09 December, 2007

Christmas Shopping in Luxembourg

When we first arrived in Luxembourg we thought we would only be shopping at smaller stores and shops for things like groceries, household items, bookes, etc. That was the case for the first week or so but then we got turned on to Auchan, a huge French supermarket in the Kirchberg section of Luxembourg which is only a few minutes from my office. This supermarket is within a decent sized shopping mall and covers 2 floors. Each floor is about the size of a Target or Walmart it seems. Auchan carries everything from wine, beer, cheese, TV's, DVD's, seafood, clothes, and everything else in between. As parking is limited in Luxembourg and Auchan is so large, they also have a huge parking garage that is several levels underneath the store. In addition to parking down there, they also have little kiosks that you can rent DVD's and Playstation 2 games. We haven't found them yet but the parking lot also has a car wash at one of the lower levels and a drive through drink store (beer, wine, soda, etc). Full service to the fullest.
Another shopping option that we found out about when we moved into our flat is Cactus, a Luxembourgish supermarket that is in several places around Luxembourg. It seems that the largest store is about 750 meters from our flat and it is huge. It is part of a shopping mall that has several clothing stores, many restaurants and bars, including stand up bars that are busy from the morning until the evening. We are still getting used to seeing men and women standing up at these bars drinking a beer or glass of wine, any day of the week. Catcus is only one floor but it feels like it is about 3 or 4 football fields long. They are a full service supermarket but they also sell TV's and all kinds of household items and they also have hardware and other do it yourself type items. Not as large at Home Depot but it is enough to get the job done.
This brings me to the topic of Christmas shopping here. Today (Sunday) Paula and I went to Auchan to get some Christmas decorations and of course some wine and beer. This is a big deal as Auchan and the other supermarkets here are not usually open on Sunday. They are open on some Sundays in December for holiday shopping. I could not believe the number of people there today. I guess because it is sort of a novelty, everyone had to be there. The Christmas decoration isle was a mad house. It was as if they were selling Furbies or Cabbage Patch Kids or whatever the hot toy or game of the day is. We could not even bring our cart down the isle. After while it was too much to take so we checked out and left.
Before we left I did a little looking through the beer isle and found some nice holiday beer gifts....for me of course since it is too hard to ship things like this. :-) I picked up a Duvel gift set that included one large 750 ml bottle and 2 glasses, but not the regular Duvel tulip. This was a set of 2 smaller tulip glasses, intended to be apertifs. We also picked up a gift set of Lindeman's beers and a tulip glass in there. There should be some pictures of these at the below link.

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