"I actually wanted to be a rock star"

The most famous tattoo artist from Luxembourg is not actually a tattoo artist at all. Now that's a good first sentence! The best-known tattoo artist from Luxembourg is actually a piercer. His tattoo and piercing studio One More Tattoo (and Piercing) is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. This makes Marion Thill exactly twice as old as his studio in the capital's railway station district, which we visit on a sunny morning.

Until recently, Marion Thill was also president of the Confédération Hair Beauty and Tattoo Guild, which was founded in 2018 and is itself part of the trade association; he is currently one of its two vice presidents again. But Thill is much more than that and has a biography that would probably last several lifetimes for other people, as we realise in the course of the conversation, although we know him from earlier times in the nightlife, where we have crossed paths from time to time.

Marion has an impressive memory and is such an enthusiastic storyteller that we don't even have to take out the questions we had written down on a piece of paper.

But before we talk, Marion first shows us around his studio, which is a little intimidating for those of us without tattoos or piercings. Once we have passed through the entrance hall, where, in addition to the usual skulls and similar objects, there is also a shrine, as they are found in practically every house in Thailand to keep the house spirit happy, we enter the two rooms where tattoos are done.

Everything is clinically clean and somehow reminds us of a doctor's surgery or even an operating theatre, although it is highly unlikely that Black Sabbath would be playing in the background. The basement, which can be reached via a spiral staircase, is just as scrupulously clean and is where piercings are done and tattoos are lasered away. Hygiene is a top priority here.