To Germany and Back

Today we gave Sophie the choice of visiting two Strasbourg parks: the Orangerie, with its zoo, or the Jardin des Deux Rives, which borders on the Rhine and would let us go over to Kehl, Germany, the small city on the other side of the river from Strasbourg. She chose the latter (which is of course the one I had hoped for myself). The park, as Ken Keffer warned us, is much nicer on the German side than on the French one. But it was still a nice way to go over to Germany. Very deliberately, there is no sign marking the border between the two on the footbridge below. The river is narrower at this point than at others, so it was an easy walk across.

While still in the French side of the park, Sophie had fun on a slide and in a little wooden play house.



After that she played in a little maze made out of small bushes. She sort of got the idea, though I ended up having to help her out.



Inside the maze were giant wooden statues of the tortoise and the hare from Jean de la Fontaine's poem based on Aesop's fable.

We reached the tortoise first. I'm not sure whether Sophie went for it first or I led her there (though Alice, my dissertation director, might have an opinion on that matter).


Over in Kehl, Sophie had her very first ice cream cone, strawberry of course. She ate every last bit of it herself, though I had to help her out a little bit with the logistics of avoiding too many drips.



During Sophie's labors with the ice cream, an old German man stopped to talk with us, explaining all about his two 17-year-old great-grandchildren and the toy his son requested back at the end of the war. It was odd, but I think he found Sophie quite charming, and it gave us the opportunity to chat a little in German. He spoke a fairly thick dialect (as some people from the area do), but I have a little experience with that type of dialect, so we were in good shape.

After a visit to Woolworths (the prices in Kehl are about 10% less than in Strasbourg), we caught the bus back to Strasbourg. 20 minutes later we were back in our apartment.