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I walked across Luxembourg

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Re: I walked across Luxembourg

#111

Post by pavlov »

sofixa wrote: post #107
mcv wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy Roman Emperors also pile on the royal titles. King of the Germans, king of Italy, on top of their regular titles. Charles V was king of Germany, Italy, Spain, Lord of the Netherlands, Duke of Burgundy. When he passed half of his titles to his brother Ferdinand, he was also king of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia. And yet somehow there's supposed to be only one real king in the Empire (Bohemia).

> Charles V Funnily he was also King of two different Galicias (the one in Spain and the other one in Ukraine)

Maybe one day some really successful conqueror will be king of both Georgias, the one in North America and the one in Caucasus.

Re: I walked across Luxembourg

#112

Post by dalbasal »

d-trieu wrote: post #82
pavlov wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did love collecting titles. The kings of England also claimed the title of King of France until 1802, even though they lost the very last enclave on French soil in 1558: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_claims_to_the_French_t...

The current King of Sweden decided that he had enough and dropped all except King of Sweden from his.

Bad move. Now it takes one move to dethrone him.

Re: I walked across Luxembourg

#113

Post by jvm___ »

sph wrote: post #85
famahar wrote: post #19

I walked across Tokyo last weekend. Took me 20 hours. I suck at writing so all I'll say is that everyone should walk across a city. It's a magical experience. Turn off your your phone, bring a disposable camera and a compass and just walk. You'll discover so many personal insights.

If one cannot afford to travel, videos such as these are a good alternative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgfd-uWTVwg (Kyoto under the rain) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgYPErtoljI (A stroll in a small town near Tokyo)

This was my early pandemic habit. Watch a long, walking only, YouTube video of some far off place. The best ones had no talking, just the ambient sounds and sometimes a on-screen note about something you were looking at.

The fascinating thing was watching pre-pandemic videos and your own response to groups of people and hearing coughs inside buildings.

Re: I walked across Luxembourg

#115

Post by abdusco »

developer93 wrote: post #84
famahar wrote: post #19

I walked across Tokyo last weekend. Took me 20 hours. I suck at writing so all I'll say is that everyone should walk across a city. It's a magical experience. Turn off your your phone, bring a disposable camera and a compass and just walk. You'll discover so many personal insights.

If you want to keep your phone on, street complete can be very rewarding, especially in places with not so much osm coverage.

Thank you so much. I read about this app here, but I couldn't find it later when I moved to Germany. I'll use the shit out of this app.

Re: I walked across Luxembourg

#116

Post by blululu »

throwaway290 wrote: post #58
famahar wrote: post #19

I walked across Tokyo last weekend. Took me 20 hours. I suck at writing so all I'll say is that everyone should walk across a city. It's a magical experience. Turn off your your phone, bring a disposable camera and a compass and just walk. You'll discover so many personal insights.

Not to invalidate your experience in any way but I think it is a special case of walking in any big city you have never been before. As long as it is sufficiently dense/walkable and you don't need to fear being robbed, it's magical. Taipei, Seoul, Bangkok, you name it...

FWIW, I’ve walked across San Francisco many times and the longer I live there the more I enjoy traversing it. The city is beautiful, walkable, filled with nice spots to stop for snack/beverage and nearly half the expanse can be covered by walking through Golden Gate Park down to the ocean. I can’t vouch for most cities, but I suspect that a lot of them are much less pleasant underfoot.

Re: I walked across Luxembourg

#117

Post by TacticalCoder »

wink wrote: post #101

I was a bit surprised that Luxembourg is actually quite a bit bigger than I had thought, especially as I wasn't too far off with the population. In my mind it wasn't SO much bigger than the other small European countries it's often lumped together with. Time to visit, I guess :P

> I was a bit surprised that Luxembourg is actually quite a bit bigger than I had thought

I live in Luxembourg now and it's not that small. There are actually various little cities and going, say, from Luxembourg city to Esch-sur-Alzette, driving on the highway (even if it's only for a short while), feels like going to another city.

It sure feels funny to go to, say, IKEA, which takes 15 minutes or so knowing that the IKEA store is in... Another country! (I go to the one in Belgium)

It's a complete change for me: last year I was in a rural area (in France) and the closest highway was a 50 minutes drive or so.

Re: I walked across Luxembourg

#118

Post by reaperducer »

opensource4ever wrote: post #104
Symbiote wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Queen Elizabeth II had so many titles they abbreviated them: (On accession.) "Queen Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God Queen of this Realm and of Her other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith." (At death.) "Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwea…

>Head of the Commonwealth that is no joke, remember back in 80 or 70, when she recalled the election results in Australia. Then they had the election again, and of course this time the other guy won.

remember back in 80 or 70, when she recalled the election results in Australia. Then they had the election again, and of course this time the other guy won.

You'd think the queen interfering in an election would earn her more than one brief mention in the Wikipedia article. But Wiki remembers it differently than you do:

"The leader of the Opposition, Billy Snedden, was enthusiastic about the appointment and also agreed to reappoint Kerr in five years, were he prime minister at the time. Kerr then agreed to take the post, was duly appointed by Queen Elizabeth II, and was sworn in on 11 July 1974."

Re: I walked across Luxembourg

#119

Post by NeoTar »

pjc50 wrote: post #46
pavlov wrote: post #9

The history of Luxembourg is an interesting microcosm of how the fortunes of states and dynasties have ebbed and flowed in Europe over the past thousand years. There was a time when the House of Luxembourg was the main rival to the Habsburgs for control of central Europe, contributing four Holy Roman Emperors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duchy_of_Luxemburg The dukes of this area used to be so important to European…

> (Monarchy is pretty weird in practice.) Friend of mine back-tested the simple "the next king is the first son of the previous king" against the past 1,000 years of English kings and found it to be true only half the time.

I did the same - taking only the kings/queens of England (i.e. starting with Alfred and ending with Queen Anne, ignoring those after the unification of the United Kingdom).

Son is by far the most common (21 from 50), followed by brother (6 from 50).

The next two are especially interesting - 5 new monarchs were usurpers (i.e. not closely related to the previous monach) and 3 times the new monarch was also an old monarch (i.e. a previous King was returned to the throne!).

There were 4 or 5 female successions (twice a daughter, twice a sister and once a daughter-but-disputed-succession [i.e. Matilda]).

Only once does it looks like the succession totally jumped a generation, and a grandson succeeded. In every other situation it looks like people were in the same generation (i.e. brother, sisters, cousins) or one lower (sons, daughters, nephews).

And only once did the succession 'jump back' a generation, with Richard III succeeding his nephew.

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