So far, there were only two restaurants listed in Luxembourg, so I added my 3 favourite places. After providing valuable free content to Skype, I’m going to post my mini-reviews here as well. I might come back later to update this post (there are so many great restaurants in Luxembourg it’s hard not to gain weight). As I’m a vegetarian, the restaurants mentioned below are veggie-friendly. Should you happen to know any other great restaurants in Luxembourg that you think I should check out, please leave a comment (note that I don’t like very formal places and no, seafood isn’t vegetarian even if Chi-Chi’s thinks otherwise).

Restaurant Royal Chine: My favourite restaurant in Luxembourg due to the great choice of vegetarian dishes. Of course, they serve traditional Chinese food, too, as well as some Korean specialities (like Kimchi). It seems there’s a Chinese restaurant on every street in Luxembourg now, but this one really stands out and I suspect many of the friends and family members who come to visit me actually just want me to take them to the Royal Chine.

Disclosure note: I’m good friends with the owners and designed their webpage (for free). However, this doesn’t make anything I wrote above less accurate or true. In fact, you can take advantage of my “guanxi” and send me whatever sincere comment you might have concerning this restaurant and I’ll mention it to the lǎo bǎn next time I go there. Or you could pretend being a friend of mine to see if you get a discount.

Restaurant Star of Asia: Lovely Indian restaurant with great food, relaxed atmosphere and very friendly service. Popular with locals and expats alike. My favourite dish is Bhagara Baigan (Aubergine curry) plus Chilli Naan (Indian bread). I’m getting hungry right now just from writing this comment.

Disclosure note: I’m good friends with the owners, designed their webpage (for free) and also did an ad for them which was printed in Paperjam magazine. This shouldn’t make you think that I’d write an embellished review. Quite to the contrary, I wouldn’t consider designing a website for a bad restaurant!

Ristorante Dal Notaro: This would be the perfect Italian restaurant – if only it was closer to my home! Seriously, I love going there because it’s always a totally enjoyable experience. Great food, great atmosphere, what more could you want? Wine, you say? They have a superb selection of great (mostly Italian) wines, too!
The menu is apparently only available in Italian, but you can always ask the waiter to translate. My favourite dishes: Melanzane e mozzarella (starters) and Pappardelle alla trilogia di funghi.

Disclosure note: Nope. I wish, but there’s nothing to disclose. No connection other than me often going there.

BTW, the “sushi” picture above isn’t really related to this article as it was taken at a Japanese restaurant in Taichung, Taiwan. No luck finding a veggie-friendly Japanese restaurant in Luxembourg so far.

Here’s what their support had to say: “[...] The service to [Taiwan] is temporarily unavailable due to regulation issues. Please note that we cannot provide specific dates for when certain destinations will be available. [...]”

If you have no idea what JAJAH is, you’re probably paying too much for your phone calls. You should go have a look at my post from February.

Good, now that we’ve established I’m not always too late reporting interesting new developments , let me tell you that using JAJAH’s VOIP-based callback service on a mobile works very well. While I couldn’t test the “seamless integration” on phones using the Symbian OS, triggering a callback with the Java application is not too much of a hassle either. For a list of supported phones and further information, go here.

Thank you, JAJAH! No longer will I have to postpone making international calls until I’m on a PC.

Please note (to prevent expensive misunderstandings): If you use JAJAH while roaming outside your operator’s network,
you’ll of course still have to pay roaming charges for the incoming (callback) call.

No need to install software on your PC, no need to use a headset or an external VoIP gateway or phone: all you need is an internet connection to enter your phone number and the number you want to call in your browser. Seconds later, your phone rings and the connection to the destination number is established.

It’s hard to imagine an easier solution for making cheap phone calls and even your least tech-savvy friends and relatives should be able to use Jajah. But Jajah is more than some sort of “Skype for idiots”, just consider the following situations:

• You’re using almost all your bandwidth to download… uh, “large files”, so PC-based VoIP would not be possible with an acceptable quality.
• You’re sitting at a PC with a slow internet connection, or no headset, or you’re not allowed to install software.
• You just want to use your old-fashioned phone instead being bound to a headset.

Of course, Jajah has some disadvantages, too: You can’t make free PC-to-PC calls* and the sound quality is limited by your ordinary telephone (and phone line). However, during some tests with calls from Luxembourg to Taiwan, we found the quality to be no worse than when *gasp* making a regular phone call.

Unlike many VoIP providers, Jajah uses a “post-paid” system instead of forcing you to pre-pay. Plus, you get 5 minutes for free when you first register your phone number. Currently, you can only pay by credit card and – as we found out – you have to be careful when doing so: if the country you’re located in doesn’t match the country where your credit card has been issued in, your payment will be declined and your account will be locked. Unless you have many phone numbers to register, you’ll have to contact Jajah’s customer support to unlock your account. On the plus side, response time was very fast.

In conclusion, in the time it took you to read this post, you could easily have made your first phone call. Don’t hesitate! Wake up your relatives in another corner of the world now and tell them about Jajah!

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*Update Nov. 19, 2006: Since several months, JAJAH allows you to make free phone-to-phone calls under certain conditions.