STRASBOURG - ANOTHER KIND OF CHRISTMAS
The end of the year is not the best time for me. It’s not as if I am down in the dumps, but Christmas and the New Year seem to have become frenetic commercial symbols and the « buy, buy, buy » syndrome just leaves me cold. Swanie, my granddaughter was not in the mood for the silly season fêtes either. I took her to Strasbourg for her « Christmas Present ». It’s a city virtually on the German border which has a long and rather sordid history: part of Alsace or part of Germany. The Alsaciens have their own dialect which is close to German. Perhaps the present generation has not adopted it but my generation still chatters on in the street…. Strasbourg is one of the nine largest cities in France with nearly half a million inhabitants in a metropolitan area spanning across the river into the German city of Kehl, on the eastern bank of the Rhine. The city itself is the seat of the Council of Europe, the European Court of Human Rights, the European Ombudsman, the Eurocorps, the European A