Andreina really doesn't like it here. I'd go so far as to say she hates it. With a passion. I'm sure the rainy weather has a lot to do with it -- this morning, for instance, it cleared up for a little bit and she admitted it wasn't so bad a place -- but it also might be the heavy, heavy German influence on the place. Germany, after all, is right across the river; we only have to walk across the bridge to get there. Most of the menus and signs have German explanations as well, and the "Little France" attraction to the southwest of city center smacks heavily of traditional small village Germany. I've suggested we go across the bridge once or twice, but I think I'd have to blindfold her and drag her along to get her there.
With the wet weather and depressing sky, it's been something of a challenge to stay motivated -- to say nothing of the fact that we're on the last week of this trip!! I personally rather like Strasbourg, but I admitted to Andreina that I'm viewing it as a tourist, not as a person living in the place. It reminds me of the Busch Gardens Theme Park back in Virginia, particularly during their Oktoberfest. Imagine all the very stereotypical German houses and you'd probably have a good idea of what "Little France" looks like. So, for me, it brings up so many memories of being in a theme park with my friends that I'm finding myself kind of tickled by all the sterotypical-ness of the place!
It is mysteriously deserted, though, especially being such a populated city. My travel book says Strasbourg is one of the nine most populated cities in France, and it's popular also for being one the sites of the European Union parliamentary sessions. But the first afternoon we were here, the streets were almost uniformly empty as we first walked to our hotel to check in, and then as we walked towards the city center in search of dinner. We could see a crowd in the distance as we got nearer and bearers to the center of the city, but it still wasn't until we were almost in the dead center of the city that the place felt inhabited! It wasn't late by that time, either, probably just around 4 or 5pm on a Saturday afternoon. The lack of people on the skirts of the city made it seem ridiculously creepy!
That first day, we wandered about for a bit, grabbed delicious sandwiches for dinner, walked around the huge Cathedral in the middle of the city, explored Little France, and then headed back to our hotel room. The cathedral is the tallest in any of France and it dominates the skyline from almost any point in the city, providing a very handy landmark for when we were wandering around trying not to get too lost. Little France, like I said, reminded me of an amusement park.
On Sunday, we both slept in until almost 11am and only then got up, very lazily, to go back to exploring the city. By that time, Andreina had already made very clear how little she liked the place, but we had a good conversation about other things as we headed north to check out the EU Parliamentary house that I wanted to see. It was a very nice walk but still heavily clouded, chilly to the point that we we both wearing our light jackets. After we walked to the EU buildings, we headed to a nearby park and walked through their small free zoo that mostly featured birds. I'd thought it would have been a lot bigger and that it would take us a lot longer to explored the zoo, but we were walking away from it in pointless-wander mode again by 1pm.
"Well, that didn't take as long as I thought it would," I admitted to Andreina. The EU buildings and the zoo had pretty much been the only things I'd planned on doing the entire day. She laughed at me, having been thinking the same thing to herself, and then suggested we go off to find an English theater to catch a movie. We hopped onto the free Wifi network out here and I found a theater that was playing Harry Potter -- the only catch was Google Maps said it would take 25 minutes to walk to and the movie started in 20. Off we went, speed-walking like devils. Andreina added that if we were too late, we could always watch it the next day, but we still kept up a pretty decent pace.
A quick word about the wifi network: when we were in Nice, the hostel we were at gave us a username and password, insisting it was for the "free wifi" network, and no real explanation after that. Later on, when we'd walked a good distance from the hostel and had gone all the way to the port, Andreina exclaimed, "That's what he was talking about!" then pointed out that there was a network showing up on our phones listed simply as FreeWiFi. It worked well in certain areas of the city, horribly in others, and not at all in our hostel itself. When we arrived in Lyon, Andreina triumphantly discovered that the network coverage extended to even Lyon. We found it again in Dijon and here in Strasbourg so I'm assuming some company has hot spots in most major French cities and that thanks to our hostel in Nice, we are able to sporadically look down at our phones and connect to the interest. It doesn't work perfectly, it's pretty slow and disconnects a lot, and it's not everywhere -- right now, for instance, I'm in my hotel room and I can't connect to the network -- but every so often we'll find a place to stop, check our emails, and find directions to an English theater :)
We made it to the theater with minutes to spare and spent the next two or so hours getting one last Potter fix in to end the series. It's been so long since I read the books and since I've seen the last movie (November! How long ago!) that, even though I had a hazy idea about what was going to happen, the movie managed to keep me completely interested. I kept coming up with quick one-liners, though, and kept leaning over to whisper my jokes to Andreina that at the end of the movie she told me I couldn't lean on her like she was my boyfriend :\
It was heavily clouded and we hadn't eaten yet so we stopped at a place for some lasagna that turned out to be deliciously filling, heating me up just in time to keep me warm when the rain started falling. We got some dessert -- Andreina got ice cream, I got a sweet pretzel -- and then headed back to our hotel, stopping at a market on the way to grab some comfort bread against the rain.
Today, we slept in late again and listlessly got ready to go, leaving our room at around 11:30am. We grabbed some croissants for breakfast and wandered around for a few hours, stopping at random stores to do window shopping, having conversations about where we imagined ourselves in the future and what we'd spend our money on if we suddenly had a million dollars. We decided to go watch another movie, Super 8, and got rained on as we waited for the movie to start. After walking around for almost two hours, with 15 minutes to go before the movie started, Andreina decided that we really needed sandwiches before watching the movie and so we sped-walked again through the city to our sandwich shop, grabbed some sandwiches, and then raced back to the theater with, again, only minutes to go before the movie started. Super 8 was pretty good, for those of you who haven't seen it; if you're ever very bored in Strasbourg with a day to kill, I highly recommend it! We window shopped again afterwards, grabbed some noodles in a box for dinner, and then headed home to escape from the rain that started pouring again.
Location:Strasbourg, France
Lol, speaking of Harry Potter, I actually had a dream about it last night. Weird. Sounds like you guys couldn't wait to get out of that little town. Don't worry about the weather, though, because it is so HOT here with barely any rain; you'll forget that you were ever cold before. Promise. (Funny thing, those semicolons. I always want to use them, but I am pretty sure that I use them incorrectly. Oh well.)
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