Stressburg

Straßburg/Strasbourg, France

Our time in Germany was quickly coming to an end and we had pre-booked an amazing Hotwire hotel deal at the Cheval Blanc in Paris for our next stop. Disneyland, Paris, but still. Now came the problem of getting there. Earlier online, we'd found overnight buses from Mannheim to Paris, and had been planning on that until we went to finalize our booking and found that those buses were completely sold out.  With our Disneyland tickets purchased and a hotel booked for the following night, we needed a plan B. Fast.

We looked into a train to Paris, and found that not only was it about 10 times more expensive than the bus, it was also a 200MPH train that shoots you in to the heart of (non-Disneyland) Paris in under 3 hours.  Which sure, sounds a heck of a lot more comfortable than an overnight bus ride, but for self-unemployed Yearopeans would mean paying for an extra night at a hotel in Paris and then navigating and paying to backtrack to Disneyland, which we weren't banking on.  So, on to Plan C.

Sadly, our sole surviving Strasbourg photo

We'd had a lot of luck in Austria and Germany with regional "partner tickets," good for unlimited travel for you, four friends and one dog within the region, as long as you stick to the slowest regional trains. We weren't social enough to take full advantage of the offer, but even for two people the tickets are a great deal.  So, we decided to grab a partner ticket for Germany, take it to the Franco-German border in Strassburg/Strasbourg (since it's a border town they get their city name in two languages!), and then transfer to what we hoped would be a similar option in France to slowly chug overnight to the happiest place on Earth in France.  There was no info about the French SNCF train system in Germany to confirm that this plan would work, but we were young and stupid (this was months ago, after all!) and decided to wing it. 

When we arrived in Strasbourg around 10pm, we were saddened to find we'd not only missed the last train out, but our visions of cheap regional transport weren't to be. So our first stop in France was to visit the ol' MacDo for some free late night internet research and a Chèvre McWrap.

That night, we slept in our most economy lodging yet, which felt more like a trampoline in a closet than a hotel room. By the time we'd sorted out our lodging, we had to revise our Disneyland plans. Since it was after 1am, we decided to scrap the idea of taking the first train to Chessy in the morning and spending all day at the park before our stay at the Cheval Blanc, and instead take a late afternoon train and go to Disneyland the day after, hopefully refreshed and well rested.  Plus, we'd talked to David's grandmother, Oma, that night, and when she heard we'd made it to France told us that we should try to see Strassburg if we had time, because that's where Opa used to work.  It seemed even when transit systems weren't on our side, Opa was. It seemed like a perfect way to end David's ancestry trip. And so began our most unexpected sightseeing stop: a half day in Strasbourg.

This charming city in the border region of Alsace Lorraine was a perfect transition into France. And it is also the self proclaimed "capitol of Christmas." Christmas markets were still going strong, and the town was bustling with tourists.  We spent the morning walking through plazas and crossing bridges with an audio guide we rented from the tourist office. 

The historic center is called the Grand Île, an island bordered by canals of the River Ill, with medieval half-timbered houses looking like they're about to tumble into the water. The higher stories of the houses are built out further than the main floor since real estate taxes were based only on the square footage of the ground floor. The prettiest half-timbered houses were in the Petite France neighborhood, which - though it sounds charming - got its name because of a hospital there that treated WWI soldiers with syphilis, known at the time as the French disease. There we learned that the dark color of the wood on the houses comes from a mix of animal blood and vinegar, and that the top stories were open balconies for drying hides.  It's definitely not livestock's favorite city, but the half-timbered houses were our favorites we'd seen the whole trip.

The city was so charming that we lost track of time, and had to run out of the cathedral to return the audio guide to make our train. Thanks to our impeccable time management skills and our failure to account for transit times (when teleporting becomes a reality, we'll be so on our game), it seems the majority of our exits are sweaty half-jogs to a transportation station. But this one was a full on sprint.  It was hard to navigate and keep pace, but somehow we managed to return the audio guide and collect David's ID, pick up our bags from our "hotel" and jump onto the train with about 30 seconds to spare. 

Best Sights:

River technology: Watching a tourist boat go through the locks on the river, and watching a swing bridge rotate, to let boats pass through.

Best eat and best laugh: We used our French for the first time on our trip at a locals' lunch spot to ask the guy at the counter if he parléed any English. The charming guy said he did - in perfectly unaccented American English. He gave us a rundown of the menu:  "So guys,you pick a burger and 3 toppings, including," he added with an exaggerated French accent and a smirk, "herbes de provence." We decided that the guy must be an American studying abroad.

"So, what'll it be?" he asked.

"We'll have, um, mushrooms…" (nod)

"corn," (nod)

"and chives." (He starts pointing at different bins of vegetables in confusion.)

We narrowed down exactly which bin held the chives while quickly revising our initial conclusion of him being an American, and asked him where he learned his English. He was a little embarrassed when he admitted his parents were both American although he was born in France.  We told him his English was great. He said, "thank you, and I learned a new word today — charves."