Mike is Me: Strasbourg, France

It was something like a 6 hour drive across France to arrive in Strasbourg, which is snuggled right up against the German border and close to the Swiss border as well. It has a really interesting history of switching between being part of Germany and part of France. Because of that it has lasting German traditions and it makes it a very unique corner of France. It was my very first city that I served in on my mission. I remember arriving in Brussels from the MTC and having a day or two to adjust to things before gathering in the family room of the mission home and opening our first calls. I was assigned to Schiltigheim (which I could not pronounce at the time and which is a suburb north of Strasbourg) and I was assigned to serve with Elder Strasser. Everyone kept talking about how cool this 'hick' from Idaho was. It made me a little bit nervous. I had nothing to be nervous about. Elder Strasser was as good as they come. He treated me like his best friend from the first time we met. I wish that everyone could have a trainer like I had. He taught me a lot and he set the tone for the rest of my mission. The one thing that I will always appreciate about Elder Strasser is that he always made me feel important, even though I was at the begining of my mission and I was more than likely useless at most things. I also remember that he used to make me bare my testimony to him every night before bed and then he would bare his. I didn't like it at first, but I grew to love it. He got me addicted to collecting ties and gave me a few to add to my collection. While we were walking down the streets, sometimes to entertain ourselves, he would teach me his old army calls that he learned at basic training. He introduced me to my favorite hymn "Abide with Me." I had obviously heard it before but when we started singing it everytime we went to visit Alex Bajee, it was forever different for me. It has a tender place in my heart and always takes me back to that hospital where Alex lived.

According to mission lingo, Elder Strasser was my dad and I killed him. For the next 6 weeks I served with Elder Hardy from England. He was an equally great guy. It was actually like I served with 3 missionaries because we all ended up in the same apartment, after all the riots caused by the events surrounding 9/11, forced us out of our apartments and our neighborhood to relocate downtown where it was more safe. We spent the holidays in Strasbourg, which is famous for it's christmas lights and christmas shops that lined all of the streets downtown. It was spectacular!

We had some pretty awesome P-day's in Strasbourg. There is so much culture around and so many things to see. When planning this stop in Strasbourg, I wanted to show Trisha how awesome the area is and the best way that I could do that was to take her to the places that we used to go on P-day.

Sam and I hanging out the window of our hotel at Place Les Halles; Trisha's idea. We had a great hotel near downtown and Sam had his own bed, best thing ever.

A look at the city from our hotel room

Sam learned to love the Kindle with Scooby Doo and Super Why. He did so good on all of our very long car drives.

We left very early in the morning for a day packed full of sightseeing. Our first stop was an hour outside of Strasbourg, up in the Vosges mountains. Struthof concentration camp. It is the only concentration camp in France and it is a sacred site.

This is a remodel of the entrance gate. Most of the camp was destroyed (several different times) after it was vacated at the end of 1944. It is documented that 52,000 people were sent to this camp or it's annexes; many inprisoned for being part of the resistence, some for being jewish, homosexual, gypsy or any other groups targeted by the Nazi forces. Of those 52,000 prisoners, 22,000 died on these grounds, making it one of the most murderous concentration camps!

A view looking down upon the camp site from the outside of the top fence. Check out that view. It might be a little twisted, but I kept asking myself, "I wonder if despite the terrible circumstances that brought the detainees there, and despite the horrendous treatment they recieved, could they look out on this view and enjoy a little piece of God's creation? Could it have brightened their spirits?" I don't know. I can't even imagine.

Looking up the hill at the memorials for each individual killed on the site. There are a lot of crosses. It is hard to imagine that each one of them represents a person who suffered and died there. I loved the wild flowers that grew all throughout the camp site.

More crosses.

I found this one very touching. "Inconnu" or Unknown. They know someone died but they don't know who. There were a lot of these. Not surprising but very sad.

Another view looking down on the camp. Hanging was one of the many awful ways that people died here.

This table, an experiment table, was in a building at the bottom of the camp. It was used for "scientific" experiments, which I would call torture, although they had seperate, specialized torture tables. This building, I believe is still in it's original form. Very rundown.

The oven. unspeakable.

I found this pretty cool. It is a door frame that divides the hallway in the experimental building. It is worn almost to the point of not being there. It represents the condition of things at the camp and even more, it represents the worn spirits of the prisoners as they drug their feet down the hallway of torture and/or death.

This is a torture room. They used this to get prisoners to their breaking point, both physically and emotionally. They were locked up in these boxes (which are not tall enough to stand in) for hours and even days. Thisha refused to get in there, but humored me by taking a picture next to it to show it's height.

This is the crematorium.

Barbed wire lined the camp

We spent a few hours at Natzwiller-Struthof walking around the site. In one of the museums they were doing a special exhibit that highlighted the sports that occured at the camp. It was very interesting. It highlighted some of the most well known olympians of the day that were imprisoned at the camp. It showed pictures of them as olympians and then as prisoners, you can imagine the difference. The exhibit also highlighted the sports that the prisoners were forced to participate in even when many of them were starving to death. It was ironic that Hitler and the Nazi's forced sports upon the prisoners to satisfy their idea of perfect physique, yet the prisoners were malnourished and emaciated which definitely doesn't fit in the perfect physique category.

