10 Reasons To Buy A Place in Saarburg, God's Waiting Room

Are you looking for a new start in a new place? Saarburg may be what you are looking for. Here are 10 reasons: read on...

1. You can find a decent restaurant in about 30 minutes
Luxembourg is 15 minutes away, and France is 25 minutes away. You can be in Belgium in 45 minutes, even if you don't really want to. In any case, it means you can find a decent restaurant or supermarket in under an hour. Just find a border!

2. Need to get away from it? This is the place.
Fed up with your friends and family bothering you day-after-day with invitations and requests? Tired of city life? This is the idyll for you. Being an hour's drive from a major motorway, your friends and family will conclude that the journey isn't worth risking just for you and you'll only ever have to communicate with them by social media or Skype.

3. Do you enjoy receiving attention? You'll get it here!
You will always see net curtains twitching as you walk past houses on a Sunday morning! You will receive open-mouthed stares from farmhands as you pass them in the fields! You are guaranteed to get glances as you sit down on a café terrace that a long-term local believes is rightfully his/hers!

4. Do you like to feel intelligent and sophisticated? You will!
Tired of being the worst-dressed at parties? Feel like a tramp when you visit capital cities? Not very good at meaningful conversation? In Saarburg, you'll feel like a hybrid of Meryl Streep and Stephen Hawking's more intelligent, younger brother. Beware the downside, though: witch burning is not yet out of fashion...

5. Do you hate the Saturday afternoon shopping rush?
Then Saarburg could be the place for you, as the shops close on Saturday lunchtime and don't open again until Monday!

6. Religious and feel persecuted by secular society?
You can find inner peace here, where the church bells never stop ringing and the priest never stops giving mass. There are at least 20 more years of this ahead, as the youngest members are only in their early 60s! No mosques, synagogues, temples, kingdom halls or such like here though.

7. Want to learn German?
You can be immersed in German culture and life from day one. Despite being only a short drive from three other countries, nobody here speaks a word of anything else, so you can practise your German upon arrival!

8. Learn to eat local dishes!
Do you overuse flavourings like ginger, coriander, thyme, rosemary or garlic? You can throw all of them away now - the local food is made with pork, breadcrumbs and potatoes. And any elaborate things you might want to do you can just buy ready-made for you at the supermarket, where there is a choice between red, orange or yellow marinade for your pork - simple!

9. Do you like driving? This is the place for you!
Here in Saarburg, people don't take buses. They save the transport company the bother of having to drive you home by learning to drive themselves. Very considerate. So the bus just goes in the mornings and afternoons for the schools. It is still not legal for children to drive, but there is hope, and then all the buses here will be unnecessary!

10. Do you like consistency? You will find it here!
Every year, Saarburg organises various market festivals. Every year they are on the same dates. Every year you can find the same people at those festivals, both as merchants and visitors. One year something different was tried at one of the market festivals and it caused mass disorientation, so they changed it back to how it always was. In 2009, the wooden animal merchants pulled out due to ill health, causing bewilderment to hundreds of visitors who needed to be reassured that civilisation was not falling apart.

If you would like to fix an appointment to view one of a number of properties currently for sale in the "town", please contact the Evergreen Care Home, where one of the new arrivals will gladly sell you an enormous house that they alone occupied to the detriment of string of young families who have been looking to move into the area for a long time.

Local butcher has "lamb", "poultry" and "beef" explained to him

Saarburg's only butcher, or should we say pork retailer, with his shop nestled in the main street between all the shoe shops and pharmacies, has gone on a training course to improve his techniques, including:

• recognising and naming new kinds of meat (beef, lamb, venison, veal, poultry and wild boar)
• cutting and cooking them
• how to correctly present products in the shop
• suppliers of other meats and correct pricing
• keeping customers interested in products other than pork

The idea is to gradually introduce Saarburgers to the idea of varying their diets. Since the recent influx of arrivals from other countries, more and more people have been confusing local caterers and food suppliers with requests for products that do not contain pork meat. These new sources of food could bring more sustainable farming to the area and at the same time introduce Saarburgers to the idea of eating dishes such as roast beef, leg of lamb, chicken chow mein and goulash.

Two cows were brought to the training course as part of an interactive exhibition to show participants, which included regional butchers and restaurateurs, what alternatives to pork there were. Unfortunately only black-and-white milking cows could be found in the neighbourhood, but it was enough to demonstrate the availability of livestock in the area.

Two milking cows being taken to the training course

Not everyone is happy with the setup. Reinhold Horn-Ochsler, a local farmer, said: "we've had pigs in this area for centuries, and now they want us to have some other animals. And what for? So a bunch of arty-farty arrivals from the city can have spaghetti bolognese or burgers. I beg your pardon, but I was always under the impression they were there to provide us with leather, cheese, milk and wool, but apparently there's this new fashion in town and we're supposed to eat them too. Well pardon me if I give it a miss."

However, local man Hartmut Landei said, "We're getting cows and sheep here! I'll be trying out this new delicacy, and I've bought a cook book from the second hand bookshop to get me started. It has recipes for cow Schnitzels which it says are called 'steak' and you can even roast some pieces of sheep with rosemary or mint. This will put Saarburg on the gastronomic map!"

Italian restaurant owner Giovanni Vaccamangia, was joyful: "I have not been able to cook a decent lamb cutlet in ages, and now it seems my prayers have been answered. I won't add it to the official menu, as it might put off some local people, but I'll add it to our chalk boards which I can discreetly present to visitors to the area."

Other restaurants in the area are weighing up this new competition, as until now, they all listed similar products on their menus. Two have already petitioned the local council to decree a period of hiatus in the phasing in of alternative foodstuffs until they can be declared safe for consumption.

Local butcher Engelbert Ferkelmacher, was enthusiastic: "Soon we will have a wide range of products available to our customers, although I will have most of the cows and the other ones - sheep - behind the counter for the protection of our more fragile visitors."