What? Who me trying to squeeze three days into one blog post? I'm on top of it, I've got this!
Day Nine: Thursday, October 2 was a rest day. We were pooped from two days at Europa Park so we took it easy. Slept in, did a little grocery shopping for snacks and sandwich supplies, and ambled around the neighborhood a little bit. But mostly staying in, reading, and resting. We did have an amazing dinner at a Chinese buffet our apartment host recommended called Aroma. It was fantastic with so many options! Also, the drinks there are serve-yourself as they are all just in bottles in fridges. Anything from beer to juices to sodas. Anything but still water :( But that's okay, because I had a really yummy orangenschorle!
Day Ten: Friday October 3. Jeff and I did a day trip to Strasbourg while Ryan and Linny (who had been there before on a previous trip), stayed in and relaxed and explored the town of Rust a little more. I'll leave it to them to talk about their lovely Friday adventures:
Linny here! Ryan and I wanted to take a day to really explore Rust. We didn't realize that it was a German holiday, so everything was closed; however, that didn't dampen our day. We started by walking through the neighborhood and saw a cute cat in the field near our apartment. We originally saw our cat pal hanging out, but by the time we passed by him a second time, he caught a mouse! We also walked through the local cemetery which was beautiful and peaceful. The graves were so well taken care of and had many personal touches, such as photos, special symbols, and tons of flowers. Walking down the main street of Rust, we admired the gardens, houses, and of course, more cats. As we've discussed on this trip, we really should create a blog of The Cats of Rust. After our two hour walk, we came back to the apartment for lunch and a well-deserved nap. When we woke up, we watched a lot of German QVC TV to learn some basic vocabulary. That means we now know the terms for turtlenecks, denim skirts, and pleated pants. Overall, a very relaxing day that ended with pizza delivery with Jeff and Angie. We'd been to Strasbourg in the past and loved the city, but were happy to spend the day enjoying the lovely town of Rust.
Jeff and I took two trains to get to Strasbourg, which is actually in France. If you have a Deutschland Ticket (a German train pass that gets you a discount), it does not extend into France. Luckily we didn't have to worry about any of that. We were lucky to find seats (even though all the good ones were taken, we got those fold-down seats in the middle, windowless part of the train) since it was PACKED. In fact, that was pretty much the theme of our experience in Strasbourg. For one guy, I guess it was a good thing it was so packed, because when he suddenly collapsed in a faint from standing with locked knees for too long he was cushioned by all the people and kinda just gently tumbled to the ground. The people on the train immediately shouted for a doctor ("Arzt!!" Thanks Duolingo) but he was able to get up and sit in a seat, waving away the offer for help.
Anyway, once we arrived and tumbled out of the train and swam downstream with the rest of the crowd we looked at my past notes on things to find in Strasbourg. We had three places to see: Little France, the Notre-Dame Cathedral, and the Nature and Zoological Museum.
First up: Little France. Google took us the ugliest and most run down way possible and I felt like I was in lower Price Hill. The day was gray, overcast and chilly, and it kinda cast a pall over everything, not really doing Strasbourg any favors. No sunburn though, so we had that going for us which was nice. And going this route got us away from the crowd! Yay?
Little France follows along a canal with locks that control the water level. Those were pretty cool. And the houses along the canal were nice but could use a bit of a paint job. Again, if the sun were out I think I would have been more dazzled. I did find a Christmas shop and bought a patch for my travel backpack and ornaments for the bird tree and the travel tree!
Next up was the Notre Dame cathedral (any cathedral in France is a Notre Dame in reference to the Mother Mary. This is not the famous one in Paris that Quasimodo swings around in). A gothic cathedral that was started in 1015 and completed in 1439 the outside is just a plethora of sculptures and ornamentation in an homage to the saints and stories of the Bible. We had plenty of time to marvel at it as we stood in a long line just waiting to get in. Which I guess was nice because it made it much less packed inside the cathedral. Almost all the naves were roped off, so just the main part of the church was available, but you could still see the giant organ and its famous rose window. We never did find the astronomical clock but I did locate the gift shop which had some nice little souvenirs.
Also, just by walking to the side of the cathedral there were much better photo ops and so many adorable little scrungly gargoyle friends!
It was a little past noon now and we were hungry. Looking at what was nearby we followed our little American hearts and taste buds to... a smashburger. Mind you, not the Smashburger, this place was called Junk and their menu consisted of 4 sizes of burgers, fries or panko-breaded chicken as a side, and little cookies for dessert. Nice and simple and the guys working there seemed to prefer English. And the burgers were better than most I've had in the States! We were very satisfied with our lunch choice!
Next up and last on our list is the Musee Zoologique, which just reopened this year. It "aims to be a place for scientific outreach, exploring the environment and the human role in the animal world". While not a large museum, it was a nice little place full of information. We learned about animal roles in the city environment, how they have been tracking bees (with tiny RFID chips glued to their backs) and the effect of pollutants in their water, the spread of disease to us and other animals through mosquitos, and the exploration of deep sea wildlife in the Sagami Bay near Tokyo.
After this our batteries were drained from the crowds and we had seen all that we came to see. The trains back home were about every hour and we had just missed one by 10 minutes so we wandered the unexceptional station that is the Strasbourg Gare. We also learned that today was a German Holiday: Unity Day! This explained a lot of why it was so freakin' crowded today, as everyone was on holiday!
Dinner that night was pizza delivered from Pizza Titan. Not just a Pizza God, they are Pizza TITANS! Our eyes were bigger than our stomachs as we ended up getting two lasagnas, two large garlic breads that ended up just being a dry pizza crust with no trace of garlic or cheese that we could find, a Popeye Pizza with spinach and gorgonzola and mozzarella, and a classic cheese pizza. It was decidedly okay, but we were hungry.
Finally, catching us up to today, we have Day Eleven, Saturday, October 4. Today we had originally planned to go to Colmar, which is also in France, but we couldn't find a way to get there that didn't take forever and 5 different train connections. Also, all the ride share people were either booked, or taking the day off. So we decided to go to Freiburg im Breisgau. This is a picturesque University town on the edge of the Black Forest, it also has a big cathedral, a farmer's market, and quaint shopping streets. Saturday is always a day known for its crowds as most people are off work and school, so it's a big day to be out and we expected the crowds today. The weather was overcast and very windy, but warmer than yesterday. We brought our rain gear in anticipation of rain!
Luckily, getting to Freiburg from Rust is just a half hour train ride away and very easy. We walked to the park that normally holds the small Christmas Market during the winter holiday (nothing there yet, boo). Everyone and their mother was at the farmer's market down by the cathedral, and after squeezing through the crowds for about 20 minutes and devouring a container of fresh raspberries like starving birds, we decided to just go and have lunch somewhere away from the crowd. We ended up at a nice restaurant called Skajo that played weird jazz music that was recorded live and the crowd was much too enthusiastic for the music being performed. We all really enjoyed our meals though. Linny and I had a delicious beef stroganoff linguini!
We picked out a couple shops we wanted to look at: a Christmas shop for me and a (closed) game store for Jeff. It started to rain while we walked down the shopping streets and made it to a quaint little popular street called Konviktstrasse.
We walked around a little more, down by the Gewerbekanal and saw a heron.
Then it was time to turn around and head back to the train station. Plus, it had been raining pretty steadily.
After making it back we took naps and showers and prepared to check out of this wonderful apartment tomorrow morning. Our next apartment is only a few days in Baden, Switzerland in an apartment that seems to be very out of the way. Hopefully it's as nice as this one was!
