I am afraid that my divigations into biography and philosophy both distracted from the main goal of this blog, which is to discuss my travels, and caused my readership to dip, though that may very well have been an aberration. In any case, I blame my focus on issues unrelated to travel in yesterday's post for having made me forget to mention several salient details of my day. Firstly, while the cathedral in Speyer was huge and had massive supporting columns, it had a relatively-small organ, leading me to believe that architects in the 11th century either lacked the technology for making large organs or considered them less important to church services than they later came considered to be. Secondly, the balance amongst icons, statues, and objects of material worth inside cathedrals is one of the most interesting differences between them, as it is rarely the exact same in any two cathedrals. Finally, a few general observations have jumped to mind: the Germans' endless goodwill continues to impress me; I get to watch people going about their daily business when I visit smaller towns, especially on weekends; and, finally, the Germans have one specific habit that drives me nuts. While waiting for a train to arrive, one never knows at what part of the platform it will arrive (It was of Cologne's train station that I complained of the platforms' being so long that one could miss a train entirely by waiting in the wrong part of it.). Once a train starts to approach a platform, though, one can easily guess, based on its velocity and acceleration, at what approximate part of the platform it will stop. It would seem most reasonable to start heading for that part of the platform in advance of the train's arrival, as that could help to prevent one's missing it, yet the German people stand around as if bolted to the ground until the train has come to a full stop - often, with its very tail end several yards away from them. Only then do they start walking towards it, with the result that one is always on the wrong part of the platform when a train arrives, and that there are always giant crowds near its doors as people try to shove their way into the train before the doors close. Perhaps this is not of enough cultural import to have warranted such a lengthy explanation, but this one aspect of their behavior is so perversely illogical that I could not help fuming about it.
I was going to start this paragraph out with an attention-grabbing sentence, but I forget what it was. I woke up tired, as a bunch of idiots in my room kicked up a ruckus for half of the night, and I mostly dozed on the way to Strasbourg. The most interesting part of the train ride was near the end. The station at which I transferred onto the train into Strasbourg looked more or less abandoned: it consisted of three railway platforms, the railroad tracks, one of those one-room buildings covered in graffiti with no obvious door and no apparent purpose, and a parking lot, which, for some reason, was full of cars. I was reminded by the scene of a friend's having told me that railway stations in some part of Russia or other were, at some point, built by government mandate at some fixed distance from one another, with the result that many of them ended up being in the middle of nowhere - and yet people still got on and off at those stops! All around the other passengers and me - for we were clearly all going to the same place - was nothing but trees and endless fields, but someone had seen fit to put a railway station there. On the plus side, it was quiet enough that one could hear the birds, and one of them, with the most complex song that I have ever heard, put on a real show for us.
The character of the train ride changed as soon as we started moving towards France: my good-natured German companions were replaced by a delinquent-looking youth and a very angry-looking old lady wearing enormous sunglasses. We passed a great number of poppies, which must be resilient flowers, on the way to Strasbourg, and, most interestingly, we passed a pair of mosques, of which I had seen none in Germany, in addition to the typical age-old churches in the German countryside. As we pulled in to Strasbourg, I could see that it would be much different from any city that I had seen: there was something like a slum near the railroad tracks, full of run-down houses that were losing their siding. I had not seen anything like that in Germany so far; I wondered if there was more wealth inequality in France than in Germany.
When I left the train station, I immediately noticed that Strasbourg had wider, straighter boulevards than any city that I had so far visited in Germany; the Germans like their streets narrow, winding, and juxtaposed at random. As the tourist office was closed for lunch when I arrived, I set off in the direction that seemed most likely to lead me to the old town. I noticed that Strasbourg had more bums, alcoholics, and poor people than I had seen in most of the cities in Germany that I have visited put together; it was full of cafes that served incredibly-expensive food; while some Frenchmen smoke, thy do not share the Germans' overpowering craving for cigarettes, which disappointed me - I have come to see not smoking as being anti-European; France is more democratic than Germany: it has free water fountains and bathrooms; French people jaywalk constantly, unlike the Germans; the French are very friendly when one approaches them individually, though they are generally frosty in public; Strasbourg had a self-contained city center that one could comfortably see in the course of two or three hours, but it was also a vibrant city with lots going on outside of the historic part of town; and the French (at least, in Strasbourg) erect far fewer statues and set up fewer fountains than the Germans, perhaps because the French only do so in celebration of very important occasions (such as the "American heroes'" having liberated Alsace in 1945), while the Germans do so almost whimsically, putting statues of birds on street corners or statues of people reading on park benches.
