Daytrip to Strasbourg

European Parliament in Frankfurt (sorry this was my other daytrip this weekend)
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Strasbourg

It has been SO beautiful lately! We’ve all suffered through just about a month and a half of solid cloud cover and rain and COLD. It is simply bewildering because when we all arrived in January, the temperature was pretty steady in the 50s every day and the sun shone nearly ever y day. Once Spring was supposed to have arrived, however, we got rain and temperatures from 20-40 for a month and a half. Even the Germans say that this has been the coldest and rainiest spring on record since the Germans began recording weather. Pretty incredible. Now that May is approaching, though, we’re finally seeing bits of sunshine and the temperature has reached 60 for the last three days.

Notre Dame Cathedrale de Strasbourg
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I decided to take advantage of the gorgeous weather and the fact that I have no more papers to work on (which has added to the miserable mood caused by the weather for the last two weeks) and take a daytrip out to Strasbourg. I decided to go by myself to just take some time to think and really reflect on the trip so far, since the end is so near (though not as near as I would hope). I’m really behind on my blogs, also, so I was looking forward to the time on the train to be able to work on them.

La Place Kleber
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By the way, sorry if my English is sounding funny. I swear being here, even though I speak English all the time, my thoughts are constantly struggling to translate to or from German and putting together English sentences don’t always come that easily. This has made writing papers inordinately much harder, lol, as I find myself writing in the not-so-perfect English style of my German professors. Yet another reason I decided to head out to Strasbourg today. I’m looking forward to being in a place where I can understand the language, the signs, the menus… and be able to ask a stranger for directions or just start up a random conversation … little things like that.

the river :)
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So I’m in Strasbourg now, sitting on a bench just a couple blocks away from the big cathedral. I have been walking around for the last couple of hours (my pretty shoes were not the best choice for walking, so it’s a good think I can take a break and work on this) and this really is such a beautiful town. From the train station, you can’t exactly see the old town or centreville, but immediately as I walked out, I knew which street to walk down because it was lined with vendors making up sort of a Saturday market.

biscuits!
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The vendors were selling mostly antiques, it was so neat. I saw antique candlesticks, lamps, and other little things for the house, old postcards from all around France… I just wondered what treasures were in there if you could sit down and read every one. Did you all read the story about the British (I think?) man finding a postcard from Anne Frank that she had sent to a friend wishing her a happy new year from her grandmother’s house? It was such a cool story, he just found it in a box full of postcards in his father’s antique shop.

Astronomical clock in the cathedrale
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Anyway, so I browsed the vendors for a little bit and then headed straight down the same road, crossing a small bridge, then hoping I would run into something that would tell me I was in the old town. I checked my map that I bought in the train station and I found out that I had just entered the old town, because the old town is surrounded by the river, so it is called the Grande Ile (the grand island). I continued walking past designer stores and finally found a large square, La Place Kleber, found my place on the map again, and decided to walk towardsLa Cathedrale Notre Dame de Strasbourg, which was the highest building in Christendom until the 19^th century.

Stained glass
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The cathedral is enormous, with an incredibly intricate façade, and the stained glass indeed shines like millions of jewels on the inside of the cathedral. Inside is also an astronomical clock, similar to the one that we saw on Prague. I know it definitely had a different designer though, since they blinded the clockmaker in Prague who designed that one, specifically so he could never make another like it.

