Germany, Days 2 and 3

Writing a day late as I was exhausted when we got home yesterday and fell immediately into bed, after 8 flights of stairs. We left in the morning for Strasbourg, France. First stop was the cathedral. Well, actually, the first stop was a restaurant to eat lunch so we could use the potty without paying. We went with Larry, a friend Joel works with, and Charmaine, a doctor on post. Charmaine and I had fun attempting to decipher the French menu. She’d had 4 years of French in high school. Later in the day, I realized that Larry was being quite nice to us, as he seemed to have a good grasp of French. But we were quite glad to humor him and appreciated his letting us think we were clever. 

The cathedral was awesome. Strasbourg is where Gutenberg invented the printing press, which changed the world for the better as far as educating more people was concerned and making the Bible more assessable. The stained glass windows were probably my favorite, but the clocks and Middle Age mixture of Catholicism and mythology is always interesting to me. Throughout history the area has changed hands several times between France and Germany, so the people aren’t characteristically French or German.

It was such fun roaming the little streets of the old town. The buildings were several stories high and crammed together much like a picture in a Dr. Seuss book. Crossing the river several times, we leisurely strolled without much of a destination, other than to find leggings for Charmaine, as it turned out much cooler there than we’d expected.

Probably the most interesting thing we saw was the bachelor party, who’d dressed the future groom in pink hair and a practically nothing matching cheerleading type skirt.  Apparently this is a European tradition that we can only hope never jumps the pond. (Note to self: “Men do not and should not ever wear a thong.”) It was certainly something you’d never see in America—to date anyhow.

Sipping hot chocolate at an outdoor café, watching a tourist boat maneuver the locks, and eating a long relaxing supper outdoors under a 350 year old sycamore tree next to the canal—the day slowly slipped by, as twilight doesn’t fall until nearly 10:00. My favorite quote was when I told Breck the sycamore tree was 350 years old…older than America. And his response was “What about Grandpa?” A favorite of Jay’s was when Helen referred to me as her “old Granny.”

Sleeping this morning until nearly 9:00, we were awakened by sounds of little feet clanking up the stairs. Stairwell dwelling might be efficient, but it is surely noisy. Everything is constructed so that every slight sound is reverberated and magnified. We feel like we’re always loud.

After church we spent a quiet afternoon doing not much at all. We took a nice walk through plots of ground where city dwellers purchase and build lovely garden retreats they enjoy on the weekends. They were interesting and beautiful and made us grateful for our own backyard that we get to enjoy every day.