Glow Time

Already?

.....................

I went for a drive through Alsace yesterday with Danny, another American assistant, and Marion, our French, car-owning friend. A bit of history: though parts of Alsace are also situated in the Vosges, the villages and countryside are drastically different from those on the Lorraine side of the mountains. During World War II, the Germans completely razed many Lorraine-Vosgien towns (Gerardmer was 85% destroyed, for example), so they almost completely lack the medieval churches and cutesy cobblestone streets of most villages in Alsace. Also, the closer you get to Germany, the lower the Vosges become, so the countryside in Alsace is already greener, warmer, flatter, and hence better-suited to wine production than the Lorraine Vosges. Gerardmer wasn't made into a ski station for nothing; it's one of the coldest, snowiest places in the Vosges, aside from the cretes (the rocky high points that are usually accessed by independent mountaineers or skiiers).

So, voila, my trip through sunny Alsace:

Traveling through the Valley of Munster

 Kaysersberg

Looking towards Germany from the top of a chateau in Kaysersberg

Riquewihr, one of the most well-preserved medieval villages in Alsace, a.k.a., the Bruges of Alsace

L

Les fameux Marion and Danny

Well, a little bit of my life. I like this blog because it takes my mind off of myself, ironically -- I've been spending the last week internally freaking out about leaving (my last day of class tomorrow! yikes!), and it's soothing to create something that is purely for others. An experience doesn't quite feel genuine to me if it's not shared; meaning, I can run and hike and explore the world as much as I like, but it all almost seems lost if I don't somehow give a part of my new self away eventually. I recently read a short story, "Monsieur Ibrahim et les fleurs du Coran" (Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt) with a nice little quote: "Ce que tu donnes, Momo, c'est pour toi toujours; ce que tu gardes, c'est perdu a jamais!" Or something like that, meaning: "that which you give is yours always; that which you keep to yourself is lost forever." It was a cute story, you should read it; I think it was made into a movie.

I hope this blog has been informative at the very least.