Strasbourg! La plus belle ville du monde...

This is ridiculously overdue, but what can I say? It's been pretty busy this month.

For the weekend of May 13-16, also known in the Christian calendar as the Ascension of Jesus into Heaven, I went to Strasbourg, France with Inga and Rebecca, two American friends also studying French at CIDEF. First of all, thank goodness I go to school at a Catholic university that feels obligated to give us time off to go to church/be with our families/get one last vacation in. We left on Thursday morning and came back on Saturday afternoon.

Angers is in the west of France and Strasbourg is so far east that it's practically Germany (more on that later) so it was really interesting to watch the landscape change during the train ride to and from Strasbourg. Angers is part of the Loire Valley, so it's flat and green, but almost a bright, colored-printer-paper green. If you've seen any aerial photos of the classic chateaux of France, that's what we're dealing with. It's also very immaculately kept, for the most part--all gardens are neatly trimmed, etc. By the time we got to Strasbourg, the trees and grass had become wet (because of the rain, but the colors struck me as "wet") and the green had become a deep evergreen. It actually reminded me a lot of Southern VA/Northern TN/West Virginia. It was a very pretty train ride.

Unfortunately, it rained for the first day, and it was very, very cold. My fingers were numb when I held my umbrella. Our hotel was kind of a dump, but that didn't matter too much because a) it was cheap and b) I'm a college student. I've always, always seen worse. But the TV didn't work and the shower head was crazy with practically no partition to keep the water from spraying everywhere. The internet also didn't work in our room, and we had to pay to use the computer downstairs.

The food, though. Glorious! I've been subsisting on mostly fruit and yogurt lately, so I wanted to eat some MEAT. From about 1870 to 1919, Alsace and Lorraine were a part of Germany (or Prussia, at that time). Napolean III had picked a fight with Bismarck, and the French army was absolutely destroyed. Typical. The Prussians took the two departments in retaliation because they are so rich in carbon. As a result, "French" children went to German-style schools, spoke German as a first or second language, and basically became full-blooded German citizens. In the rest of France, maps showed Alsace and Lorraine shaded in black, and the country was literally in "mourning" for their lost brethren. It became this deep wound on the French psyche, and is one of the reasons that France jumped so quickly into WWI at the height of nationalistic sentiment in Europe. At the end of WWI, Alsace and Lorraine returned to France, which was confusing to everyone by that point. Even today, Strasbourg and the rest of the area retains a lot of it's German heritage. Strasbourg is even right on the border of Germany. There's a line on the city map, like: FRANCE / GERMANY.



The moral of this story is that there is a lot of fantastic food in Strasbourg. For lunch, we had Flammekuchen, which is a really crispy, thin pizza with creme fraiche and mushrooms and bacon. We also saw a bunch of the little pastries and breads that are unique to the region. But the best was the dinner on Friday night, when we all had regional specialities. The image above is what I ate: Baeckeoffe. It's basically three meats, potatoes, and carrots cooked with white wine and cooked in a "terrine." I loved the terrine so much that I picked one up for myself to take home. Honestly, it was a little dry, but I'm sure that's something I can learn to adjust. I was seriously jealous of Inga's pork knuckle with sauerkraut. Mmm. It looked delicious. I noticed that many restaurants in this area had what I can only describe as "family" seating. I'm very used to very small tables that only seat two people, four at the most. However, at two restaurants in three days, we were seated at one end of a long table that sat anywhere between six and ten people. I watched hostesses seat two different parties at the same table. It was interesting. I kind of liked it. It fit with the cozy atmosphere of the region. We also ate lunch one day at a sushi restaurant that had a conveyor belt that moved all of the dishes around the room. It was really cool, actually. And one of the cheapest meals I've eaten all semester!





We also visited the cathedral, which is huge and beautiful and will probably always stick in my mind. It's very gothic and mysterious looking because it's made out of sandstone. Inside, I lit a memory candle for my grandfather, whose mother was from Germany and who was Catholic. Never let it be said that I am not thoughtful. Also, Petite France was absolutely stunning and basically straight out of a children's book. The buildings are all timber framed and white with steeply sloping roofs. Interestingly enough, it's called "la Petite France" because it used to be the area where all of the french prostitutes did their business. Now it just sounds (and looks) like it should be a part of Disneyland. It was in this area that I was able to get my pretty terrine for only 25 euro!

We also went to a few gardens, but other than that, we just wandered around. I loved it, though. Strasbourg is definitely a city I would love to come back to. Only about 10 days left in France! It's a weird feeling, but more on that later.