What a wonderful, unexpected trip! Up until a week before Christmas, I planned on my boyfriend coming to visit me in Paris for Christmas and New Year’s. Due to some unforeseen issues, this trip was unfortunately not able to happen (only 10 weeks and 2 days until I’m home for Andraya’s wedding and get to see him though!). Because I had saved up some money to be a tourist myself while my man was in Paris, I began to look for other options for my Christmas break very last minute. Luckily, I remembered that my friend from French class had invited me on a trip to Strasbourg, France after Christmas but I had had to decline. So, I asked her if she was still going, and she said yes, but she’s added four other cities to her itinerary, and she’d love for me to join! What a blessing! On top of that, she told me that I wouldn’t have to pay for any hotels along the way because her parents had already booked them as her Christmas present! At that point, I knew I had to figure out a way to get on this trip because this was a once and a lifetime opportunity! After some budgeting and a generous Christmas gift into my bank account from my parents, I was able to say yes to this dream trip!
STRASBOURG, FRANCE
On December 27th, I woke up at 4:30 am and caught a train to Strasbourg at 6:55. Upon arrival at 9:15, I had a few hours to myself before my friend met up with me. In those few hours, I fell in love with this beautiful, charming city! Because this town is right on the French border with Germany, it has a heavy Germanic influence. Even the street signs are written in both languages. The architecture blew me away! The half-timbered houses were incredible and everywhere! So well preserved! This architecture was especially picturesque in “La Petite France,” the region of the city where fishermen, millers, and tanners used to live. Dating from the 1500’s, most of the houses of the area had overhangs that the tanners hung skins to dry after they had been scrubbed in the waters of the canal nearby.
Half-timbered houses with overhangs
Loved the architecture
Saint-Pierre-le-Jeune Protestant Church took my breath away.
I met up with my friend at the hotel and was finally able to drop off my luggage after walking the city lugging it behind me. We then went to discover more of Strasbourg. I took her to all of the places I had already been, which was a welcomed review for me! We then went to Place Kleber, the location of the humongous Christmas tree and a little bit of the Christmas market. Strasbourg is famous for its Christmas market, the oldest in France! The spirit of the city in December is inspiring. Literally every house and store is heavily and beautifully decorated in Christmas cheer. Every year, the city of Strasbourg invites a certain country to host a mini-market in Place Gutenberg. This year, Switzerland was invited. Here, I had the best vin chaud I’ve ever had and my first bretzel (how Europeans spell “pretzel”). I was thrown off because the bretzel was big and salted like an American pretzel but not warm! Weird, but still wonderful. Bretzels slowly became an addiction throughout the trip. It was in Strasbourg that I found my favorite cathedral in the world. It’s scary to say that because it’s such an unwavering statement, however you would too if you ever see this place! It’s incredible. I literally could not keep my mouth closed, the detail of the Cathedral of Notre Dame of Strasbourg was just stunning! After taking a little tour of the inside and the sun went down, we took a little break to “faire de la patineige,” or ice skate.
Notre Dame de Strasbourg
We ended up eating at a really cute restaurant, where we ate sausage (glorified hot dogs) and really sour sauerkraut. With a cup of hot wine of course! After 2 hours of sleep the night before, and 10 hours of walking that day, I was beat. I remember that being a wonderful night of sleep.
EUROPA PARK, RUST, GERMANY
I thought Strasbourg would have prepared me a bit more for my first trip to Germany, being so heavily influenced by the German culture. However, I could not have been prepared for the huge, sudden, and obvious changes upon arrival in Germany the next morning. I’ve travelled from country to country before, but I just wasn’t expecting such distinctions between Germany and France. For some reason, although I have NO idea how to speak German, I felt safer right when I stepped off the train. And I have never seen so many blond-haired, blue-eyed people in my life! I honestly can’t pin-point it more than that; it was just bizarre.
We had a fun day in Europa Park, the biggest amusement park in Europe. Although we only went on only one medium-sized ride (the two biggest ones were closed for some reason), we had a blast walking around the beautifully decorated park-it felt like a winter wonderland. It was great because there were sections of the park dedicated to certain European countries, like Switzerland, Norway, and Italy, to name a few.
STUTTGART, GERMANY
Upon arrival, we were starving. After dropping our luggage off at our super nice hotel, we headed to the center of the city for lunch. We ended up at Ochs’n Willi, which was recommended to us by the tourist office as legitimate food for this region of Germany. Boy, were they right! Our thoughts were that we would eat a bigger, pricier lunch and just have a snack for dinner since it was so late in the afternoon. Though we had no idea how BIG our lunch would be. We were intrigued by the “crispy grilled giant leg of pork served with Semmelknodel (a specialty of the area-similar to dumplings) and white cabbage salad.” It was a HUMONGOUS serving to say the least. I will leave you with a picture:
German portions
Barely being able to walk after our giant lunch, we slowly made it to the train station tower. There we had a beautiful view of the city by night under a bright shining Mercedes emblem. After seeing this emblem and noticing that more than half of the cars driven in the city were Mercedes, we decided that Mercedes must sponsor the city. I guess that’s what a city gets when the Mercedes museum is in the outskirts.
