Wasserbillig is definitely old Europe. The small, pretty border town nestles in the Moselle valley on a bend in the river, a picture of Luxembourgist solitude and prosperity. The rich profusion of vineyards on its steep hills suggest a way of life unchanged for centuries.
The town's hostage siege is most definitely of the New Europe, of the continental melting pot of nationalities. This trauma is of a Europe in which the layer upon layer of successive worlds of migration fit uncomfortably on top of each other, transforming even this most rural of idylls into a cosmopolitian expression of wider cultures.
In the last century, waves of Italian workers came to settle in this region and southern Belgium to work at the coal and steel mills. And so it is hardly surprising to find that Wasserbillig's burgomeister is an Italian.
In the 1960s, the Portuguese came to work in such industries as the local tyre factory, restaurants or domestic service. They now make up 15 per cent of Luxembourg's 400,000 population and in this small town of 2,100 people, they number as many as 300.
Many, like the handful of small shopkeepers, are fully integrated, many married into the local community. Among the hostage children, 14 of yesterday morning's total of 29 were Portuguese. Of the rest, three are French and three are German and there is a Pole, an Italian and a Greek.
But for other Portuguese, migration is a more recent experience and among the groups who congregated in the streets of this town yesterday were many who did not speak the local language.
And then came the most recent wave from North Africa, particularly in both Belgium and Luxembourg, the Tunisians, and, one supposes, the family of the hostage-taker.
The 39-year-old-man had already been receiving psychiatric help and had apparently been tipped over the edge by a dispute with the local authorities over their insistence that his children should be taken into care. He was said to hold a grudge against the manager of the day centre.
The international character of the siege has brought diplomats in droves to Wasserbillig along with the journalistic horde and has mesmerised local people. Posters around the town advertise a local circus. Now - irony of ironies - on a beautiful bank holiday they had a ghoulish free spectacular, and the queues of cars stretched out of town up towards the motorway.
The Luxembourg authorities played the whole crisis down as much as possible - definitely no macho posturing, no overt displays of weaponry.
Spokesmen denied suggestions that the hostage-taker was mentally disturbed or that he had asked for cash. Greeting journalists in French, Luxembourgish, German and English, they dismissed talk of the presence of German Special Anti-Terrorist Police, though few believed them. They stressed that the order had been given to end the siege peacefully. A plane was on standby at the airport 15 miles away.
The traumatised parents were protected from the press in the town's cultural centre, where beds and food had been provided and they could receive counselling from specialists. Few ventured out through the throngs of cameras.
But the drip-drip release of children must only have made their ordeal worse. The return of each group of freed children had raised expectations among the waiting parents, only to see the hopes of most dashed, until the final assault on the centre and the liberation of all the hostages.
Speaking before the end of the siege, the Portuguese vice-consul, Mr Antonio Martin Antones, told journalists: "The parents are a bit nervous but taking into account the situation, are very calm."