once again collaboratively created a truly exceptional feast.
The turkey that Jessica cooked was perfect: moist and tender all the way through. The gravy was good, but not as good as the year before, which is unfortunate because gravy is the great unifier of the Thanksgiving plate. We chalked it up to having made the roux first this year and adding the liquid to that, and not the other way around as we had the pervious Thanksgiving: one of those life lessons that you only learn through the labor of love that is Thanksgiving dinner. The wine we had saved for the big event, a skin-contact pinot gris from Alsace by JM Dreyer, was slightly sour and funky and perfectly added the tang of cranberry that was missing from the table. We clinked our glasses together, satisfied in the knowledge that we had created another truly decadent holiday meal, and thankful that we have such wonderful friends around the world to share those meals and holidays with.