I spent the day in Strasbourg, France today, which borders Germany and was about an hour drive from where I am living. Strasbourg is the principal city in the Alsace region. The city is historically German speaking, but I encountered mostly French signs, French-speaking people, and a very heavy French culture including many little crêpe shops, pâtisseries, and chocolate shops.
As it was Good Friday (which is a national holiday both in France and Germany) the majority of stores were closed excepting the tourist shops that sold post cards, stuffed storks, and the ever-popular I <3 (that is a heart) Strasbourg (or whichever city you happen to be in) bags and t-shirts.
The day was cool and windy, and, despite my desire to wear something other than my gray wool coat, I was forced to wear both my coat and mittens. All of my pictures show me in this outfit, making it appear as if all the pictures were taken on the same day. Perhaps these past few weeks have been one solid day, towns and villages spilling into one another, churches and tourists blending together to form one tornado of European architecture and personality.
I sometimes tell people that I am able to speak a little bit of French. And this is true. I studied French since the 7th grade (as well as hold a minor from Carroll University) and I am confident that I studied rigorously and with much enthusiasm. Today, I got to speak French with several locals in Strasbourg, and much to my amazement, I was successful in conversing with these people. The tone of the language and the vocabulary all came flooding back to me despite my present drowning in the German language. When one woman asked if I was German or French, I responded that I was American, and she complimented me on my accent. Merci Mme Larson-Horne!
While walking through "La Petite France", I was stopped on a bridge by a crowd of people. They had all stopped to watch as a boat entered the lock system in order to move to another section of the river. The water in the lock began to slowly rise, the boat along with it. A few minutes later and the boat was even with the water on the other side of the lock and it was on its merry way. I had never seen this before and it was fascinating!
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Bravo, ma belle! Je suis très fière de toi! Mais, tu sais, je ne suis plus "Madame Larson-Horne," mais simplement "Melinda" (ou "M" si tu préfère :)
ReplyDeleteJoyeuses Pâques!
M...
mais, bien sûr, M...! Je voudrais écrire un post en français (comme ton blog), mais c'est difficile!
ReplyDeleteI have been to that same square in front of that church in your photo. It is the color of Arizona sandstone and is carved with the labor of a million hours of long dead stonemasons. A visual cacophony of gargoyles, filigree and detail... some that only God can see it is so far from the ground. I expect that some worked on it their whole lives.
ReplyDeleteNow it is just something that shows up in pictures. Few in Europe are Christian any more. Too bad.
When I was there, the French Communist Party had had a huge convention/meeting in town the day before. I had one or too many beers at a cafe in that same square contemplating the Frenchmen who spent their lives building that church hundreds of years ago for present day Frenchmen who now have no use for their God and surrounded by the liter of leaflets with hammer and sickles and dramatically punctuated words in a language I don't understand.