View of Stuttgart
With a yummy, bready, and crispy bretzel in hand, we headed to the Christmas market. It had a small, but homey feeling with a really unique bar area. After trying and failing to see some of the main buildings of the town by night, we settled to discovering the local chocolate in a small chocolate shop. It made for a great snack as we toured through Markethalle. To top the night off, we settled into Lavazza-a café/bar/lounge that had a Bailey’s vanilla shake to die for.
The next day, we woke up at the crack of dawn in order to see some more of the sights by daylight. We then took the S-bahn to the Mercedes Museum. So wonderful! They had car models from the very beginning to the most recent! I especially loved how the museum includes a timeline of general world history events throughout the visit so that the visitor can see what was going on in the world at the time and some of the reasons behind the certain car models coming out in the years that they did. We also learned a lot of fun facts, like how obviously speed limits were necessary as cars became faster and faster, “initially restricting motorized traffic to the pace of life in the pre-motorized era: In 1909, a maximum speed limit of 10 mph was imposed throughout the German Empire-the equivalent to the speed of a trotting horse” because the world wasn’t ready for anything faster. We ended up having to rush out of the Mercedes Museum to check out of our hotel and catch our train to Munich!
MUNICH, GERMANY
The first thing we did after checking into our hotel in Munich was walk to see Marienplatz, the plaza with the church named Neues Rathaus, better known as the church with the Glockenspiel. That night we ate dinner at the Bier and Oktoberfest Museum where we found a traditional Bavarian “beer hall” atmosphere and food selection. I chose to eat Schnitzels and potatoes with Augistiner beer. So delicious!
The next morning it snowed! It started out lightly at first, but as the day went on it, it got heavier then wet. It ended up being miserable. Nevertheless, we started our day with an amazing walking tour through Sandemans [check out their website here: http://www.neweuropetours.eu/. Great tours for free (you can give a tip at the end) in many of the world’s biggest cities.] We learned so much about the wonderful and interesting city of Munich! We saw the Glockenspiel play at 11h00, went inside the Frauenkirchif church, and visited the Viktualien Market. We saw Hofbrauhaus, the most famous drinking den on earth. We walked on Maximilianstrasse, where Michael Jackson came to get all of his nose jobs, no joke! We saw the Royal Residence and Opera. We went to a place where Hitler went to give some of his more well-known speeches. Finally, we went inside of the Theatinerkirche, a stunningly beautiful yellow cathedral.
SNOW!!
To celebrate New Year’s Eve in Munich, we decided to make it easier on ourselves and just sign up for the pub crawl through the hostel. Though quite expensive, it was nice to not have to worry about where to go in an unfamiliar city! After three bars and fireworks, the tour led us to literally the best night club experience I have ever had in my entire life. For those who know me well, I have been searching for this ultimate experience since the age of 12, haha. The only thing that was going through my head was I have to figure out a way to get this DJ to play for my wedding. The playlist was off the chain, to say the least. Okay, anyway, we ended up getting back to our hotel at 3 a.m. New Year’s morning. As you can imagine, we did not get the ideal amount of sleep to catch an early train to Salzburg.
SALZBURG, AUSTRIA
Because we got so little sleep, I supposedly (I have no recollection of this) slept through my alarm about five times. After literally sprinting with our luggage to the train station, we missed our train by ten minutes. Sadly, that meant we had to buy new, more expensive tickets for the next train out. Bummer. The good news was we got to Salzburg in time for our “The Sound of Music” Tour. So magical! During a four hour bus ride, we got to see the lake where the children’s boat capsized, the “16 Going on 17” gazebo, the gate Maria enters to the family’s house, the cathedral where the VanTrapps got married in the film, and Mirabelle Platz-the square where most of “Do Re Mi” was shot. All the while, the views from the bus of the Austrian mountains and the city of Salzburg were incredible! I wish we could’ve spent more time in the city! However, the tour was so worth the trip!
The rest of the day was spent with more travelling. It was a long, long day, especially after New Year’s Eve partying in Munich the night before. I ended up not getting back to Paris until midnight. Not including the metro ride home. But what a fantastic trip!! I am seriously so blessed to have been able to see all the wonderful cities that I saw and with such a wonderful travel partner :)
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