Strasbourg

A few weeks ago I vowed to find us an escape from Strasbourg on the night of total madness - known to many as Saint Sylvester or New Year's Eve. Unfortunately it seems every hotel, hostel, campsite, chalet and guesthouse within a two hour radius of the city has been booked solid - with the last few remaining rooms demanding prices akin to Davos during billionaire season. Despite the lack of snow, any hideaway in the Black Forest, Vosges or Jura mountains remains elusive and thus it looks as though we will have to endure the worst night of the year in Strasbourg once again. Clearly we are not the only ones with a fear of New Year. Happy New Year! Why such dread? Well last year, to celebrate the passing of another calendar, the citizens of Alsace: set fire to 117 motor cars (61 in Strasbourg itself) held onto exploding fireworks (resulting in 17 people having their hands mutilated; 2 youths from Mulhouse lost their thumbs) smuggled over 2 tonnes of contraband fireworks into the region [...]

There is a small red Smart car that has been parked down at the end of our road for the past two weeks. Emblazoned across it's side is the old English word for 'moreover' : Yea! (pronounced yay). Normally anyone who forgets to move their car from this particular spot, in less then three hours, would find themselves with a parking ticket; but this one seems to be immune...

A bloke in a chasuble Frank was in town yesterday to nag the bureaucrats about their lack of enthusiasm for encouraging peace and cooperation between the peoples of Europe. He came, he spoke, he left. The only difference between him and the elected officials in the audience, as far as I can tell, is that he wasn't required to sign-in to claim his parliamentary attendance allowance. They came, they signed in, they sat, they politely applauded. It is unlikely however that a single MEP actually thought anything Frank said was going to make an iota of difference.  Still, it was nice seeing his chasuble pass through town. His what? His chasuble - you know the thing football players wear on the training pitch? Now I'm confused - the Pope plays footie? Er, I doubt it. No - the word chasuble (which exists in French and English and means exactly the same thing: the outermost liturgical vestment) is used in sport to refer to the bib players wear when training.  Why the French use the same word as [...]

A few weeks ago I noticed that the wheel rims on my town bike were looking rather mucky, and although I didn't resolve to clean them at the time, today they are sparkling like new.  However, this is not because my Virgo natured self could not live with such uncleanliness but because, in the space of two weeks, I was forced to replace both wheels following two separate collisions with motor vehicles. These two incidents bring my total tally of cycling accidents since moving to Strasbourg to 5.  Now, to put this in perspective - I don't own a car so go just about everywhere on my bike and I've lived in the city since 2005.  That's less than one accident a year and, I reckon, about one every 1000 kilometres cycled. Three accidents have involved cars, one - a fellow cyclist and one - a pedestrian (neither of whom seemed to have read the highway code). Each time, bar one, I have been forcibly dismounted; three of the incidents resulted in my head making contact with the tarmac/car [...]

So what's it like to be an English Masters Student at the University of Strasbourg? Well after a whole semester there I feel I am now in a position to make an objective(ish) judgement. First off, I have to say that the quality of teaching is superlative.  I have had the honour to be in the presence of some very great minds, all of whom are capable of some quite profound elucidation, not just in English but in French too - and both flawlessly.  An inferiority complex is not hard to come by here.  I'm rubbish. Personally I found the timetable a bit of a challenge.  Up to 14 hours of seminars every week ... which in addition to 6 hours of teaching, 8 hours of freelance work and copious parenting obligations - made finding personal study time a near impossible task.  Which is my excuse for failing my exams... The teacher-training element of the course 'didactics' is handled by the IUFM from a brand new building down in Meinau.  While the facilities there are excellent, the positives in [...]