Day 14 – Les toilettes n’est pas privé

I discovered in the quiet of the morning, that somehow, be it through the pipes or vents, a muffled auditory conduit joins the floors – at least in the toilette. And so it was that early this Christmas, a man on level 1 and lady on level 2 were reducing fluids, level three was taking a dump and level 4 and 5, probably sauerkraut and bratwurst related, were degassing. Ah, but there’s no level five, so that was likely my echo. Eerily true.

Brollies in hand we wander the shiny-wet morning streets in search of writing paper. The winter grey makes the warm inner glow of the little shops even more inviting and we spend much of the morning window shopping and popping in and out of cake stores, sausage places, toy shops etc.

Gaston from “Bretzel Airlines”, and his brother Simon, started drawing texta designs on T-Shirts. The shirts became very popular and now, fourteen years later, he proudly hands us some “Bretzel” stickers, asking us to put them somewhere bon in Australia and posting a photo on Facebook.

Famished from the cold (and having had nothing since our Hotel Suisse breakfast some minutes earlier), we find a place to eat outside, smack in front of the Cathedral main entrance. Most expensive plate of fries we’ve ever had – nice view though.

It’s le premiere place for photographs here, in front of the cathedral, and we see; a man photograph his wife with two dogs down her front as he holds another in his camera bag, a serious looking, machine-gun baring Gendarme, cracking a smile as he photo-bombs a family pic, a Japanese girl spending maybe fifteen minutes trying every model-photo pose imaginable before swapping with her camera-girl friend who then did the same, and a man with a cat in a satchel…….

Strasbourg is small, but thus far we’ve hung around the popular spots and not seen all of it, so we leave our handy viewing place for someone else to go into debt, and go for a walk.

We wander until dusk and Di opts to return to write some cards. I have a rush to the head and think that buying some snacks for dinner might be a good idea – but it’s fifteen minutes before closing time on Christmas eve – Sacre bleu!

Cheese purchases don’t generally pose a significant challenge in our household, but when there are a hundred varieties to choose from, most of which I’d never seen before, and the closing announcement is sounding through the store, and I’m getting the look from the rather severe looking deli lady…I broke into a sweat and made a panic purchase, in fact multiple panic purchases as I rushed to finally queue in the ten deep crowd at the check out.

As I staggered down the alley laden with; a quarter round of (I’m going to say) Mobier, two loaves of bread (I bought a supermarket one only to find an open boulangerie later on), a shoe box size packet of GF crackers (seems you can only by those suckers in bulk), a tub of olives, a quarter kilo slab of terrine maison and a bottle of red wine, I had one of those insights that perhaps I’m not too different from my father after all – minus the global warming stuff – though to be fair, my French vocab would make that impossible any way (probably wouldn’t stop Pete).

Sorry Pete but your over-catering is legendary. Case in point, once we organised a picnic in a park in Muswellbrook NSW when the boys were young. Unpacking the ‘sumptuous repast’ onto the picnic blanket Pete thinks we’re a little underdone and returns from the shops some significant time later with; a tub of tabouleh, two barbeque chickens, a tub of potato salad, a bag of bread rolls and a bottle of Saxa salt.

When done, we had left; a tub of tabouleh, two barbeque chickens, a tub of potato salad, a bag of bread rolls and an empty Saxa salt bottle. OK I made up the Saxa salt bit, but the rest is fair dinkum legit.

I’d forgotten to get Di something for Christmas too and had to suffer the ignominy of queuing in the narrow, swarming, chocolaterie, like a bag lady, pulling pretty packaged chocolate boxes from the shelf as I dragged my bulging-bagged-booty towards the counter. It’s a tough job this traveling business.

We sat in the cosy little Hotel Suisse parlour and enjoyed our wine, cheese, olives and terrine – even the crackers (a small portion of our now ample stocks) were good! Local tradition is to swap presents on Christmas eve – the chocolates were good too!

Took an early morning (for Aus) Christmas call from Michelle (we think Joy tried too but we were done) – Merry Christmas!