Strasbourg, France

Hi! Sorry that this picture is a little dark...I thought I fixed it up a little, but it must not have saved correctly. And, sorry that it's been a couple weeks since I've updated this blizzog...I've actually been keeping pretty busy...lot's of paperwork (anyone catch the Old School reference there?).

Anyways, the past couple of weeks have been interesting, to say the least. I will expand more on what has been going on in future posts...I just need to wait for the final outcome to play itself out on a couple things. Unfortunately, I get the strange feeling that I will hit some other snags related to these "things" before all is said and done! Sneak peak: things aren't going as well as I'd have hoped with my car and setting up TV. Also, I currently have an interesting situation going on at work.

But, on the bright side, I went to Strasbourg, France yesterday with one of my co-workers (a guy named Henk from S. Africa). Strasbourg is a France-Germany border town, located southeast of Luxembourg in the Alsace region of France, and is supposed to have one of the nicest "Christmas Markets" in the area ("the area" being France, Germany, and Luxembourg).

Honestly, though, I was pretty unimpressed by the whole Christmas Market scene that they had going on. Things just weren't that "authentic" feeling and it was really crowded (lots of other tourists, I believe). The city itself was pretty cool, though. Really old buildings, tons of cool restaurants, a lot of nice shops (tons of ski/snowboard shops, actually), etc. We also found a decent "brasserie" (bar) with some really really good beer.

The trip also served the purpose of getting me acquainted with the way the trains work here, which was probably the better part of the whole thing. In summary, the trains here are really comfortable, really smooth, really easy to figure out, and really convenient. You can basically get to the station five minutes before the train leaves, hop on (no check in, no baggage claim, etc), and in a couple of hours you are in the center of the city of your choice. The only drawback to them is that they can be kinda expensive and they take longer than if you'd just drive places yourself (i.e., a drive from here to Zurich is 4 hours, but the train will take at least 5 hours). But the scenery during the ride is nice, the seats are surprisingly comfortable, the bathrooms on board are surprisingly decent, and you can take the extra time to read, listen to music, etc.

Some major cities are decently close: Paris = 3.5 hours; London = 6 hours; Brussels = 3.5 hours; Amsterdam = 5 hours; Cologne, Frankfurt, and Heidelburg each = 4 hours.

We only had one little thing happen...neither of us brought our passports. So when the guys came around to check our tickets, and asked us for our passports, we both just kind of looked at each other and then started trying to explain to these guys that we lived in Luxembourg and didn't think we'd need our passports. We were trying to laugh and be friendly about it, but they didn't seem too amused. One of them asked if we had 7,000 Euros cash on us, apparently because that was the fine. Then another guy started looking through my back pack, and found the piece of paper where I wrote down the train schedule (so we knew when to catch the train home). On the back of it, I had written down the World Cup groups and where each of the teams were playing. He was asking me "Why do you have all of these countries written down? What do you plan on doing here?" Then his buddy took the piece of paper and started looking at me pretty sternly. I was getting a little worried, but then they started laughing and it was obvious they were messing with us. (very funny)

Anyways, I'm excited to start taking trains around to see things...especially next summer for the World Cup (several cities in Germany), possibly this February for the Winter Olympics (Torino, Italy), next summer for Oktoberfest, etc.