Strasbourg highlights

On my second day in Strasbourg I went to Mass, continuing a run of three consecutive cathedrals and three consecutive Sundays. (I'm not Catholic, just curious.) The Prague Mass had been subdued: few people, an empty half-church roped off. The Vienna one had an oddly cosy feel, with lots of parish notices (German, half-understood) at the end, and so much artwork in the cathedral that the walls and pillars were almost hidden.

The Mass in Strasbourg was the most spectacular. The cathedral was huge and medieval and bare, and of stone a beautiful pink. The congregation was large; the singing was loud and clear (helped, I suspect, by some sort of hidden microphone and boom box); the organ music was more and better than elsewhere. A man with no legs came on a stretcher, and the big front doors (usually not used) swung open for him.

Afterwards I went sculpture-seeing in the museum. Among the jumble of stonework salvaged from churches and abbeys now collapsed was a scene labelled "Temptation, and the two foolish maidens, and the four wise ones". Temptation was offering an apple; the two foolish maidens were holding upside-down egg cups and the four wise ones were holding ones the right way up. I'd love to know what the egg cups represent . . . .

I came across a junk market full of stalls offering secondhand novels or used clothing or old dishes and knickknacks. My favourite sold only ancient French posters: "Coca-Cola!", "Bostik: for joins and gluing", "Queen of Pleasure, by Victor Joze -- at all bookshops", "Tell your mama to buy Chicorée Nouvelle".

I splurged in a bookshop (it was a cheap splurge, books here are $10-$15) before heading back to Freiburg. I read French much better than German, and have been missing having comprehensible novels.