Tuesday In Strasbourg

We ate breakfast in the room, then were out the door about 8:30.

B had to work. My mission: get info regarding a day trip to nearby Colmar tomorrow.

I walked along the canal then branched off when I saw the tall spire of the cathedral; B told me the tourist information office was near the cathedral.  Sure enough. I went inside and got info on how to get to Colmar---by train, as no bus serves it from Strasbourg---and bought a pack of 10 tickets for the Strasbourg city bus and tram system. I won't use all of these but B will use them up in subsequent visits...

Public transportation works differently in different cities. In Strasbourg, tickets are good for an hour after they're punched. You get on the tram or bus, punch your ticket, and you can get on and off, transfer to other lines, etc. but if you're still riding around after an hour you need a new ticket. In Vienna, a ticket is good for a direction of uninterrupted travel only, assuming reasonable transfer times. For example, you can get on the bus, transfer to the subway, then transfer to a tram, then another bus, IF it's in the same direction of travel and IF your non-travelling time is reasonable waiting time for the next connection....you can't, for instance, take the bus, jump off and eat lunch and go shopping, then continue on your way using the same ticket.

A building along the canal.

You got your soul meat, and your soul-less meat.
Sign in front of a steakhouse, Strasbourg.

Another view along the canal.

People have pedalled past these buildings since bicycles were invented.

Or maybe I should say velocopedes.

One of the entrances to the Strasbourg Cathedral.

So, with my new tickets I jumped on the 10 bus and took it to the main train station to find out about a train to Colmar. They have machines you can buy tickets from. I punched all the info in and the machine told me it'd be 22 Euro round trip. So then I found the ticket office and asked an actual human being what the trip would cost----sometimes it's less if you buy from the machine or online, or more if you want to leave on any train and come back on any train, instead of leaving and returning on trains that depart and return at specific times.

But, it was 22 Euro from the ticket agent, too, and he said the tickets are usuable from today for a period of two months, and I can take any departing train and come back on any returning train. I like the flexibility of traveling that way...

I got on the 10 and went the opposite direction,  getting off at the Cafe Brant. Standing at the bus stop afterwards studying the map and schedule, a woman walked over and started doing the same. Then she asked me a question in French.

"Sorry, do you speak English?" I asked her.

She did, and I noticed she spoke English with what sounded like a German accent. So in German I asked her if she was from Germany. "No, Austria," she answered back in German.

This began a very pleasant little conversation entirely in German. Maybe she was just friendly and maybe she warmed up to me because I could speak her native language a little bit, or because she was a kind person and could see I was trying my best despite my linguistic limitations.  I managed to ask her where she was from, how she was enjoying Strasbourg, etc. and tell her I am married to an Austrian woman who works as an interpreter, and I'm trying to immigrate to Austria, that I'm from Oklahoma which is north of Texas and something of a Third-World land, and I had to take a language proficiency test as one of the immigration requirements. It kind of startled me that I was able to hold a conversation with the lady for about ten minutes entirely in German.

You have to have little victories every day.

I walked back to the Orangerie park, took a lot of pictures, then met B and her colleague Angela for lunch at a nice restaurant in the park.

A boat passing beneath one of the bridges along the canal.

Uh..building. Canal. Strasbourg.
I think you're starting to get the idea.

These swans were dunking their heads under water, but coming up empty.

Angela is British, and has been living in Strasbourg for years. She spent part of her early years in Baghdad, where her father was an English teacher and she attended French schools. It's startling to remember that Saddam wasn't always in charge of Iraq, and in fact it was a fairly liberal, open, international city back in the day. "Imagine: I attended a school run by French nuns in the middle of Baghdad," Angela said.

 Imagine, indeed.

No stand-up comedian would walk this street on a dark, rainy night.

Official buildingry in Strasbourg.

Stork's nest on a chimney.

Catching some late September morning sun in the park.

One of the tree-lined lanes in the park.

French is hard to figure out. Any ideas from you French majors out there?

A restaurant in the park.
The building dates from 1607.

Catching up on her reading as a swan swims by.
French literature, no doubt.

We're meeting B's colleague N for supper later; N is the young interpreter B has been mentoring for a few years. I last saw her at lunch in Vienna some weeks ago, so it'll be good to catch up with her tonight.

It's been perfect weather here----sunny and warm. I watch the French riding their bikes, or strolling by with their kids, or sitting in the park, and it has a real charm to it, this place.

Monday In Strasbourg

We're in Strasbourg, France through Thursday afternoon. B's working, I'm spending my last week with her until we meet again in December.

B's job is tough enough to do, but the commute is another thing altogether. A morning flight from Vienna to Stuttgart, then the train from the airport to the main train station, then the TGV to Strasbourg, arriving about 2 PM.Then a cab to the hotel. Then she went to work, finishing about 7 PM.

