Kehl!!!!!

Crossing over into Germany was like walking into a dream land. See, the walk to the bridge from the last tram stop in Strasbourg to the bridge was way way waaaaaaay longer than it looked on the map, and was along this sidewalk with a freeway on one side and alternating construction sites and empty lots on the other. I thought I was going to pass out from exhaustion and hunger. And when we finally got to the "garden" around the French side of the bridge, and it was barely more than a patch of grass! There were like some signs about where different planets would be if they were on the scale of the distance from the gate to the foot of the bridge. Eh, it was not great. Plus it was all cloudy and gray. Bleh.

But then, we started to cross the bridge to the German side, and the sun came out, birds sang, and we were suddenly surrounded by the cutest town ever!!! Seriously, around the bridge at least, the Kehl side was soooo much nicer than the Strasbourg side. They had an actual park, with lots of statues and benches and an observation tower. And the area past the park wasn't an industrial wasteland but pretty European-y houses, and there was a pedestrian shopping street only like five minutes away.¹

Here we are approaching from the Strasbourg side. Grim.

Boom! We get halfway across, and the sun comes out!

The bridge itself is so cool!!! There's two paths you can take to cross, one is up and sort of curves out horizontally, and the other is like a big hill, you walk up and then down on one big curve. The two paths meet in the middle, and there's a space with picnic tables, so you could even eat lunch right on the border! The two columns are at angles instead of straight up, which I think makes the bridge look longer and even more impressive. And of course with the sun out, everything looked even better!

Nom Central. Welcome to Nomsville.
Capital of the Kingdnom of Nomnomington.²

At the shopping street, I made a beeline for the nearest bakery in order to get my hands on some authentic German soft pretzels. OH. MY. GOD. SO GOOD!!!!!!!!! The pretzels were seriously amazing!!! They were crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside, lightly sprinkled with salt... I was in heaven!! Plus, two pretzels and two Cokes was only like 3-something euros, so cheaper than a single Coke in Geneva. And the Coke bottle was pretty cool itself, it was like super thick plastic, it was weird! The bottle was so heavy, it felt like there was still liquid inside it when it was empty.

We walked around a little, and ended up getting seconds on the delicious pretzels!!! I just couldn't resist!!! Christophe wanted to split one, and I was like noooooooooo way, buddy. Some things in life are too good to be split in half.

I am seriously so hungry just looking at this picture.

The observation tower

Then we started heading back to the park, and on an (ultimately unsuccessful) hunt for a bathroom, we ended up going up the observation tower.³ The tower was like a huge free-standing staircase. At first, I was like, this is kind of random, there are no major sights to look at around here, but we thought it'd be cool to go up and be like, "There's France! And there's Germany! And there's France! And Germany! And France! Germany! France! Germany! France! Germany! France!"⁴ 

The view was so beautiful!!! Kehl is such a pretty town, and you can see the river and a lake that was next to the park, and all the houses with red roofs. We got an awesome view of the bridge too. You can even see downtown Strasbourg and the cathedral in the distance.

Soon though, we headed back so we could make it to Christophe's wine basement cave tour. And that is the story of Kehl. I liked it so much, I wish we could have spent a few days there too!

À bientôt!

1. This contrast was kind of weird/relevant because I had just been reading in the news about how Germany's economy is doing so much better than France's, which is a big talking point in the election. Germany has a 5.7% unemployment rate, versus 10% in France, and the disparity is even greater for young people. I remember reading this article right afterwards.
2. I'm cackling at myself right now.
3. No, we did not expect to find a bathroom at the top.
4. Maybe the chanting part was just me.
5. To clarify, this isn't to say that I didn't like Strasbourg! I loved downtown Strasbourg! Just the area between the edge of downtown and the bridge was kind of crappy.
6. Epilogue: I did finally find a bathroom in a McDonalds. No toilet seats though. :/