Hello, again, Blogonauts!

I have just spent a day-and-a-half in the storybook-styled Alsatian city of Strasbourg, France. Although it sits a stone's throw from the German border, it is a million linguistic miles away.

The city is truly a wondrous anachronism. If the Brothers Grimm had survived into the 21st century...well, first off, they would be miraculously old. We would have loads of questions, such as "How did granny survive in the belly of that wolf?" But they, in turn, would recognize much of the architecture and cuisine in Strasbourg.

Just like Freiburg, the city's skyline is dominated by an ambitiously tall cathedral. And again like Freiburg, this one also devoted to Mary, aka, Notre Dame...but Strasbourg diverges from those shared traits with a near obsession with measuring time.

In addition to a host of horsemen and sanctified statuary, the church's exterior also contains multiple clocks, and as evening approaches, each hour is marked by the pealing of the tower's bells...not with just a simple counting of the hour, but a 5-minute-long bash of bing-bang-bonging that resembles how I imagine an alert for a bombing raid..or perhaps V-E day.

Once inside, the cathedral's stained glass seems more colorful than many others'. Its rose window at the rear of the nave gleams yellow, depicting the golden wheat that grows so well in the Alsace region. Above the altar is a stained glass depiction of the Madonna (not the material girl, but the maternal one), the installation of which was funded largely by the E.U....and so the E.U. flag is glazed high above Mary's head.

Representations of Mary dominate throughout, except in one particularly popular corner of the cathedral. There, in all its mechanical glory, stands a large astronomical clock, which depicts not just the time, but also the phase of the moon and the position of the planets. From the 16th to the 18th century, it worked nearly flawlessly, but once it broke, it sat disused for about a century. Repairs finally took place in 1842, and someone has funded its continued maintenance ever since.

Strasbourg is not just a one-church town; they seem to abound, and many of them are protestant.

Fronting several canals is a neighborhood known as "Petite France," which if my reading is correct, began as a cordoned off area where folks suffering from syphilis were sent to recover (or not). This neighborhood of narrow streets, vintage architecture, and Alsatian eateries is indisputably a tourist draw...even in an era when antibiotics are plentiful.

On my second morning I set out to find the headquarters of the European Union Parliament. This mushrooming mass of bureaucratic offices sits alongside an obviously older residential neighborhood, so making my way there was a pleasant half-hour walk from my hotel. (I fear that the government buildings sacrificed a broad swath of residences. Check the photo album for some notable statues I passed.) My return took a slightly different route, which took me passed the very modern headquarters of the European Court of Human Rights.

Winding my way further along, I passed by the Orangerie park. There was no reason to expect anything more from the park than a nice urban green space. However, as I walked along the park's residential edge, I became suddenly aware that atop each tree sat a nest, and each nest was occupied by a stork or two. These heron-sized birds, raising their young in such close proximity, showed no sign of animosity toward one another, and only slight alarm that I wanted to snap a couple of photos.

Thanks to Google, I discovered that because there had been a notable decline in the stork population, the Alsatian government began work helping restore nesting spaces that had been disrupted by human encroachment.

Because Strasbourg sits on the Rhine river, I spotted several other species of wild birds (swans, coots, Egyptian geese), plus some large sunning turtles.

As evening approached, an organ concert was publicized for the Church of the New Temple. Rather than visit the Alsatian museum, I opted to hear some music. Perhaps the museum will prompt me to return at a later time.

As I type these words my laptop and I are in motion, headed by train from Strasbourg, through Luxembourg, and back to Germany, where my destination is the city of Trier. Stay tuned, for there are more discoveries to come!

Blog to you later!