LUXEMBOURG-VILLE – A man who moved to Luxembourg last year under the belief he could easily get by with English has announced that he is officially fed up with dealing with people here who only speak French.
“Luxembourg isn’t France or Belgium,” he said at an expat support-group meeting on Monday evening. “It’s very international here, and you’d expect that being able to speak English would be a prerequisite, at least if you want to work in customer service.”
He then went on to recount a visit that same day to a petrol station where he tried to explain that he wanted to first pay 20 euros in cash, and then pay the rest with a credit card.
“The cashier looked at me like I was mad,” he said. “So I just repeated the words ‘20 en cash, le rest avec my card’ really slowly so she could get it. But she still pretended to not understand.”
Another member then suggested they create a petition to make English lessons mandatory for anyone who works in shops and restaurants, which prompted everyone in attendance to say “hear, hear” and nod in agreement.
According to reports, the cashier also complained to her peers about the incident, expressing frustration that the customer refused to understand when she explained, in perfectly good French, that the card reader was broken. She went on to question why there are so many people in Luxembourg who don’t speak French when Luxembourg is an extension of Lorraine.
Being confused about where Luxembourg actually is and which language should be predominant in the Grand Duchy is quite common, even for residents, according to observers. Last year, the Wurst reported the story of a man who lived in Esch for 30 years believing it was a city in northern Portugal.