This might be a little lenghty...

Bon soir, tout le monde.
(PS- When it is evening, you don't say bonjour. you say bonsoir. I am very bad at remembering this).

Right at this moment I am sitting in the lounge-area of our Strasbourg hostel, Ciarus. As sad as I am to be leaving the beautiful city of Strasbourg, I am not quite as sad to leave the Ciarus. Tomorrow we leave for Paris, doing what the French call a "saut de puce" which literally means a "flea jump". We will ride the train to Saverne, then on to Nancy, then finally to Paris.

A lot has happened since I last posted. We have been so busy!
Official Excursions:
1. Strasbourg Cathedral and the "guided tour of Strasbourg"
This last part is in parentheses because we never actually got guided past the cathedral. While the weather was gorgeous the day we arrived, the "vent du diable" was so ever present the day of our tour. This was especially disappointing as we had a lovely tour guide who taught us many an interesting fun-fact.
2. Struthof
This is the only concentration camp left in France. This trip was the hardest. Our guide spoke very rapidly and with a specialized vocabulary, but I think it was for the better that we were not able to understand a large portion of what he said. I think we were all emotionally drained after that visit. Luckily I got an almost-nap on the ride back, and we were set back to rights with our disco party later that night.
3. Ligne Maginot
This is the impenetrable fortress France built so Germany wouldn't be able to invade during WWII. Needless to say, it kind of didn't work. The Germans ended up just going through the forest. I wish I could say the visit was more interesting than it actually was. The best part for me were the guidelines about how the soldiers were supposed to go to the bathroom.
4. Haut Koenigsbourg
This castle was AWESOME. Spencer brought his guitar along for the bus ride and appropriately strummed a little of the Harry Potter theme as we pulled up. We had fun, and it was a sunny day. Unfortunately our tour was not guided, so we never did get the answer to why there were paintings/figures/pictures of llamas all over the place...
5. Colmar
A tiny little Alsatian town that inspired the popular Alsatian artist Hansi. It was really too cold to do much other than run to find a place inside where we could sit for a while. We found a petit cafe and drank some cafe. Then we stopped by some shops, took pictures, stepped inside the cathedral, and got free perfume samples (a new pass-time, perhaps?) Unfortunately, we didn't make it to the awesome museum, but I think we will get enough of those once we arrive in Paris.
6. Requir
I found this town much more charming than Colmar, but unfortunately we only got to see a little bit of it. The good news: the bit of it we saw was awesome. We went wine tasting in one of the many wine caves in the town.
7. Conseil de l'Europe
This visit to the lesser known of the official-European-important-thingies was actually quite enjoyable! Much more so than, say, our visit to the Parliament. None of us really wanted to go on this last excursion, myself included, but I was pleasantly surprised. We were greeted with taxis to take us there, a pleasant surprise in the face of a brisk cold walk across Strasbourg. There we received official visitor badges (!), and were greeted by a kind, humorous lady who practiced her English by giving us the information in our mother tongue. After a tres sympa tour of the classically 70's interior, we waited in a room for another speaker. Little did we know that our presenter would be the charming, interesting, thirty-something Scottish press officer, Angus. Oh, Angus. I think more than one of us girls wished that Angus could have given us all of our tours...
Anyway, it was a lovely visit, and I walked back with Kaori and we had a grand old time at bookstores and cafes and markets and that restaurant we always walked by and said "we have to go here it smells so good!" Oh, and we randomly saw Lucie, my host sister, in her giant purple hat on a field trip with her school. Its kind of a small world, you know?


UNOFFICIAL Excursions: (explanations to come next blog post. I gotta pack!)
1. Friday Nights
2. Petit France/Day with Julia!
3. Disco
4. Mozart: L'Opera Rock
5. Cafes and Musees