Jess Bauldry: Tell us a bit about yourself.
Xavier Cremonese: I was born to French parents who immigrated to Luxembourg in the late 1970s. I grew up in and lived in Luxembourg until my parents moved back to France. After France, I lived for a few years in Germany before returning to Luxembourg.
What was your career path?
After university, I started working in Luxembourg as a restaurant waiter in a few different places. I realised it wasn’t going to be a career. I had the opportunity to travel the world. At the same time a friend who was casting film extras in Luxembourg suggested I attend a casting. I went along and ended up working for five years in the industry in Luxembourg. Then I heard about a job with the management of the Philharmonic orchestra--a guy was leaving and they wanted a replacement. I landed the job. That was 10 years ago.
At the time, besides playing drums, I had no musical background. Back then the orchestra and the Philharmonie were two separate institutions and they later merged to become the Philharmonie. I enjoyed the freedom that we had. That changed after a while when there was a change of management. It’s normal. Things cannot stay the same forever. I left last December.
How did you get the idea to become a tour guide?
It’s something I had been thinking about for less than a year. I have been living in Luxembourg for close to five years and immediately started hanging out with the expat community via meetup.com and couchsurfing. Over the course of time hanging out with expats and getting to know the city, country and greater region better made me realise there are a lot of people who want to know more about it but the means to access it are limited.
One of my things is I like to be outside. Working at the Philharmonie for ten years made me long for fresh air. I also wanted to regularly meet new people and discover new places. Probably one of the most important things is enabling other people to discover new places themselves. I don’t want to become a guide who takes people by the hand and says now we do this.
One thing I’ve discovered from doing free tours is I really enjoy creating something and giving people the opportunity to be able to make something out of it.
How did you make it work?
I built the website myself and I’m still working on some of the tours.
Not everything is about the city, of course. It is on a lot of people’s agendas to visit the greater region like Metz, Saarland and Wallonie, etc. I try to get out there on Facebook and talk about these places. And I’m looking at jogging tours. I’m trying to work out how to put that together. It depends where people are staying and if I can convince them to go running. Running through the vineyards, that would be something!
What’s changed since then?
I’m more anxious. Having a job working for someone gives you the peace of mind that at the end of the month the paycheque will come through. But it’s one of the things that made me go for this change of career--I wanted to see what it was like when I was in charge and was the one to create something out of nothing.
My partner is also completely supportive of what I do. I’m a happier person I would say because what I’m doing represents what I am or shows who I am.