Retro - 2022: The year Esch was Esch 2022

By Pascal Steinwachs Switch to German for original article

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The Lëtzebuerger Journal is already celebrating its second digital birthday. We have found our place in the media landscape, evolved and are ready for 2023. None of this would be possible without the people who tell us their experiences and perspectives. To mark the occasion, each team member looks back on a story that was particularly meaningful to them this year.

What do package inserts and annual reviews have in common? You can't get past them, but only very few people read them.

But we'll try anyway. But where to start when the beginning of 2022 is already so long in the past? Preferably at the beginning, but since the year is over anyway, we'd rather look to the future. After all, the inventor of science fiction literature, a certain Hugo Gernsback, comes from Luxembourg, more precisely from Bonnevoie, which is now known to be about the personification of gentrification, i.e. a hotspot for moustachioed, topknot wearing people. But that's not what our review of the year, which – we remember – is more of an outlook, is about.

For the sake of tradition, however, we'll take a brief look back. So: From our point of view, the past post-Covid year was marked firstly by the endless, mega-awesome super summer, which gave us a crisp tan, secondly by the return of the Schueberfouer, which gave us masses of embarrassing politicians' selfies, and, thirdly, the Esch 2022 thing, which made us travel to the alleged Minett metropolis so often that we started questioning ourselves.

However, we didn't go to Esch 2022 because of the so-called culture, which is much more cultural here in the capital, but because of the Esch pizza, a delicious Divola with garlic and anchovies, specially created for the event, for which the Esch cultural magistrate found clear words: "If Esch is too strong, you are too weak."

We also talked to people from Esch during our Esch excursions, but not necessarily about Esch 2022, but mostly about everything and nothing, as our annual review photo with Esch left-wing legend André Hoffmann suggests.

"2022 is history. Let's look ahead because a wet dream awaits us there."

Be that as it may! 2022 is history. Let's look ahead, and what awaits us there is, we can hardly wait, a double election year – for those of us who already sucked up politics with our mother's milk, of course, a wet dream that could not be lewder. First the municipal elections in June, and then, four months later, the Chamber of Deputies and the government. Most likely – and the CSV must now be as strong as Escher pizza eaters – it will come down to the third edition of Blue-Red-Green.

From now on, but no later than soon, the politicians will be very, very close to the citizens again, even if some of them may have bad breath, but in a country in which it is customary to vote for people, not parties, and in which personal sympathy is more important than the election programme (only retired teachers and journalists who have been forced to do so read election programmes), this is probably unavoidable.

So, from now on, from the moment you step outside, you can expect to be flocked by politicians on the campaign trail (Xavier on Tour, Paulette on Tour, Samantha on Tour, Claude (Luc? Gilles?) on Tour, Robbie Williams on Tour…, um, that's another story), who, as we all know, are even harder to shake off when they are hunting in a pack.

After October 8, however, they will discreetly disappear again, thank goodness. Whew!