Our next stop was a drive down the mountain to a small village called Ribeauville. It is a typical Alsacian (Alsace region of France) village at the foot of the mountains. When I was a missionary we came here and spent a day hiking up the mountain to the 3 castle ruins located there.

A view looking up at the castles in the hills above the village

The Alsace region is known for it's storks. I can't remember why. This is a stork nest on top of a cool spire.

A cool building with a vinyard in the background.

Downtown Ribeauville

A street in Ribeauville

We stopped in centre ville to eat lunch and above us, atop the adjacent building, was this stork nest with two storks inside. While we were eating, one of the storks flew out and over us. It was pretty sweet.

Sam waiting for lunch, with sweet building in the background.

Me and my coke chilling outside under an umbrella at the restaurant. I ate a smoked duck salad and it was delicious.

Kate loved acting like a big girl in Sam's stroller.

Trisha had her first tasted of escargot. Despite her face that clearly shows how nervous she was to try it, she actually really liked it! She also had the famous alsacian choucroute (a cabbage, sausage, potato mixture) for lunch.

Good thing Sam was going through a phase of loving hotdogs and fries. He had a huge variety of weird european hotdogs during our trip. He loved them all.

The whole time we were eating, we were debating whether we wanted to try to hike to the castles with the kids. Trisha was weary and I was pushy. I knew it would be hard but I also knew that she would regret it if we didn't do it. So, I convinced her to hike. This is a view of the castles from the bottom of the hiking trail.

This is the first part of the hike which leads out of the city. Sam did so well at first. He wanted to walk by himself. I was really happy.

This is by far the best shot we got in Europe. I LOVE THIS PICTURE!

More of Sam walking up the steep trail. He occasionally triped up the trail and sometimes he felt like it was so steep that he need to crawl up it.

Sam with St. Ulrich castle in the background. That is the one that we hiked to. Shortly after this picture, Sam didn't want to walk anymore. I ended up carrying him up the rest of the way. I didn't think it would be too bad. It was 95 degrees and extremely humid and Sam didn't want to be held and he refused to walk. I fought him for the remaining mile of the hike. Trisha had Kate in a baby carrier on her belly. Kate also began to get hungry and thus fussy close to the top of the hike. We were both sweating like crazy and we did not bring enough water for all of us. We were stopping every 5 minutes for breaks. It took us over an hour to reach the bottom castle.

It was worth it!!! The view was breathtaking! Skies like this are rare.

Sam exploring the castle ruins.

Trisha and Kate with the ruins.

A really cool wall on the lower level of the castle.

Can you see the village below? It's a great spot for a castle, they had a view of everything coming at them. Just one question? How did they haul all of the supplies up the mountain to build the castle, it's insane. I was dying with a 25lb child.

Another view from a window.

Sam, Trisha and Kate with the adjacent castle in the background

A view looking down from the upper levels of the castle.

Me and Kate.

Because the way up the mountain was so frustrating, we did the old swaparoo. Trisha took Sam in the baby carrier, so he was stuck in it. I took Kate in my arms. It turned out better. I did slip on a rock and fall down, but Kate was unharmed. She didn't like me holding her and screamed most of the way down but it was still better than the way up. We have never been so hot and thirsty and sweaty in our lives. If we can do that with two kids, we can do anything! It was incredible!

The city square at the begining/end of the hike.

After the hike, we decided that we would meander back to Strasbourg by taking the Route des Vins (translation Wine Route), a small two lane road that stretches just over 100 miles and winds through all the small villages with thousands of acres of vinyards on both sides. It's something I had read about online and thought it looked cool. It was beyond cool. Here is what we saw along the way...

Haute-Koenigsburg castle. One of the few castles in the region that has been fully restored to it's original form. It is massive and beautiful.

More castle ruins. Most of the castles in the region are still in ruins.

The vinyards.

Small winding roads.

Dozens of villages.

Hills and mountains.

If I were to go back to this region again, I would start at the begining of the route and take my time stopping at all the villages along the way, hiking to all the castles, and staying the nights in the quaint hotels. This is a must do if you are ever there.

We took a slight detour to pass by the chapel and my two first apartments in Schiltigheim. Again, crazy to pass these places that are so familiar, almost felt like I knew them from a dream. We got back to the city with just enough time to hit some stores in the commercial center next to our hotel and then head over to the famous gothic cathedral at the center of town.

This was a view from out of the hotel window. It is called Woman Walking to the Sky. Apparently it is modeled after Man Walking to the Sky which is located in the neighboring town in Germany. I'm not sure why it exists, but it's unique.

This is Place Homme de Fer.

This is the cathedral. It is impossible to get a picture of the whole thing because of how tall it is and it's location between lots of buildings. We just got a snap of it before the heavens opened on us and sent a flood of rain down. We had to run back to our hotel, each of us with a kid in arms. It was raining so hard! We ran from one store front to the next trying to find cover. It was the France that I remember.