Strasbourg

Ok, so fast forward through a week of school where I was super busy but having fun!

On Friday CIEE (the group that runs my program) took all of us to Strasbourg for the weekend! We got on the train around 1:30 and Sarah had brought many delicious little snacks from some big food festival by her house. It took about two hours to get to Strasbourg on the TGV and I really enjoyed just staring out the window and enojoying the French countryside.

Finally we arrived at the train station, which was very moden and beautiful and we walked to our hotel. There are several rivers that go through Strasbourg (which later led to Hillary and I getting turned around after we crossed "the" (a) river and thought we were almost at the hostel).

Before dinner, we all went out to get a drink and somehow ended up at a looney toons bar. Like loony tunes like great america. Everything was yellow and blue and there were many pictures of sylvester and tweety. Tell me thats not a little strange. But the drinks were cheap so what can you do. I had a beer with some sort of lemon-lime something else going on. It was different but very interesting!

Then we went to dinner. Strasbourg is part of Alsace which is very close to Germany (and has been germany like 345403985 different times). The food is very hearty which is not my style. The resturant was ok except that i thought this one thing was apple jelly except that it was definitely some kind of cooked animal fat...i think...and it was disgusting or degoutant as they say in Paris!

The next day we took a guided tour of the cathedral in the morning. It is very large and very beautiful and you can see it from almost anywhere in the city. We spent the rest of the afternoon shopping around and sort of hanging out. Hillary and I also took public transit (AH!) to go visit the buildings of the EU (Its the Parliament, the Council, and the Court) and we had a very nice time wandering around in the neighborhood out there.

On our way over to dinner, there was a little marching band concert going on in a square and we listened to that for awhile before going to dinner and eating the biggest plate of sausages known to man. In some, not my best dinner ever, but the wine was plentiful and the dessert tasty.

The next day we checked out of the hostel and saw an old german castle which I suppose was pretty sweet but it wasn't totally digging it. Then we went to--- MONKEY MOUNTAIN!

Ok, monkey mountain is pretty much the weirdest thing ever. Its this big open park where there are 280 monkeys. They sort of just wander around and walk up to you and you feed them popcorn. Then sometimes the monkeys fight. I wish there was a better way to explain it but thats pretty much it. So i fed some monkeys and was really sort of amazed/freaked because we do not have things like that here!

Finally we made our way home and it was the end of a nice weekend!