I had a great time in Luxembourg this weekend and met some fantastic people. I’m hoping I made a few real friends as I know I want to work with some of them too.

You can get a little tired of the echo chamber here in London so it was great to relax with a few like-minded folk who come at things with a slightly different outlook and European direction. Seesmic and Twitter are great for breaking down barriers and connecting people, but my own inability to learn another language (I figure I need to finish butchering this one before I move on to a new one) means I navigate towards English speakers first. Thankfully every person in Europe is way smarter than me and forgives me my ignorance. This means I already have a nice little European social group to turn to online.

However, nothing beats sitting down in a hotel that was once a fortress to chew the fat (and Toblerone) together.

I was incredibly impressed with everything I saw in Luxembourg, but what stirred me the most were the people. I travel a fair bit, but it takes more than history and postcard pretty scenery to get me fired up about a place. I was bored to tears in the jungles of Mexico because the pyramids are just mausoleums. Impressive, yes, but it’s not like the ancient Mayans have contributed much lately (unless you count the Mel Gibson movie with the face chewing) and a hundred years from now someone taking the same trip as me will see pretty much the same thing. Mexico City, however, rocked…

Jess drags me to a lot of OLD places that are quite happy to look backwards for the next century and concentrate on diverging tourists from their cash by wearing silly costumes and treating their whole nation as a museum. Dead places, dead ideas.

Everyone I met in Luxembourg was well aware of the perceived shortcomings of such a small country, but crucially they were all committed to moving forward and changing those perceptions by being as progressive as possible. The people won me over first and then it was easy to sit back and enjoy the view.

Anyway, I’m going to break my posts about the trip up with my usual stuff here and also try and keep things short and snappy. Just sorting out all the video I shot will take a week plus I’m learning how to handle a new camera and a new editing suite at the same time. But more on that later too…

Right now here’s some footage as a teaser that I almost deleted and then shoved into iMovie 08 as a quick refresher:

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