I was going to start this paragraph out with an attention-grabbing sentence, but I forget what it was. I woke up tired, as a bunch of idiots in my room kicked up a ruckus for half of the night, and I mostly dozed on the way to Strasbourg. The most interesting part of the train ride was near the end. The station at which I transferred onto the train into Strasbourg looked more or less abandoned: it consisted of three railway platforms, the railroad tracks, one of those one-room buildings covered in graffiti with no obvious door and no apparent purpose, and a parking lot, which, for some reason, was full of cars. I was reminded by the scene of a friend's having told me that railway stations in some part of Russia or other were, at some point, built by government mandate at some fixed distance from one another, with the result that many of them ended up being in the middle of nowhere - and yet people still got on and off at those stops! All around the other passengers and me - for we were clearly all going to the same place - was nothing but trees and endless fields, but someone had seen fit to put a railway station there. On the plus side, it was quiet enough that one could hear the birds, and one of them, with the most complex song that I have ever heard, put on a real show for us.
The character of the train ride changed as soon as we started moving towards France: my good-natured German companions were replaced by a delinquent-looking youth and a very angry-looking old lady wearing enormous sunglasses. We passed a great number of poppies, which must be resilient flowers, on the way to Strasbourg, and, most interestingly, we passed a pair of mosques, of which I had seen none in Germany, in addition to the typical age-old churches in the German countryside. As we pulled in to Strasbourg, I could see that it would be much different from any city that I had seen: there was something like a slum near the railroad tracks, full of run-down houses that were losing their siding. I had not seen anything like that in Germany so far; I wondered if there was more wealth inequality in France than in Germany.
When I left the train station, I immediately noticed that Strasbourg had wider, straighter boulevards than any city that I had so far visited in Germany; the Germans like their streets narrow, winding, and juxtaposed at random. As the tourist office was closed for lunch when I arrived, I set off in the direction that seemed most likely to lead me to the old town. I noticed that Strasbourg had more bums, alcoholics, and poor people than I had seen in most of the cities in Germany that I have visited put together; it was full of cafes that served incredibly-expensive food; while some Frenchmen smoke, thy do not share the Germans' overpowering craving for cigarettes, which disappointed me - I have come to see not smoking as being anti-European; France is more democratic than Germany: it has free water fountains and bathrooms; French people jaywalk constantly, unlike the Germans; the French are very friendly when one approaches them individually, though they are generally frosty in public; Strasbourg had a self-contained city center that one could comfortably see in the course of two or three hours, but it was also a vibrant city with lots going on outside of the historic part of town; and the French (at least, in Strasbourg) erect far fewer statues and set up fewer fountains than the Germans, perhaps because the French only do so in celebration of very important occasions (such as the "American heroes'" having liberated Alsace in 1945), while the Germans do so almost whimsically, putting statues of birds on street corners or statues of people reading on park benches.
I am sorry that I had to rush through my description of Strasbourg, as it was an endlessly-interesting city, but I would like to go to bed. My summary of the day is that it was a whole different world from that of Germany despite having been a German territory for some time and that the degree of difference between French and German cities is enormous. I can look forward to eating phenomenal food for phenomenally-high prices when I visit France; the gains to e made in quality by switching from German to French food are minimal and do not justify the latter's increased price. Based on my humble experience, the Polish have by far the best food in the world compared to price, while the Germans have the best pastries of any country outright (or, rather, the Austrians do, probably - the difference is small) and the French have the greatest fondness for serving tiny amounts of food for exorbitant prices. A typical French pastry is a little bit of something creamy that is held together with loads of gelatin and has a very becoming presentation, while a typical German pastry is a dense dough filled or topped with things more delicious than bread itself. The only pastry that I tried in Strasbourg was a chocolate-filled croissant, as they only cost 95 cents and are typically French. I would give it a 10/10 for what it was, but it did not knock my socks off. My final comment about Strasbourg is that it can be more fun to walk where one's eyes take one in a city than to set up a checklist of sights to see and rush to see them all as quickly as possible. When I finally got a tourist map, I was pleased to see that it actually accorded with reality, which German ones rarely do, and I made sufficient use of it to see some things that I would have missed (such as Strasbourg's synagogue; it was less impressive than the ones in Germany), but scant enough use of it not to let it take control of my plans. My walking half at random through Strasbourg somewhat mirrored what I did in Heidelberg - somewhat - which might be why I found the last two days so pleasant. I suppose that there is a greater element of exploration and surprise when one genuinely does not know what monuments one might find and where one might find them than when one sets oneself a task list, more or less, and completes it.
I just remembered the final thing that I wanted to mention at the beginning of this email: at the restaurant that I went to last night, I got to watch the ornery but talkative, heavyset cook make beer-bread, a local specialty, as I was sitting right next to the kitchen. I wish that details like this would stick in my mind when it came time to write about them, but, alas, I seem to deal better with generalities. (Also, I meant to mention that even the smallest German towns that I have visited have had little rows of bumps at the edges of sidewalks so that the blind can navigate them. The infrastructure of the country is amazing!) I am afraid that my letters will continue to be disordered collections of recollected facts; that seems to reflect how my brain works. My final point is that I saw a wading bird, on the train ride back to Heidelberg, that looked almost like an egret with black wings. I am sorry not to end these letters with the kind of artistic flourish that one would expect of a student of creative writing.
I am a sucker for climbing cathedral towers.
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