This is going to be a very long post. The tl;dr version: I was having a crappy couple of days until I gave a French hippy a ride home to his family's mountain farm, where I hung out with him and his family and had some amazing Alsatian wine and cheese and made some great new French friends.
Before I talk about today, however, I want to start where I left off after my last blog post. That would have been the day before yesterday, day six of my trip. I had decided to take a day trip to Nürnburg that day, which I did. My main objective was to check out the Christmas market there, which is supposed to be the biggest in Germany, but I also wanted to poke around the old town and visit the Germanisches Nationalmuseum (a museum dedicated to the history of the Germanic people). I got in to Nürnburg around noon, found a parking garage not too far from the old town, and then walked over and into the old town. One thing that immediately turned me off about Nürnburg was its rough, big city character. Some big cities in Europe, such as Rome and Paris, lack that rough character and are highly pleasant, vibrant, and enjoyable, but Nürnburg definitely has it. I try very hard in those situations to be optimistic, to not judge my surroundings, and to try to find the positive in it, but I just couldn't overcome the dark cloud that was hanging over me. I did enjoy my visit to the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, but otherwise Nürnburg was a bust. The Christmas market was as big as advertised, but that didn't make it any better than any of the other smaller ones I've been to. The old town did indeed have some interesting medieval architecture, but nowhere near as cool and interesting as things I had seen in other places in Germany. After a while I realized that I just wasn't enjoying myself in Nürnburg, so I decided to head back to Rothenburg and see if I could catch a little bit of its Christmas market before it closed for the evening.
I got back in to Rothenburg at about 6:30, which gave me the chance to grab a bite to eat and a gluwhein from one of the Christmas market stands. That, along with Rothenburg's more uplifting spirit and character, made me feel a bit better, but I still wasn't completely back to normal. I wandered Rothenburg for a bit and took a few pictures, but my heart just wasn't in it. I thought to myself, "why am I here if I'm not enjoying it?" and sadly I could not come up with a very good answer. I had been having a good trip up until that day, but then something about that side trip to Nürnburg just brought me down. I decided to visit my favorite pub in Rothenburg (and also a favorite of the locals), Altfrankische Weinstube. I had some really tasty käsespätzle (spätzle with onions and cheese) and a few really good hefeweizens, but even then I wasn't feeling right. What I really needed was some interpersonal interaction and I just wasn't getting it.
The next day I had planned on departing Germany for the Alsace region of eastern France. I didn't want to leave Rothenburg though - I knew Rothenburg well, it was safe and familiar, and in my state at the time I just didn't feel up for any more adventure. I forced myself to stick to my plan though, so I got in my car and set out for Alsace. Along with a stop for gas and a bottle of water, the trip took four hours. My destination was a nice hotel in basically the middle of nowhere, south of a town called Sélestat, called Hotel l'Illwald. I made it there just as it was getting dark, found a grocery story back in Sélestat and got myself a picnic dinner, and then returned to my hotel room, ate dinner, and went to bed.
The next day, which is today, I awoke feeling refreshed and somewhat more ready for a long day of travel than I had over the previous two. My only plan for today was to visit Strasbourg, the chief city of Alsace and also the seat of the European Parliament. I had the remains of my picnic from the night before for breakfast and hit the road earlier than I have been of late, getting in to Strasbourg by 11:00 am. Strasbourg seemed to be of similar size to Nürnburg, but much nicer in character and appearance. I was able to find a place to park near the center of the city, and took a short walk to get to an area of Strasbourg called Petite France. Strasbourg straddles the Ill River, and the Petite France area is a really beautiful part of Strasbourg on the banks of the Ill. It's kind of like Venice, with canals and lots of waterside houses and buildings, only everything looks like it's out of a German fairy tale. It's all medieval stonework towers and half-timbered houses and pretty little bridges. So I walked around there for a bit and then made my way to the Grand Ile, the historic center of Strasbourg. The Grand Ile was more of the same - lots of half-timbered buildings that look like they belong in Germany rather than France - but also a spectacular cathedral and a really good Christmas market. They also have gluwhein here in France, although here they just call it "vin chaude" ("hot wine" in French), and I actually like it better than the German version - in France they seem to let the wine stand on its own more and use less spice than in Germany. It's good everywhere though. So I had a few vins chaude and some choucroute garnie (an Alsatian specialty, various sausages and potatoes on a bed of saurkraut) from a vendor at the Christmas market, strolled around the market for a bit, sat in the cathedral for a while and reflected on the previous couple of days, and then decided that I was ready to move on and do some exploring. On my way out of town it occurred to me that it would have been a crime not to at least drive by the European Parliament building while I was in Strasbourg, so I went ahead and did that before leaving town, and I was not disappointed. My visit to the EU building was brief, however, and thanks to my early start to the day I still had several hours to fill, so I decided to explore.
