I didn’t know it, but Strasburg is literally just over the border from Karlsruhe, only a one hour drive in fact.
Suspiciously perfect for a day trip… So we piled into the car (a Honda Civic with a B.A.R Honda barcode on the side) and onto the autobahn. Did we see any Audi’s come flying past at a fantastic speed? No. Was everyone doing 160 like it was normal? Yes.
Also Holger says that if we really want a ride we should go somewhere with his father or Lisa’s; apparently they are better-adjusted to higher speeds than most young people, who ought to have faster reflexes, and think nothing of twiddling along at 200kmh.
I’ve always wondered what that other end of the speedometre was for.
The guidebook says not to be put off by the suburbs around Strasburg, which are, um…. not historical? Duly not put off, we parked the car and found the cathedral, which is like a great brooding monster holding something down below. Maybe I’m being melodramatic (see for yourself someday), maybe it’s because it’s built out of pink sandstone in various stages of red, grey and green decay, but the cathedral looked to me like it must have been built by Davey Jones (the one from Pirates of the Caribbean 2 through to 19).
The cathedral closes from 11.15 to 12.45 so we sat down for coffee etc. Inside the cathedral is of course ornate and peaceful and stunning and all of those things, and they have a big clock where on the hour one of twelve little men will go for a little walk across a ledge which is part of the decorations around the clock.
After that we coughed up €7 for a 70-min boat ride around the Marne canal of Strasbourg, past Petite France and round to the European parliament. Other things I didn’t know about Strasburg; it’s actually considered the capital of Europe, hence the European parliament buildings. Also I didn’t even know it had canals, or that the canals have locks in them because the Ile river is higher. Mind you if I knew all that we could have stayed in Australia.
On the boat we all had headsets in various languages to act as an audioguide, although curiously the person doing the english-language voiceover was Irish. And as soon as we sat down in our seats a surprisingly hot sun poked out from behind the clouds and we actually got steamed a little bit until we went around the North side of the main part of town and into the shade.
After the boat ride came the stroll over to Petite France where we sat down for lunch (at nearly 4pm), then we wandered on back through town, stopping for pastry and chocolates, and then found our way out of town and back to Karlsruhe. What with the late lunch we weren’t that hungry so we watched TV and such like, as well as catching up with John McCain’s nomination acceptance speech on YouTube, which is a topic of surprisingly great interest to many German people.
Greg
