If you ask Betsy what the most memorable part of our recent trip to Strasbourg was, she's likely to say "going to Germany". From the moment she learned that we would be close enough to the German border to make a side-trip to Germany, she really wanted to go. We're not sure why.
Technically, we did go to Germany: We walked across the bridge (shown from the French side in the first picture, from the German side in the second) across the Rhine river from Strasbourg to Kehl. This is a beautiful bridge, designed by the architect Marc Mimram and opened in 2004 (it seems to have no name other than the generic
passerelle). The structure of the bridge is perhaps easiest to see in the second photo, taken from underneath it on the German side. There are two paths across the river, the looping curve on the left for bicycles and the straighter pedestrian route on the right. The two paths are joined in the middle of the bridge, where there are some benches that could potentially double as picnic tables.
This attractive and futuristic passarelle is only a few hundred meters down the Rhine from the much older (more functional, less aesthetically pleasing) Pont de l'Europe, which carries vehicle traffic between Strasbourg and Kehl. Near this bridge on the French side is a large park with an enormous amount of parking for cars, despite the fact that we were one of only about 3 or 4 cars in the entire lot on the day we were there. We could not understand what all of this space was for, nor why the whole area looked so deserted, until we noticed the front of this really ugly, clearly-not-much-used building. If you look closely, you can see the letters spelling "Pont de l'Europe" that have been pulled off the front of the building. We figure this must have been part of what had to have been an enormous amount of infrastructure to support a border crossing between two European countries, back in the pre-European Union days. An interesting side effect of knocking down borders: What do you do with junk like this?
A related side note: We were a bit sad that it was so easy to simply walk from France to Germany -- we had brought our passports along for the occasion and had hoped for new stamps! In hindsight, that was kind of silly of us in today's Europe, and there was a big ugly deserted gray building there to mock us. The new spirit of cooperation and interdependence in Europe is symbolized by the statue shown here, on the German side of the bridge. The statue is interestingly very difficult to capture in a picture because the relationship between the two figures looks quite different from different angles, which undoubtedly the artist had intended.
...and finally, a word from Sydney. Flat Sydney, that is. One of Dave's aunts has a niece on her husband's side of the family who is in third grade in Iowa. Their class is doing a project in which they send small laminated people to folks in various locations, to see what they can learn about the world by living vicariously through a piece of paper. We were happy to oblige by taking "Flat Sydney" to straddle the French-German border on a bridge over the Rhine river.
If you ask Betsy what the most memorable part of our recent trip to Strasbourg was, she's likely to say "going to Germany". From the moment she learned that we would be close enough to the German border to make a side-trip to Germany, she really wanted to go. We're not sure why.
Technically, we did go to Germany: We walked across the bridge (shown from the French side in the first picture, from the German side in the second) across the Rhine river from Strasbourg to Kehl. This is a beautiful bridge, designed by the architect Marc Mimram and opened in 2004 (it seems to have no name other than the generic passerelle). The structure of the bridge is perhaps easiest to see in the second photo, taken from underneath it on the German side. There are two paths across the river, the looping curve on the left for bicycles and the straighter pedestrian route on the right. The two paths are joined in the middle of the bridge, where there are some benches that could potentially double as picnic tables.
This attractive and futuristic passarelle is only a few hundred meters down the Rhine from the much older (more functional, less aesthetically pleasing) Pont de l'Europe, which carries vehicle traffic between Strasbourg and Kehl. Near this bridge on the French side is a large park with an enormous amount of parking for cars, despite the fact that we were one of only about 3 or 4 cars in the entire lot on the day we were there. We could not understand what all of this space was for, nor why the whole area looked so deserted, until we noticed the front of this really ugly, clearly-not-much-used building. If you look closely, you can see the letters spelling "Pont de l'Europe" that have been pulled off the front of the building. We figure this must have been part of what had to have been an enormous amount of infrastructure to support a border crossing between two European countries, back in the pre-European Union days. An interesting side effect of knocking down borders: What do you do with junk like this?
A related side note: We were a bit sad that it was so easy to simply walk from France to Germany -- we had brought our passports along for the occasion and had hoped for new stamps! In hindsight, that was kind of silly of us in today's Europe, and there was a big ugly deserted gray building there to mock us. The new spirit of cooperation and interdependence in Europe is symbolized by the statue shown here, on the German side of the bridge. The statue is interestingly very difficult to capture in a picture because the relationship between the two figures looks quite different from different angles, which undoubtedly the artist had intended.
...and finally, a word from Sydney. Flat Sydney, that is. One of Dave's aunts has a niece on her husband's side of the family who is in third grade in Iowa. Their class is doing a project in which they send small laminated people to folks in various locations, to see what they can learn about the world by living vicariously through a piece of paper. We were happy to oblige by taking "Flat Sydney" to straddle the French-German border on a bridge over the Rhine river.
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