When I walked back outside there was kind of a makeshift orchestra playing, made up of people in street clothes but playing traditional French songs. It was nice. I left La Place de la Cathedrale, where there were many cute cafes and restaurants, and headed back to the main pedestrian street, Rue de Grands Arcades. Here I got very distracted with les magazins: the stores J. I had just been telling Taylor that I wished we had Sephora in Freiburg because I needed mascara, and of course one of the first stores I came to was a Sephora. Also, our friend Allie had been telling us how comparably inexpensive Longchamps purses were here (in Germany and France), and of course there was a bag store selling Longchamps, Guess, and other purses. I might go back and get one… I went into a couple jewelry stores as well. I guess my problem here is a good one: that there are too many pretty things I just can’t buy anything, just to be fair to the other pretty things. I wouldn’t want them to be left out. J Je plaisante, bien sur. Something that I did buy, of course, was some petits biscuits that I simply couldn’t resist. I got chocolate chip, chocolate, strawberry, and something that looks like snickerdoodle… but that kind is round shaped.

another Place with a merri-go-round near the cathedral
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More about Strasbourg… many of the buildings are either stone or have the dark wood planks on the outside… I’m so sorry I don’t know what style of architecture that is, but we see it everywhere in this region and its beautiful. I have already seen 3 churches, other than the cathedrale. There are quite a few museums here, the history of Strasbourg museum, the history of Alsace, a modern art museum, etc. I think it would be fun to stay here for a weekend, or maybe even a week and then rent a car and make daytrips to the surrounding smaller wine towns. I was absolutely marveling in the countryside from the train on the way here. Now that the grass is green and there are flowers, I feel like I’m in a completely different world.

architecture
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Supposedly Christmas is a really big thing in Strasbourg. They have famous Marches Noels, Christmas markets, surrounding the cathedral that are covered in lights and at least look really pretty in the pictures. I’ve seen similar pictures of another small Alsatian town, so I’m wondering if it is an Alsace thing.

There are so many children running around here and laughing. It seems like such a family friendly place. There are many people walking dogs, as well, of course. I still want to steal every one that I see. I would even take the one that I saw with a really, really fat and wrinkly face that nobody else probably would have thought to be cute.

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There is an Italian couple sitting next to me who match. They are both wearing jeans, and the woman is wearing a navy blue sweater over a white collared blouse and the man is wearing a white button down with a navy blue blazer. He’s wearing blue Chuck Taylors and she is wearing tan boots- their only striking difference. It’s funny, but cute J So I think I’ll walk around a little bit more. I have a couple more hours until I need to head back to la gare.

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So I’ve walked a bit longer and I have learned for the bajillionth time that walking in heels on cobblestone, even if they’re LITTLE heels, is NOT a good idea. You can only go so far making the self sacrifice for fashion. Next time I come to Strasbourg I’ll be wearing my pumas.

While walking around, I finally made a purchase J I bought a small Longchamps bag, it’s like Allie’s- the same dark salmon color but smaller. I didn’t need a big one. I don’t need big anything with the limited amount of luggage space that I have, lol. A good thing is that it’s easily compressible J

One quick thing to mention that I’ve noticed in Strasbourg, and this is indubitably because it’s one of the 9 big cities in France and because it’s also the European hub of France being home to the second European Parliament: the diversity. Being at home and even in Freiburg, it’s rare that you see someone that isn’t white, and you can always tell the tourists because they are the only one’s speaking another language (except for the Turkish immigrants who speak Turkish amongst each other but German to everyone else). Here, there are people of all colors and tongues, and I don’t for one second believe they’re all tourists. Okay, the Italians definitely are but there are so many more people who just spice up Strasbourg’s demography. I love it. It reminds me of why I love DC. There are so many individuals and cultures intermingling despite their differences. At least in Northwest.

So I’m definitely pleased with my séjour, I’ve had a lovely day away from home and I’m looking forward to tomorrow being another beautiful day that I get to enjoy in Freiburg. We’ll probably go up and hang out at the outdoor café on the Schlossberg and get some sun. And only about five more days until I go to the Italian Riviera (the Cinque Terre to be exact) for all five of my study days! I cannot wait. Then after the program is over, Laura is coming to see me and we’ll go to Rome and Alghero (Sardinia). I hope I don’t get too tired of Italy J I’ll try to keep updating you all! I should have more time now that most of school is done, we just have exams left. Miss you all!!