Luxembourg and it’s Many Luxuries#
On May 31st - June 3rd, we spent the weekend in Luxembourg, which was very similar and yet different from Belgium. The largest difference between the two being the demographics between the two countries. In Belgium - or at least in Leuven and Brussels to an extent - there was a large young demographic. Everyone in Luxembourg for the most part were older men and women who seemed to be working in government or retired. I heard from other students that went out that the average age range in the bars and clubs was around mid fourties.
The amount of pure luxury that exudeded from the citizens there was palpable. The buses for public transportation were Mercedes, the number of Audis and BMWs were no longer worth counting once I reached 75 in a matter of 36 hours, and there was a Porshe 911 that I saw that I’m still waiting on Maggie to send me the photo of so I can make it my wallpaper. In some ways its a less flashier version of Monaco.
However, in some ways I understand the lack of younger people in Luxembourg due to two things - cost of living and education.
Although Luxembourg is indeed a very beutiful place filled with different activities such as hiking, biking, shopping, and eating - its EXPENSIVE. Most young professionals probably wouldn’t want to stay in Luxembourg unless they were making lots of money that they didn’t mind going to taxes or they worked in the government (which I unfortunately don’t think pays as well as the private sector, which is also another possibility). There was even a noticable difference in the cost of basic necessities here compared to Belgium. A bottle of water here in Belgium from a small shop or even grocery store runs around 1 - 2 euro, compared to Luxembourg the water was 2.50 - 3 euro (not a notciable difference, but did I end up buying any water in Luxembourg- the answer is NO!!)
Another thing that may also contribute to the lack of younger professionals and students may be education. In the Luxembourgish education system, students schooling is broken down into three sectors, where they are taught three different languages. Luxembourgish is the standard language taught when students are first beginning to start school, until around the age of 6, where German is first introduced. After 6 years old, students are taught in German, with French being the next language to be introduced. Once a student is around 15, that is when the last years of their schooling is taught in French until they graduate. (I definetly think most American brains would break by the time they were 15 with having to switch between three different langauges, but that’s also because I’m jealous.) Although this is an amazing feat to be trilinigual at such an early age, there are not many colleges or universities in Luxembourg. After some slight googling, I found that the University of Luexmbourg is the only fully-fledged university, which was founded in 2003. This might explain why these students decide to leave Luxembourg and pursue their higher education in neighboring countries such as Belgium, France, or Germany, where they can not only speak the language, but it might be relatively cheaper.
Individual Contributions to Phase III#
During this phase of the project, I completed the list of tables with whether or not that data would be sourced or generated. For the creation of the API routes, I went into google sheets and listed 10/11 routes that could be created within our app,and went through with the writing and implemetation of these routes into our api. On the Subleva page itself, I worked on creating the new pages and permissions for certain users which consisted of listing the oages and placing the valid information.