March 26, 27, 28 Museums, Walking, Shopping
March 26, Tuesday
I love walking through the old part of Strasbourg. This week there are so many groups of young people!! It must be Spring Break. Sometimes, it takes me a long time to get to where I want to go because I stop to look and wonder. Many of the streets are really like alleys and I know they were the main thoroughfares in times past with horses and carts. Now they are filled with tourists all experiencing the city in whatever ways they can. Here is one of my wondering / wandering stops on this day. I stopped to admire this ancient building. (OK, ancient to me, not to the Alsatians.)
Imagine that you build a kind of box, then fill the box with straw and clay and whatever else will make a kind of adobe. Then you attach cross supports with wooden “planks” to build a structure. You pile up the “boxes” and stabilize it with the cross pieces. I’m not explaining this very well. If you look at this building closely, you can see that the cross planks are important parts of the support of the house— not just like the cross planks at the Campbell House in Spokane, for example, which are more decorative. Anyway, these are the weird things that fascinate me.
My wandering this day took me to the Musee de la Ville Strasbourg. Here, I learned that Strasbourg was a free city from about the mid-1200s to the Revolution in 1794. Strasbourg and Alsace has, throughout history, been bounced back and forth between various regimes, mostly between what is now Germany and France, although the first time it was declared a free city, it was considered part of the Holy Roman Empire (which I thought was quite kaput by the 13th century.) Strasbourg is really an island surrounded by a river, the Ill. (Sick? in English?) It had fantastic fortifications and was wealthy due to trade and manufacturing (weapons for one). It was an important crossroads for the region. As a free city, it didn’t pay taxes to the “crown”—whichever “crown” it was because it changed over the centuries. They did have taxes and fees of their own. They also didn’t send their young men into the military of the “crown,” although they had their own security forces, and they minted their own money. Other stuff too.
I won’t bore you with a lot of history that I find fascinating. —Or maybe I already have. LOL. You can look this up on Wikipedia. I got to see it at the museum.
Along my way back on this day, I made the most amazing and useful discovery. You’ll never ever guess. Tucked away on one of these little cobblestones streets, with tourists streaming by, and restaurants putting out their little tables and chairs, I found a…….wait for it…….you won’t believe it…… a…..
C’EST DEUX EURO STORE!!!!!! AHHHHHH.
Everything in the store was two euros. I bought a lunch box.
I stopped by the Supermarche on my way back. I need to buy food about every 2 days here so it’s an adventure—so far, a stressful one. For example, I put vegetables in my basket and I try to remember the names of the vegetables, but, inevitably when I get to the weighing machine, I can’t remember the name…then people start lining up…and I get flustered and really can’t remember. I look for the picture of the vegetable but I often can’t find it. I do a lot of asking “Ca c’est quoi?” or “qu'est-ce que c'est?” (“What is that?” “What is this?”) So far, there has been someone in line behind me to help.
On my way out of the shopping center, I stopped at a patisserie and indulged in a macaron. (Groan! I fell off the wagon again. Sorry no pic.)
March 27, Wednesday
I think that I forgot to say that it is still cold here. And rainy. Yesterday, today, tomorrow.
The big adventure of the day was a trip to the Alsatian Museum. The museum entry fees here are really cheap for me….I go and ask for a ticket. When they ask if I’m a senior, I smile and say, “Oui. Je suis vieille.” (Yes, I am old.) Then I get a discounted ticket, usually about 3.50 euro. <Note: My spell checker changed the French from “vieille” to “virile”—guess I’m not as old as I thought.>
The Alsatian Museum is housed in about 3 houses that have been connected so I walked through some hallowed halls of time. Here’s a selfie of me in an area that shows all three.
The museum was established in 1902. At that time, Alsace belonged to Germany. Like I’ve already said, Alsace has been bounced back and forth between France and Germany a lot over the centuries. In fact, someone born in 1869 and dying in 1945 would have gone through four changes of nationality. And, this is just in one person’s lifetime. You can understand why Alsace has developed its own language and culture to a certain extent. The inside of the museum reflects this. There are rooms and areas that are set up like houses and establishments for the last 400 years or so. Some of it reminded me of my Grandfather’s house where he grew up in the tiny village of St. Martin. His house was built in the mid-1600s and I saw it in 1980 when nothing had been done to it in about 100 years. Here’s one of the rooms in the museum. I think this one belonged to a chemist, aka pharmacist.
