Just to post a small resume of the trip since it's just too annoying typing with my temporary OS. You'll get a more detailled summary with pictures as soon as I get my new computer.
Well, it was a great trip and also very relaxing. We spent most of our time in the little villages of Alsace, and only a few days in bigger cities like Strasbourg, Nancy and Paris, in decreasing order of appreciation.
Most of the villages were went, including Zellenberg where we were renting a house, live from either the tourists or from wine making. My parents, who love wine, had a great time tasting as much as they could and buying and drinking a few bottles every day, while I settled for local beers most of the time.
I also visited several castles, one fully restored (Haut-Koenigsbourg) by the German Kaiser at the start of the century, and three who were completely in ruins. While the others spent most of their times shopping and tasting wine, I prefered to simply visit the towns and the trails/ruins. It was more fulfilling physically considering I'm not really in good physical shape (once, I challenged myself to run up a steep trail leading up to a castle 528 meters high in the mountain in half an hour, which to my surprise I actually managed to do) and one of the ruins I visited by really small but I was alone up there with nothing by the sound of rushing wind and a view of the entire region extending several hundred kilometers. Those kind of places are too few near where I live, and it's great to just stand there and not think of anything except what you see.
We also spent a day visiting a woman my mom had met several years prior in a train in France. She and her husband live in the Vosges mountain chain, so we had to travel for close to two hours on a narrow and steep road to get there. They were really nice and welcoming people.
Aside from that, there was a stork (the regional mascot) which kept hanging on the TV antenna of the house in front of ours, which was neat. Oh, and I visited an exposition in a town of old World War II documents when the Nazi annexed Alsace and basically tried to force everyone into adopting German and Nazi culture. It was creepy to see two pictures of the town square, one empty with parading Nazi officers and another today with the streets filled with tourists and with flowers at every window.
There are a lot of other things to talk about, but I've said enough for the moment. You'll get the rest once I get a working PC
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"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard
B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me
