La belle France

We packed the car back up, said goodbye to our wonderful German hosts (and the lovely town of Rothenburg), and headed back to France.

The major highways over there are referred to as the "A" roads - we avoided them as much as possible! :-) But eventually you need to get on a fairly major road to get across the border.

Which was weird in and of itself - no border crossings! The wonders of the EU!

Our first stop was a little town called Zellenberg, in the middle of the Alsacian Route des Vins (Wine Road). We could walk from our B&B down into Zellenberg itself, and there were two or three other little wine-producing towns within a 2-3 km walk. Nice!




The view from a dirt road leading from Zellenberg to the next little town.



Grapes! Aren't they wonderful?



A "cave" - wine store/tastng room in a nearby town where we stretched our rusty French and learned a lot about the wine-making process and traditions of the area - and tasted some very good wine!

Woo!

Bryan and I ran our first 5K this morning - loads of fun! We don't have our official times yet (they had timing chips and everything) - but Bryan finished around 27:40 and I came in around 34:20. We were pretty happy, since we've only been running for a couple of months. (And took our vacation time off!)

Once more, with feeling...

One more day of pictures from Rothenburg - then it's back to France!



Enjoying a stein of beer over lunch - I discovered Dunkel beer on this trip! Including one called Weltenburger Kloster biere, brewed by the same monastery since 1050. If I were a medieval king, and I'd tasted this beer, I'd have spared the monastery, too!



An example of some of the beautiful religious wood carving from the area.



The view from the town walls, looking in across the town.

Rothenburg, Part II

another day of Rothenburg pictures! (It was just so photogenic - I'll probably do one more day past this one.)



The city town hall - on the weekend, they had a farmers' market in the square in the foreground.



You could take a tour of the town in these horse-drawn carriages - cute, but we passed on this one.







The view of what we think was a currant tree/bush through an arrow slit on the wall.










An entire garden of garden gnomes! This is looking over the first-ring wall just down the street from our hotel.

Rothenburg I

After leaving France, we went to Germany for 4 days. We stayed in a walled town named Rothenburg ob der Tauber.

Rothenburg was about 40 percent destroyed by bombing in WWII, but before then was largely unchanged from the 1500/1600s. Because of shifting trade routes and the whims of empire building in Europe, Rothenburg was a very wealthy free-city early on, then stagnated from the mid-1600s until after WWII.

The town realized the tourist and historical potential in the town, and called on people world-wide to donate to the repair efforts. Money poured in from all over the world, and the town is beautifully restored today. The names and locations of the donors are etched in stone plates set into the inside of the town wall - you can see the plates by walking along the parapets.


Very cool, quite lovely, and a great place to spend 4 days!

Workin' for a living...

More details about the job: Monday, I stated as an associate for a big law firm here in town (about 350 attorneys). Slight digression: while that size makes them a "big" firm, and would have seemed huge to me as recently as law school, it's positively dwarfed by some of the places here in town. I mean, places with 1000+ attorneys - wow.

Anyway, I started Monday, and while I like it so far, I still haven't done much real work. (I did officially bill my first hour yesterday, though.) I'm meeting with a number of people who might have work for me today, so that could be changed by tonight. Wish me luck as I shake those trees! It's a little harder for me - the rest of my class summered with this firm, so people already have an idea of their working habits and work product. I'm an unknown. Again, that should change pretty quickly. :-)

Today is a meeting with the labor and employment folks - and they're feeding us again. I suppose law school is still recent enough that "free food" still has a certain appeal...

Strasbourg!

After two days in Paris, we rented a car and drove east to Strasbourg, France. Strasbourg is considered the "capital of Europe," as some of the governing bodies of the European Union are located there. We were only there one night, but it was a good experience. We'd both like to go back and visit for longer.

The cathedral was quite impressive!

(A detail on the cathedral)

The night we were there, there was a really cool sound-and-light show at the cathedral. As impressive as the stonework was during the day, it was even more so with dramatic lighting at night!
(The picture in no way captures it, unfortunately.)

Delays, delays...

Ok, so Comcast spent most of the weekend giving us fits with our Interet connection. And I started my new job yesterday. As a result - no new pictures yet, but Strasbourg is coming tonight! (connection willing)

The new job is cool. Or, rather, the people and the firm in general seem cool - so far, we've just been in orientation, so I can't really comment on the work itself yet. :-) But liking the people and the culture is at least half the battle, so I'm happy with my decision thus far!

More on the job later, and pictures (hopefully) tonight!

(Drop me a line if you get a chance, or leave a comment... I'd love to know someone's looking at this!)

Back!

We're home! (And the jet lag is even starting to wear off - that 7-hour time difference is a killer!)

The trip was wonderful - I'll try and post a mini-travelogue over the next week or so, including pictures of course.

We started by flying to Paris, to visit our friends Damien and Sarah. They have a wonderful little apartment in a quiet, gated street in the 17th arrondissement. (Housing prices in Paris are even more insane than in Chicago, though!!) We spent two evenings with them, spending the days sightseeing around Paris. It's still a lovely, lovely city - the only skyscrapers have all been built in one outlying secton, so most of the city is still the old building (or newer ones built to blend in). A great first two days of the trip!


The church of St. Germaine.


View of the Eiffel Tower looking from the hill near Sacre Coeur, in Montmartre (neigborhood of Paris).


One small section of a lovely park near Damien and Sarah's place.