Lucas Wax Goes to Germany...: Strasbourg and a German Winery

Twas another busy week. Of course. Monday and Tuesday were fairly uneventful. Basically just went to classes and did homework. EU-US Relations was interesting on Tuesday, however, as we presented arguments for or against certain companies in EU-US trade disputes. I was on the Microsoft "team," arguing that the fines the EU imposed against the company for monopolizing markets were unfair. It was pretty interesting actually. And then of course there was the Airbus-Boeing debate, which got very technical and convoluted very quickly, which reflects reality fairly well actually. But I digress.

On Wednesday, we took a day trip to Strasbourg to visit the European Parliament and tour the city. We were actually able to watch about a half hour or so of live debate from the galleries of the Parliament floor. It was really interesting. We actually got to see this speech live:

So that was pretty cool. He's one of the extreme British nationalists that are basically against European integration for the most part (in case you couldn't tell from the video). And we also got to see Barroso (the President of the European Commission) speak on the floor. He was cool because he kept switching languages during his speech to address different delegates or issues. Altogether, we probably heard about 10 different languages on the floor, and we even got to wear those little earpieces so we could listen to the translators give us the English version of the speeches. It was super badass.

This is in the main entrance part of the EU Parliament where most of the offices are.

After vising the Parliament, we went to this place in the city for Flammkuchen. It was all you could eat Flammkuchen and pop for 5 Euro. Between four of us, we went through 7 or 8 Flammkuchen total (each one is like a thin pizza in a rectangle shape), including some wonderful dessert Flammkuchen. There were two main kinds of Flammkuchen, one with onion and bacon and the other with mushrooms. And they are very cheesy and have some kind of delicious sauce on them.

We then went on a city tour, which was fairly interesting. Strasbourg is a very interesting city because it is in the Alsace region, giving it a unique German-French history. I think the tour guide said the city has alternated between France and German rule five separate times. Today, most of the old architecture is German, but the city itself is run in French (official language, street signs, etc.).

This is on the tour of Strasbourg. The house on the right is an example of old German-style architecture.

Thursday was an incredibly busy day for me. I had an assignment due in Regions in the EU, a paper due in German, a midterm in EU-US Relations, and a presentation on Slovakia in my Political Science Seminar. The day went about as well as could be expected, but I was absolutely exhausted at the end of the day. I had planned on going out to the bar later that night with friends, but I got this intense fever for like two hours where I was curled up in my bed with a bunch of layers on just shivering. Eventually I fell asleep, and I felt a lot better in the morning (though probably not 100% still).

But I was glad I felt better on Friday morning, because we took a trip to the Zeller Abstberg Winery near Offenburg. We sampled many different wines, all grown and made locally. We had a rose wine, a few different white wines, a few different red wines, an ice wine, and a sort of unfiltered wine (as I understood it, the unfiltered wine was just at the beginning stage of the fermentation process, which was the reason that it was opaque instead of transparent). They were mostly very good, except for one red wine we had that was pretty strong in flavor. The ice wine was incredibly sweet, and it usually a dessert wine. It is made from grapes that are left out on the vines after the harvest until the temperature gets lower than -7 Celsius. However, in most years in this region, the temperature does not get that cold before January when the grapes rot, and so no ice wine can be made. But every fourth year or so, it is possible. Anyway, that was just some random knowledge that I thought I'd share.

In the cellar of the winery.