Annie goes to France, Germany and Belgium!

Well! This has been quite the week. I went to visit Erin in Strasbourg, France. We also went to Baden-Baden, Germany, and Brussels, Belgium, and saw the entirety of Luxembourg from a train. It was insane, busy, tiring, and a blast. I will start from the beginning, I suppose!

Tuesday morning I went to my first class, at 8:30, and brought my suitcase with me, which was definitely an exhausting haul. After class I bolted to the metro, and met Sarah, who was also going to Strasbourg, at the airport. Our flight was uneventful, and we landed in Frankfurt, Germany, and then took a three hour bus to Strasbourg, where Erin met us, and took me to her house.
Her house is adorable. The couple she is staying with, Anne and Jacques, have the bottom two floors of a very nice house, on a river. I had a room to myself, which was nice. They are so quiet, it was amazing in comparison to the chaos that is my apartment in Madrid.
That night, we met up with other Kalamazoo kids in Strasbourg, and went to a cute bar downtown. I had their Christmas beer, which was pretty good! There are a lot of microbrews there, like in Germany, so pretty much everything I drank all week was excellent.

Wednesday Erin had to go to her ICRP, so I went to the museum of modern art, and wandered around there some by myself. I met up with Erin at a Christmas market (of which there are many, all over Europe right now, its pretty sweet). I had this amazing baguette covered in cheeses, hot wine, and a chocolate crepe. To be honest, most of my stories are going to involve good food, because I feel like all I did was eat a TON of delicious food.
After that, we took a train to a small French town, Colmar, which happens to have a church/museum that houses Issenheim’s altarpiece, a very famous work we both studied in art history. It was fun to go; it felt like a pilgrimage, going to see this famous painting of Jesus. It’s a pretty neat painting, very intricate and complicated, but its also pretty disgusting up close, because it’s a painting of a Jesus with a horrid skin disease, because it was hung in a hospital for people with that same disease. I knew it was supposed to be intensely gross and painful to look at, but up close, its larger than life, and incredibly detailed, in ways that make your skin ache and crawl with the pain those people must have felt.

Thursday we took a train to Baden-Baden, Germany, which is apparently famous for its roman baths and spas. So, of course, Erin and I were planning on finding a spa and indulging ourselves. We succeeded, and had brought bathing suits in preparation, but when we got there, we realized that it truly was a roman style bath, complete with total nudity. So, I am proud to say, we sucked it up and did as the Romans do, and spent 3 and a half hours completely naked together, and with other women. It was a ton of fun, and actually not embarrassing or anything at all. It all felt totally natural, and we felt very in tune with our “womanhood” so to speak, because we were bathing in natural hot and cold springs from the ground, and drinking water from the ground. It was great.
There were 16 “stations” that you go through. The first is a hot shower, then a hot dry air room, then a HOTTER dry air room, then another shower, then a massage called a soap and brush massage, where brisk German women scrub you down with warm soap and exfoliate every inch of you with a brush, then pat you on the bottom to signal you are done. After that was a hot steam room with giant clay ovens pouring heat into the room. Then several warm baths, some with water jets and some just plain pools, in gradually cooler water, until you jump fast into a freezing pool, then get ushered into a giant hot towel by one of the brisk German ladies. Then you dry off, and get to cover yourself in wonderful smelling lotion, and eat dark chocolate (in a room that is awkwardly all mirrors, so you can see every single angle of every single other naked lady in the room). Then, one of the women asked us if we were ready to sleep. We thought she was joking, just pointing out how relaxed we felt. So we said, yes, we are very ready, and then she ushered us into this dark room full of beds, and then literally TUCKED US IN to hot blankets to sleep for half an hour. She really did just tuck us in, totally. We were like mummies. It was incredible, and very painful to leave.
After all that, we had to trek back to Strasbourg, and go to a dinner party thing for the Kalamazoo professors who are going around all the Europe programs (They come to Madrid tomorrow).

Friday we headed to Brussels. We woke up early to catch our 7:50 train, but when we got there, it appeared that due to a strike, our train would not be running. So we took a 10:30 train to Metz, France, then from there a train to Luxembourg City, then from there another train to Brussels. It unfortunately took forever, and by the time we got there it was nearly dark, and the weather was miserable. Pouring rain and gusting winds! And we got lost, and couldn’t find our hostel, too. But then we found it, and declared that we would not let the day ruin our night.
We went with four goals: to eat Belgian waffles and Belgian chocolates, to drink Belgian beer, and to track down the Mannekin Pis, which is Brussels’ claim to fame, a bronze statue of a little boy perpetually peeing.
I am happy to say we accomplished all our goals and then some (we were able to find the Mannekin Pis’ sister, a less generally known about little bronze girl squatting and peeing!). We had waffles; some covered in strawberries and chocolate, got little boxes of chocolates from a famous chocolate store, and drank lots of excellent beer, in many different Belgian bars.
We collapsed that night, the world spinning a little, and got up 5 hours later for our train ride back to Strasbourg. It was short, but definitely an adventure, and I don’t think it could have been nearly the same, or as much fun, if it had been anyone else. It was so much fun to run all over Brussels with Erin. Four years ago I never would have guessed we would have done anything like that.

Yesterday after we got home, I pretty much passed out for a few hours (after we stopped at the Christmas market for another baguette covered in cheese!). Then we braved the cold once more, and wandered around, which was very beautiful, because Strasbourg goes all out for Christmas, and there are decorations everywhere. We went to a part of town that is called Petit France, which is one of the older parts of the city, and we had a very classically Alsatian dinner there, of tarte flambé, sauerkraut, and Riesling wine, followed by chocolate mousse at a cute little café. After that we were totally exhausted, and came back and feel asleep early.

And today I came back to Madrid! The trip was fairly uneventful, save a disastrous landing of the plane, where we dropped the last 10 or so feet to the ground, bounced, skidded, and felt like we literally were going to tip over and roll. Oy vey. Poor Sarah, I was clutching her leg in fear. But all was good; we were all just a little shook up.

The week went by so fast. And I can’t believe its already a good ways into December. This is my last week of class. Next week is exams, and Lindsay comes Thursday morning. Next weekend I will be in Barcelona with her! And in less than three weeks I will be in Paris with Brett! Time really does fly, its insane. I’m getting sad I only have a month left actually in Madrid. But that’s a good sign, I was hoping I would fall in love and never want to leave, that means I got the most I could out of it all.

Alright, its bedtime!