Strasbourg and Alsace

Last weekend I headed east to the German border to Strasbourg, where I met my friends Alex and Katie, who are studying in Germany. Strasbourg is an adorable city, with pretty architecture, canals, and a neat combination of French and German culture. We met at the hotel on Friday afternoon and took off to explore the city. It's not very big, so we walked a decent amount of it in only a few hours. It was raining when we first left the hostel, so we started with tea and a pastry at cute tea shop. We walked around the main square and the cathedral, one of the best examples of Gothic architecture in Europe, and an adorable area of shops and paths along the water called "Petite France". We ate dinner in a French brasserie/German winstub where we ate the famous local dish, Flammkuchen, or, in French, tarte flambée. It's like a French pizza, but much richer, made with cream, cheese, and bacon bits. It was filling but tasty. After dinner we walked out to the edge of the city where the Council of Europe and the European Parlement buildings are located. There wasn't much to see there and they weren't open to the public except by groups, so we looked at the buildings and then headed back to our hostel to retire early so we could start early the next morning.

Since Strasbourg itself didn’t have many attractions, we decided to check out some nearby towns along the Alsatian wine trail. Originally we planned on taking the train, but we soon discovered that we could rent a car for a reasonable price. This turned out to be an amazing decision. We started out heading south from Strasbourg and went down the wine trail, seeing over 25 adorable Alsatian villages. The drive was absolutely gorgeous, through vineyards and farms and one-street towns. We took a winding road up a mountain to see an ancient castle and an amazing view. We tasted wine in two towns, both in the cellars of sweet old women. The degustations were amusing, because the women had to explain things to me in French and them in German, or we had to translate for each other. It was a fun linguistic as well as cultural experience. Alsace is known for its white wines (lucky for me) and we tasted pinot blancs and pinot gris at the first cellar. We all fell in love with the pinot gris, and we all have a new favorite wine. The second cellar was in a town known for the region's only red wine, pinot noir, so we tasted that as well as a sweet wine. I loved the sweet wine, but didn't really care for the bitter pinot noir. That night we ate dinner in one of the towns, and I had a munster cheese salad (another regional speciality).

Sunday morning we still had our car because it was cheaper to rent it for the entire weekend than for just the day. We went to the Alsatian museum in Strasbourg in the morning and wandered around the city until lunchtime, when we hopped back in the car hoping to taste some more wine. Unfortunately as it was a Sunday in France, nothing was open and we enjoyed a pleasant drive but no wine. We ate some more tarte flambee, then hopped on our respective trains back to our respective cities. Definitely one of the best weekends away I've had this semester.