Strasbourg!

Two weekends ago-- October 8-10 I went to Strasbourg with my friend Kimmi.

Strasbourg is located in the north/EAST part of France right on the German border. I remember in high school, my senior year history teacher (Ms. Martinov) was obsessed with the fact that Alsace (the region in which Strasbourg is located) would switch from being a part of France to being a part of Germany and vice versa overnight. She was so amazed by it "They'd wake up and they'd be in Germany, they'd go to bed that night and they'd be in France! Then wake up again and be in Germany! Fascinating!"

I obviously don't share her same enthusiasm, but it is cool that it is so close to the border because there are a lot of German influences. Most people there speak both French and German and a lot of the buildings are designed in German style, especially Petite France-- it's so cute!!

We headed out Friday after class and made it to our hostel in Strasbourg around 11 or so that night. We were originally planning on going out that night, but we ended up talking to the two girls that were in our room for about 4 hours. They were both really cool; one was named Alex and she was from Canada and she's been traveling around the world and teaching English in different countries pretty much since she graduated college. The other girl was named Kerry and she was from NYC! Her story was pretty interesting-- she had been planning this big trip with a friend for like half a year to travel Europe after the friend took the bar exam and then right before they were going to buy tickets her friend bailed. But Kerry still decided to go and has been meeting up with people along the way and meeting new people (like us!).

Saturday we decided to check out some of the markets and do tourist-y things. We made it to one market and then went shopping. Strasbourg surprisingly has really good shopping though-- a lot of high end boutiques also. But the market we went to was cool-- it was a book market and they had a bunch of old school French books and a lot of vintage posters and postcards. I got a Kronenbourg poster that was literally cut out from a newspaper in 1959 and then an old postcard.

Afterwards, we went on a tour of the Kronenbourg factory. It was cool to learn the process of brewing beer and we got to see the history of Kronenbourg and a bunch of vintage posters and paraphernalia of the brand. The best part was at the end when we pretty much had free reign on their bar area. The tour was only 4 euro for an hour tour and then an hour of bottemless beer tasting. Kronenbourg owns or partners with a bunch of other beers so in addition to Kronenbourg, they had Carlsberg, Guiness, 1664 and a couple others. It was pretty sweet.

Beer tasting time

Ad shoot for Kronenbourg

For dinner we had made plans to meet back up with Kerry at the hostel and then we were meeting a friend of Kimmi's named Sophia who was in Strasbourg for the weekend with her dad. She's doing an internship program in Germany for the semester and we also met up with her the weekend after in AMSTERDAM! (post to come)

We went to dinner at a typical Alsacien restaurant in Petite France, the area with all the German-looking houses, and had a typical Alsacien meal. Afterwards, we headed to a bar in the main square area. I guess it was still early and it was a chill place because everyone was just sitting down in chairs talking amongst themselves. So we got bored and ditched it for a boîte (club) that we found by making friends with a few passerbys. The club was cool because it was underground so it almost looked like a grotto.

La Petite France

We stayed for a couple hours and decided to head back because Kimmi and I wanted to go to Baden-Baden the next day. Baden-Baden is the area in Germany (not too far from Strasbourg) with the naturally occurring thermal waters and they have a couple big spas there. They also have a famous casino where they filmed part of Casino Royale. On our way back to the hostel we stumbled upon the Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-Strasbourg. It was amazing because it was so immensely huge. I have a pretty cool picture of Kerry just standing in front of it looking up at it and the cathedral is so big you can't even see the top of it.

The next day, Kimmi and I got up to go to the train station (and took some picturesque fall pictures along the way-- Kimmi is from Seattle and they don't really have a fall season there so she was surprised to see all the leaves changing color. It wasn't even as pretty as fall in VA though.)

However, our plan to go to Baden-Baden was thwarted because they were doing work on the track and didn't have a lot of trains running. Our train home left at 3 and there wasn't a return train until after that. So we decided to do more touristy things. We had crepes at a café near the cathédrale for lunch and it was so good, love crepes. Then we did a boat tour along the river and for some reason I could not manage to stay awake. I still enjoyed it though. Then it was time to catch our train and head back, but not before we stopped to get a bratwurst on the way out!

And not to worry, we are still going to Baden-Baden. Strasbourg has a big Christmas market in December, so we're going to have a spa/Christmas market weekend in Baden Baden and Strasbourg the weekend before finals!