One of the interesting things about Alsace is that during most of the times throughout the ages, it has been home to Catholics, Protestants, and Jews who have lived somewhat happily together. WWII disrupted this a lot, but for the most part, there’s been good cooperation among the three groups. The museum had rooms and areas that showed the rituals and life stages for each of these religions. (An interesting note: The Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish clergy are paid their salaries by the government of Alsace. This is true only in Alsace. This is due to when the ruling government changed from German to French and certain concessions were made in certain areas.)
One part that I thought interesting was this display of iron limbs, people, and other objects. The trunk below showed frogs and turtles—symbols of fertility. It seems that people would bring these objects to the Catholic church if they had a request of God to help them in some way…relieve pain, establish relationships, make babies, etc. It seems to be similar to hanging “milagros” medals in a church in Mexico to ask for a favor. In Japan, it seems to me that one can go to a shrine or temple and get “omamori” as a kind of good luck charm. We are all culturally connected…..
After the museum, I went to a coffee shop to drink something hot and rest up a bit. Then I decided to take the tram back home. It was my first tram ride so I waited along with others at the tram platform. I got on the tram BUT I couldn’t find the machine where I tap my card to pay my ticket. As the tram took off, I noticed that no one in the tram had done anything to pay for their ride. I noticed that there were tram officers in the tram next to the one I was on and they were checking peoples cards or tickets. YIKES! I figured that if I got “caught” without having paid for my ride, I could just play the dumb foreigner card and get forgiveness. I didn’t get caught and later, Fabienne told me that in all of her years of working in Strasbourg, she never paid for the tram. (Shhh. I think that’s a secret.) Oh, one is supposed to use the machine on the tram platform before getting on the tram.
As a special treat, I’m going to try to insert a little video that I took on my way to the Alsatian museum. I walked to the end of a little street and walked down some stairs to the river. There was a walkway next to the water and I wondered where it went so I ended up walking quite a ways before I could get back up some some stairs in order to take a bridge across the water to get to the side with the museum. I took this vid/pic along the way. So, if the video doesn’t work, here is a pano picture of the pretty much the same thing. Enjoy your walk along the quai. Try to find the building that houses the museum.
In the late morning, I went to Bischheim to have lunch with Fabienne and Francis. A funny thing about that is that the machine that checks tickets wasn’t working so I again got a free ride. Ha!
Fabienne and Francis have bought new furniture and redecorated since I was last there. Fabienne is a bit of an artist and she did a fantastic job of making sure everything went together. The furniture is great. The artwork, mostly hers, complemented it …
AND she bought the most amazing rug. It’s hard to describe but it is strips of cow hide of different kinds that are woven together. Then there are shiny gold flakes distributed throughout. Zoom in and take a look.
Finally, here’s a photo of the furniture from the other direction with Fabienne showing it off.
After I oohed and aahed over the furniture, we had the most delicious meal of veal and rice. Francis made it. How does he do that? For dessert, we had little meringues, chocolate and coffee. Of course, there was the cheese course between the veal and the dessert.
After lunch, Fabienne and I took a walk around the lake, La Ballaztiere.
Here are a couple of scenes of our walk around the lake. (The balls of green stuff in the trees aren’t nests, it’s mistletoe.)
We were having a great time walking along until it started raining(!). I pulled out my umbrella for Fabienne and my portable raincoat for me and we continued on. As the rain stopped, we noticed a lovely rainbow. I hope you can see it too.
And here we are, happy after the rain…
From the lake, we went to a place where Fabienne’s friend, Natalie, keeps bees. Next month, I’m going to go visit her at her house where she can show me more hives and talk about her bees. I met Natalie the last time I was here so it will be good to see her. I’m really curious about her bees.
The local mayor gave the land to the bee keepers association to use for their bees. Here it is.
Before it got too late, I went home. The Easter weekend is a 4- day holiday only in Alsace (another concession), so I needed to get food before everything shut down. Stores are closed on Friday and maybe on the other days too. Well, everyone else decided that they had to get food too. OMG! The lines for everything were v-e-r-y long. I chose 4 or 5 vegetables and tried really hard to remember what they were called. However, when I got to the scale, I couldn’t find the sweet potato picture. I started talking to the machine in French and a young man came up and helped me find the sweet potato picture. Then as I fumbled my way through the other veggies, other people came up to help. They were all waiting for the scale!!! It was a team effort to get me off the scale, When I finally finished, I turned around to the group of people and declared, “Merci, tout le monde.” (Thank you everyone.) They laughed.
Back home, I had a snack of bread and Saucisse de jambon. Sooo good.
PS. I don’t think the video “took” but when I click publish, a miracle might happen.
