At Last the Sun is Shining

Thursday September 16th

Today the weather looked a lot better so we got ourselves into town and went to the infocentre to hire the audio guide for the town walk. This walk is supposed to take 90 min but you are allowed to keep the audio for up to 3 hours. It certainly took us well over 2 hours to do it properly. There was a good walking map provided and an excellent commentary. Strasbourg had been a Roman settlement from 12BC. It was also part of the Holy Roman Empire until 1681 when it became part of France under Louis XIV. The Marseillaise was first sung in the rooms of the mayor of Strasborg as it was the battle song of the Rhine Army. Strasbourg was part of Germany from 1870 to 1918 when it again became part of France, only to be annexed by Germany in 1940. France finally got it back in 1944 and it had been part of France ever since. Because of this there is French and German influence in the buildings and the traditions.

The walk took us along the L’Ill which is a small river that flows through the town and into the Rhine. The most interesting part of the city is Petite France. This is built all alongside the river and there are a series of locks on it as they created levels on the river for the mills in the old days. There is also an ancient washhouse that was a platform that could be lowered and raised to do the laundry. The walk ended in Gutenburg Square where there is a statue of Gutenburg with his printing press. He spent about 10 years in Strasbourg and and it was at this time that he devloped his printing press so they have claimed him as their own.

After returning the audio guides and eating our lunch we used our free museum entry to Palais Rohan which included the decorative art museum. The woman at the desk directed us to go downstairs and leave our back packs in a locker which we were quite happy to do. However when we got there we didn’t have a €1 coin to put in so that we could get the key out. So I went up with €2 and asked her to change it, but she seemed to be saying we didn’t need a coin. After struggling with this locker we went up again and in the end I realised she was refusing to change the coin. She said she did not have a €1 which I found hard to believe as there was a shop selling things for €29, so if we had bought that she probably would have found one. So we refused to buy her expensive postcards and went back across the square and bought a cheap postcard and got the change and finally got the bags locked up so we could go into the museum.

This is the ancient residence of the princes-bishops of Strasborg and was built between 1732 and 1742. It houses the Rohan Cardinals’ luxurious suites. They certainly treated themselves to style, as in Munich. There is also a large decorative arts museum as part of it. Some of the original pieces of the astronomical clock that have now had to be replaced are housed here and they were able to be viewed close up. These included the original rooster that crows three times at midday and is the oldest mechanical working metal object known to be preserved. It was an interesting collection.

When we got back outside it was nice and sunny so Alan decided to retake some of his photos of the front of the cathedral. He had no sooner got where he wanted to be when a group of rowdy med students descended on the cathedral square and started some sort of hilarious demonstration which included songs, dancing and Mexican waves. It wasn’t a protest but some kind of organised fun. They had decorated their lab coats and theatre gear with illustrations and slogans. There is a huge medical school in Strasbourg and they have students from all over the world come to study at it.

We took a tram out towards the Botanical Gardens and had a walk around but they were not spectacular so we caught the tram back into town and had a look around some of the shops before heading back to camp for tea. We decided to have dinner before going to the cafe to get online as we were quite hungry. This campsite is surprisingly full with lots of coming and going. A bus hotel combination arrived as we were having tea. It is called Rotel Tours. Half of it is bus for touring and the other half seems to be sleeping accommodation albeit very small. I looked it up online. It is a German company and looks very interesting.