The international symbol for "Watch Your Ass"

We walked through the wonderful Orangerie, a park near the European Parliment. The only thing we don't like about this park is that it contains a small zoo, mostly with birds like storks. I hate seeing animals caged up, and while these birds seem well cared for, still....but the park is beautiful, with a pond where people were rowing boats, lots of swans and ducks, pavillions and a restaurant and plenty of benches where people can sit around being French.

Caught in the act of being French.

B went to work and I walked a kilometer or so to the Cafe Brant, a venerable old watering hole across the street from the university. The patio has about thirty tables and all of them were full except for two, one of which I quickly snagged. I ordered a large beer and sat in the sun answering email and looking around.

The French seem very relaxed. They can't be as relaxed as they seem, but who knows? Maybe they've figured out how to live in modern society without going insane and now can get on with the business of enjoying life. There were all kinds of people sitting on the patio----students, old people, the artist types...but sorry, no berets. I've seen more berets at the Red Cup in OKC in a given month than I've ever seen in Strasbourg, which is too bad, because berets are cool hats. But back to the laid-backedness of the French---to see them sitting around the cafe, with their easy laugh and casual conversations and nice clothes and magnificent health care system, you'd think they hadn't a care in the world.

A word now about French women. As a group, I think they're the most attractive in Europe...but not because they're more physically beautiful than anyone else. There's just something about them---that upright posture when they ride their bikes, or their polite demeanor, their touch of class, the fact that you rarely see one who looks as if she grew up eating Happy Meals, or whatever it may be. 

The Italian men are the handsomest in Europe, so I think if the French women mated with the Italian men, the result would be a race of super-models who could speak two musical-sounding languages and cook really well.

There's more to say about Strasbourg and the Alsace region, but as you can see I'm too loopy after a long day to make much sense of anything...

Thursday & Friday

Thursday afternoon, we grabbed the bikes and rode along the canal, then to the Ringstrasse.

The Green Party managed to get a section of the Ringstrasse closed off in order to focus attention on the plight of cyclists. This closed-off space was lined with sod and people sat on the grass listening to music, talking, or recieving / handing out info about various Green initiatives and ideas.

Ride your bike instead of driving your car!

(cough, cough, never in America, cough cough!)

Though there are bike paths along the Ring, they could use an update and a clearer delineation between them and pedestrian paths---every so often a pedestrian (usually a tourist) wanders over into the bike path and nearly gets killed. I've done it.

When I move here, I won't buy a car or motorcycle or even a scooter. Owning and maintaining a motor vehicle in Vienna is a hassle compared to doing the same in Oklahoma City. At most, I'd get a bicycle. Even at that, using a bike as transportation is a bit worrisome to me because this is still a town filled with drivers, people who insist on clinging to the automobile in a town with excellent public transportation. The fucking Austrians just HAVE to have their cars, period. And then they HAVE to drive them fast. So being a cyclist in the middle of town ain't for the weak of heart.

---
Friday, we met B's dad H at his house, then hit the road for our mushroom spot 45 minutes or so south of Vienna.

 What the countryside looks like where we hunt mushrooms.

Being pessimists (or as they call it, "realists"), they didn't expect to find any mushrooms. But me, being essentially optimistic even when I have no reason to be (or as they call it, "being American") I said: "Bullshit. We'll find mushrooms."

I like hunting mushrooms. It's like a scavenger hunt, and even if you come away short, it's still fun walking through the woods.

Different mushrooms come out at different times. We hoped to find some Steinpilze(porcini/cèpes), but saw none. However, we did score plenty of Eierschwammerln, or as we call them in English, chanterelles.

What the forest gave us. 

This is about five or six pounds of mushrooms, mostly chanterelles.

These mushrooms were kind of gelatenous.
B thinks they're called "ice mushrooms" ("white jelly mushroom", actually, in English -B.) and says she's only seen them once before.

This fungus looked like beautiful yellow coral. ("Gelbe Lohblüte" or Hexenbutter - "witches' butter"- in German and "dog vomit slime mold" is one of its common names in English, poisonous - B.)
I put my finger in the shot to give a sense of scale.

Walking back down to the car, we saw a man hiking along the road.

Before returning to Vienna, we stopped at the Gasthaus for lunch.
L to R: warm sauerkraut salad, Grammelknödeln (dumpling stuffed with ground pork drippings),
Topfenknödeln (cream cheese dough, stuffed with apple and cinnamon, rolled in breadcrumbs, lightly fried),
Kaspressknödel (a cheese dumpling, but pressed flat and fried), mixed salad, i.e. potato salad with lettuce and tomato salads.

When we got back, B was out on the balcony watering her plants. She came back in and in a whisper told me to bring my camera. "It's the start of the yearly tradition," she said. Walnuts have started falling from the trees. Our downstairs neighbors, an elderly couple, gather the walnuts and then the old man sits outside shelling them. B says it happens every year...the guy's a millionaire, BTW.

The neighbor and the start of our neighbors' Shelling Walnuts Outside tradition for 2011.

Vienna does not suck, ladies and gentlemen.