Karlsruhe, Germany and Alsace, France

End of October through November was visiting time for me (conveniently coinciding with the end of ultimate season) with visits from my friends Heather (see her blog too), Jeff S. and Jeff S. (not a typo, just two friends with very similar names). I blame my sporadic blogging on them. More excuses about a lack of blogging in Dec. and Jan. will be posted soon.

But before Heather came to Munich I visited her, Bridget and Toby in Karlsruhe. A 5^th Calgarian was also visiting and the five of us had a great weekend of laughs and driving around the countryside and Alsace region jammed in a rental car. My pics are a mixture from myself, Toby&Bridget and Heather; I can’t even remember who took what anymore.

A ridiculous tourism office in Alsace was only open from 10-11 a.m. on Saturdays. At least we got meet this kitten.

Heather driving our rental car. She later got to speed on the Autobahn, although unfortunately I don't have any photo evidence.

The modern art museum in Karlsruhe is pretty neat. The special exhibition while I was visiting was on Asian modern art. It included crazy origami made from McDonald's take-out bags and a strange Chinese lantern-tank.

That’s not gasoline in the big containers. We stopped for “neuer Wein”, the newly pressed, weaker wine which tastes a lot like tangy apple juice and comes in 5 liter jerry cans. Heather took more neat artsy pictures of the food they had displayed.

We carried on through France to see the Schoenberg fortress, one of dozens of sprawling underground defences comprising the Maginot line. Unfortunately the Maginot line didn’t do a very good job at stopping the German advance in WWII. This is all one can see from the outside.

They had some amusing signs translated into English including this one.

Because we had some daylight we carried onto Strasbourg for a few hours (for more on Strasbourg see my previous post). We also found a fabulous sweet shop.

I had just enough time to have a quick drink back in Karlsruhe before heading back to Munich. You can tell I’m the integrated German among us having opted for the darkest, heaviest beer.