A man who lives in an apartment in Luxembourg City’s Gare district and put his slippers outside his door on the night of December 5 has, for the third year in a row, been given drug paraphernalia by St. Nicholas.
St. Nicholas, known locally as Kleeschen, has for hundreds of years been giving small presents and goodies to those who put out their slippers the night before his eponymous holiday.
Ahmed Wasel, who moved to the Gare neighborhood in 2016 after getting a job with a tech startup, says he doesn’t know how to interpret the elderly gift-giver’s yearly offering.
“Is he trying to tell me something?” said Ahmed Wasel. “Is this a cry for help, a taunt, or in his warped, 1800-year-old mind, is a used syringe a nice present for a young man whose only bad habits are being addicted to Coca-Cola Zero and forgetting to recycle my used paper?”
Wasel’s gift was not the only unusual one left the evening of December 5. Other Gare residents have reported getting an empty vodka, a used condom, an abandoned Vel’oh, a bag of moldy bread, and a tidy pile of cigarette butts that had been impressively smoked to the very end.