Strasbourg had bolstered my spirits. I decided that there was no good reason, with a car at my disposal and nothing better to do for the next few days, that I shouldn't just hit the road and explore and see as much of the region as I could in the time I had left. So after Strasbourg I set out to do just that. I decided to drive around the Route des Vins, a scenic route through the Alsatian wine country. I also decided to ignore my guidebook and just check out what looked cool, because I was finding that some of the best things I've encountered on this trip have been things that weren't mentioned in my guidebook. So I just started driving, and it didn't take long for my exploration to yield a gem that I would not have found otherwise, an incredible place called Mont Sainte Odile. I found it simply by driving around and following signs pointing to what appeared to be some sort of castle. The signs led me up into the Vosges Mountains, along narrow, winding, snow-covered roads, up and up and up until finally just when I was considering turning around, I reached the top. What I found there was spectacular. It turned out that the signs were directing me to an abbey there, Mont Sainte Odile Abbey, and never have I seen anything like it in Europe or in America. It was one of the most beautiful buildings I have ever seen, sitting literally at the peak of a mountain, clinging to the rocks, surrounded by sheer tree-filled valleys and covered with snow and with plenty more billowing down upon it. Perhaps it was the setting more than anything that made it so captivating to me, but whatever it was, I loved the place and was very glad that I had decided to go check it out.
As I was leaving the abbey, a shaggy-looking French guy approached me and asked me for a ride down into the closest town. He didn't quite look like a bum, but he was definitely an alternative-lifestyle kind of guy, with raggedy clothes, very long hair, and a shaggy beard. My primary consideration in deciding whether or not to give him a ride was whether I thought he meant to try to rob me or something. I quickly decided that he seemed harmless, and I had nothing better to do and could do with a bit of adventure, so I agreed to give him a ride. I asked where he was going, and in response he asked where I was going - he wanted to get as far along to his destination as I would take him, but didn't want to ask me to go out of my way. I didn't mind going out of my way though, at least in part because I didn't really have anywhere in particular I wanted to go, so I told him I'd take him all the way to wherever he was going (which it turned out was his home). He seemed dubious, apparently concerned that my car wouldn't be able to make it to where he was going. He had never seen me drive though.
So I directed the guy to my car, we got in, and we started back down the mountain. His name was Hugo, he seemed to be in the neighborhood of 25 years old, and he liked to talk. It didn't take much prompting from me to get him to talk about whatever he felt like talking about. In keeping with his hippy-like appearance, it became clear pretty quickly that Hugo had some radical political views. Hugo doesn't have a job - he seems to basically be a wandering anti-government activist. He told me about how he and some friends squatted in some buildings in western France to prevent their demolition, how he plans on going to Algeria soon to help mend the lasting wounds of French imperialism there, and the like. So I learned all about Hugo and his politics as we wound our way through various country villages on our way to his home. I learned that he lives with his parents on their farm in the Vosges Mountains, that his parents raise cows and harvest wood for a living, that he studied theater in college but dropped out to pursue his activism, and that his favorite locally made beer is called "Météor".
Alright, I'm getting tired and it's getting pretty late here and this post is getting pretty long, so I think I'm going to pause here. I'll try to wrap this up tomorrow. In the next post you'll hear all about how I delivered Hugo safely home and about how I wound up spending the evening hanging out and drinking excellent Alsatian wine with his friendly, welcoming family.
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