3-22-2024 Orientation Part 2

 3-22-2024 Orientation Part 2

An interesting encounter….for lunch, Aude invited over a friend and her young, 5½ year old son. I loved meeting them but was horrified that I could understand about 5%, no—less than 5% of the normal conversation. I often couldn’t even tell what the subject was. YIKES! What’s wrong with me?!?

After lunch, Fabienne came to continue my orientation of the area. At 3:25 (15h25), I was scheduled to take an oral exam at the school, Alliance Francaise so we decided to “orient” along the way. We went to the transportation office to get a bus pass. It’s pretty much as I expected. For $28 euros / $30.25 a month, I got a card with unlimited rides—for the month of April. That’s the old lady price. It’s the same cost as in Spokane.

We continued on our way and I saw a few things of interest to me. Here you go…

Live flowers inside balloons at a flower shop (flowers are everywhere here, not just in flower shops).

Along the way I saw a sign on the side of a building at an area with several small amusement park ”toys” like a carrousel and other things. It said “Sassy Sally.” This building had “Las Vegas” written on its front side. I took the pic for my cousin, Sally, who recently returned from the WCC basketball games in Las Vegas. (Note to Sally: Were you being sassy?)

Here is old city hall—a beautiful building. The city offices are no longer here. It’s used as a wedding hall, or I guess (civil) marriage hall is more accurate.

I found this…graffitti(?). “Coffre” is a kind of safe for money and the “j’ai du coffre” / “I have a safe” is actually such a safe on its side with the door missing. It had trash in it. The other one about tobacco with a drawing of Rosie the Riveter…beats me. I don’t know. You can see why I thought this was interesting.

I got to the school, Alliance Francaise, and discovered that my appointment was cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances (and I didn’t check my email before going)…so Fabienne and I decided to wander some more.  

We went to my favoritist place in all of Strasbourg. The Cathedral Square. Every time I go into the square and the cathedral suddenly appears, I just gaze in wonder at the beauty of this building. I have seen cathedrals all over Europe and Mexico and none of them, not even St Peter’s in Rome, is as spectacular as this on. (In my ever-so-humble-opinion.) Even Fabienne who has lived in the area her entire life says that when she was younger, on her way to work, she would walk through the square every day to watch the sunrise over the Cathedral. 

If you want to know about this Cathedral, here are a couple of YouTubes on it.

8-minute—This one is great but a bit long so I’ve marked some minimum parts. The entire video s pretty good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNdOzVXa1vY

0:00-:55– A description of the Cathedral

2:17-2:57–The construction of the Cathedral

5:29-6:49–A description of the Clock

7:00-7:30–A story about a rival architect

3-minute—If you really can’t watch the long-ish one, here is a shorter one.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr0wD62Ja-U

My photos don’t do it justice so here are a few from the internet—in case you didn’t watch either of the videos.

The inside is spectacular but there are a few hidden secrets. First, there is a tiny dog statue at the base of the pulpit that just sits there and enjoys being petted by the tourists. Can you find him here?

And here is the statue of the rival architect that was introduced in the film (maybe zoom in). He sits in a balcony and looks at the astronomical clock. The story goes that when he saw the plans of the clock, he declared that it was too heavy and it would fall down. So, the real architect had a statue made of him watching the clock “fall down.” He’s been watching it for over 180 years…I’m sure it will tumble any minute now…wait for it….wait for it….still waiting.

Enough about the cathedral. Other interesting things I saw were….

Soldiers marching through the square carrying automatic rifles. I guess this is a common sight. Look carefully—I got their backsides as they were leaving. Whodda thought this was common in France.

I found my very own devil again today. We cozied up a bit.

In truth this is a a monument to the people who built the cathedral. Since it took 200 years to build, it’s probably the family-descendants for generations. The personal symbols of the builders are enshrined on the top of the wall of the monument. These are found through the stones of the cathedral. Oh, dear, I just realized that a woman has photo-bombed the photo. It looks like she’s a tiny imp standing on top of the devil’s head. LOL! There must be something meaningful about this.

On our way back, we walked down the “Rue des Hallebardes.” 

A hallebarde is a kind of spear and battle axe. 

In the olden days, the guards who guarded the houses and buildings had these in order to do their rightful business if the premises were attacked.

I think women must have also had this job. You have to zoom in to see them.

That’s it for the orientation tour of the day. There was one last ah-ha. After returning home, Aude showed me how to use her nifty soup-maker. You just put all the soup ingredients into the carafe that looks kind of like a blender with a blade. Add water and bouillon, push the right buttons and “voila!” …after 35 minutes, there is hot soup. Mine was made with squash.

There you have it—end of the orientation.