Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Robert & Emily (& Sophia) go to White Castle...

Saturday was Marina's last day in Germany so we wanted to do something special (but low impact). Via our typically semi-random but wholly irrational process, we narrowed our options to Stuttgart or Wissembourg (don't ask). Since I love Alsace, I talked Marina into choosing Wissembourg.
Wissembourg is a Francosized version of the German word for White Castle. Like Strasbourg, it takes about an hour to get there, but is actually closer as the crow flies as it is further away from major Autobahns (on which I can coax the family truckster up to around 100 mph).
We poked around a bit, took some pics, went to the cathedral and then had lunch. The champignon tarte flambée (Flammkucken in German) was out of sight. The red stained glass windows in the steeple gave off an eerie, quasi-evil glow.With much patience due to other tourists who seemed intent on seeing the church rather than respecting my artistic endeavor, I took an over-the-head 180° shot. If you use your imagination, you can summon what the cathedral looked like "live" (to Ken Kesey in his heydey). Although it's a cute city, I'm not sure we'll be back any time soon. I'd just as soon invest the same hour and end up in Strasbourg. That evening, Marina and I went to the Altstadt in Heidelberg to watch the Schlossbeleutung. A few times a year they illuminate the Heidelberg castle and have a small fireworks show (very small by the standards of New Year's Eve in Rio). We then headed to the Unterestrasse and imbibed a few glasses absinthe before heading home. I can't imagine her 3 hour layover in Lisboa the next day was much fun.

1 comment:

Kato said...

About the only reason i see to go to Wissembourg is that it's part of the VRN (and directly tied into it, connection-wise), so you can get there relatively cheap by train.