Europa Park

Today I spent the entire day riding roller coasters with Mark, and it. was. AWESOME.

We went to Europa Park in southern Germany. The whole park’s like a low-budget rip-off of Disney World, complete with a princess parade, a giant Epcot ball with a “Space Mountain”-like ride inside, “Pirates of Batavia,” and — wait for it — even a giant gray mouse (“Euromaus”) as its mascot. But on top of all of that, it also has the extreme high-speed coasters of a park like Six Flags or Busch Gardens. And all for about half the price of Disney World — transportation included!

Today was particularly great because it was a weekday, so the lines were really short. We just kept jumping off and running back around to ride our favorite coasters over and over and over again. We loved the Silver Star best, and rode it four times — amazing, even if it is going to take me hours to detangle my hair!

Snapshots from Germany.

Day trip to Kehl

The funny thing about living in Strasbourg is that, while it is distinctly French, it’s also so close to the German border that even the French president sometimes forgets it’s not part of Germany. In fact, Strasbourg’s public transportation runs right across the Rhine River into the town of Kehl, which means that with one swipe of our regular monthly tram passes, we can make a day trip into Germany at no extra cost.

And that’s exactly what we decided to do yesterday. After the Christmas break, a lot of us have been having trouble waking up at a reasonable hour in the morning. (Most people have jet lag from flying back from the States… and I’m just lazy.) So at “ball night” the night before, we decided we just needed a little bit of mutual reinforcement to get up and out the door. Chris, Leah, Danna, and I decided to meet up in the morning for coffee, and a few others decided to come along to Germany for lunch afterwards.

A little after noon on Wednesday, we met up at the bus stop, where we realized we had all forgotten our passports — Kehl is just so close, I always forget I’m actually going to be crossing into a different country. We debated going back for them, but in the end decided just to go on. Passport checks generally are not a problem within the EU unless there’s a specific security threat. (And — SPOILER ALERT! — fortunately we guessed right and it wasn’t a problem at all.)

There are a couple of reasons that we regularly make day trips into Kehl. First and foremost, there are certain products that are less expensive in Germany than in France, like contact lens solution, toiletries, and sometimes meat. But this time, we were particularly interested in checking out a Chinese restaurant at the train station. If there is one thing I miss in Europe, it’s spicy Chinese food. (Or really, any kind of spicy food.)

Sadly, the food at this place turned out to be just as mild as everywhere else, but we still had a great time. Mark and I were able to impress everyone with our German abilities (basically we said “Yes, please, ” and “we want three of those,” and everyone who didn’t understand oohed and aahed) and we all got scarily apt fortune cookies.

Afterwards, we wandered around the city taking pictures of the weird things we found. Unfortunately, I failed to take a picture of the circus pony begging for food for the winter (no, really), but I did get the pink cowgirl beer helmet and the scary Michael Jackson-inspired men’s fashion store called “BIG BOYSS.”

Kehl may not be the most exciting town in the world, but it sure has its moments.

Two hours in Munich

In France, as I’ve discovered, the big fall break is not Thanksgiving, but Toussaint (All Saint’s Day). And it’s not just a long weekend — it’s ten days! With this in mind, some friends and I started talking a few months ago about taking a long trip. We were all on tight budgets, though, so we decided to go somewhere none of us had been that was also supposed to be super-cheap: Eastern Europe. Even so, I still wound up scrimping and saving to put together enough to cover transportation, youth hostels, and food costs, but in the end it worked out, and we had a fantastic (if exhausting) time!

So on Friday night, we had one last dinner with all of our friends in Strasbourg (ten days seems like an awfully long time to be apart when you’re living in each other’s pockets), and then a big sleepover in our living room so those of us on the trip could depart together in the morning. At 5:45 a.m. Saturday (did I mention we bought the cheap tickets?) we left the apartment, took public transportation across the Rhine into Germany, and began the first long leg of our trip from Kehl.

Our first stop was Munich. Munich was kind of an unplanned element of the trip, but since we had a two-hour layover between trains, we decided to leave our backpacks in lockers and go see a bit of the city. Mostly, we watched other tourists watching the Glockenspiel go off (because it’s not terribly exciting, but that doesn’t seem to stop people from oohing and aahing like they’re witnessing the second coming). Also, we admired the tidy lines Germans stand in while waiting to cross the street (because that would never happen in France). And then we ate döner. Which is about all you can do with two hours in Munich.

After Munich, it was on to Vienna!