Now we own the night and it can't be undone, we'll never forget how it feels to be young.

There was a market
(with free cheese samples!)
next to the boat landing.

Happy Forever Day!*

Yesterday I went to Strasbourg (France) with a group of about 60 exchange/ Erasmus students. I set out at 07:45, and we arrived (a bus and three trains later) in Strasbourg at about 11:30. It was a lovely albeit cold day as we walked as a great big massive group around the town for a while. Not on a tour or anything, just to seemingly get to the landing where we were meant to go on some sort of city tour FROM A BOAT, but it turned out there were no boats there until 2:30 or something... so we were set free to roam about the city.

There were some lovely Christmas decorations put up all over restaurants/ other buildings. Further to my post about Christmas over here, the decorations just don't seem to be as tacky here. Sure, there are still some super tacky things, but they are balanced by the nice decorations.

There was a big church.

 After a pizza lunch, we had a look around the Christmas market (similar to German ones except that >Glühwein was called vin chaud and came in plastic cups instead of nice mugs) which was nice. We watched a band busk for a while - they were quite good and seemingly the opposite of self-important; they had their band name written on a tea towel, pegged to the keyboard music stand. Something that I've noticed over here is that buskers seem to form bands and play together, rather than sitting alone and playing the accordion, there'll be an accordion player, with a violinist, and perhaps some other instruments too. I think it's quite nice, actually. The band I saw yesterday seemed to be an actual band trying to make a name for themselves, rather than just busking, though. 

While we ate eclairs and toffee apples, we sat in a radio broadcasting... hut? I don't know, it was made of glass, and it was super warm inside which was rather nice. However I don't think we were meant to be in there... not that anyone said anything, but just had that feeling. So we left (taking free keyrings on our way out!) and had a bit of a look in some shops before making the three-hour trip home.

Once home, I was super tired after such a long day (and a very restless night's sleep the night before - I kept waking up for seemingly no reason), and did not feel like going out at all. However, I had received an invitation from a girl at Church to a real German Haus party, so thought I probably should go, really. I made it there (it took 40 mins to actually get there - it's times like these that I would like a car... (interestingly I wrote 'bike' instead of 'car' then...)) about 11pm, where I was described by the birthday girl's fiancé (upon being asked who it was) as 'the red-haired girl'. I accepted a Glühwein and awkwardly made some conversation before children's games became the focus of the evening.

First we played Topfschlagen (~hitting the saucepan). Topfschlagen is a children's game, and involved someone being blindfolded, span around a few times, then crawling on their hands and knees hitting things with a wooden spoon, trying to find an overturned saucepan while everyone else said 'warmer' and 'colder'. There was meant to be something sweet underneath... instead there was an onion. That game was abandoned after two rounds, after which we played musical chairs (which I joined in with, and came fourth or something. Yesssssss ;) [EDIT: musical chairs in German is Reise nach Jerusalem - journey to Jerusalem. What.]

German sparklers: exactly the same as Australian ones.

Just before midnight (Sophie's birthday was today), we all put our coats and shoes on, and went outside to sing 'happy birsday' (oh, Germans! <3) and light sparklers at midnight. Then, my favourite part of the evening, we went on a drunk walk! A German drunk walk with Germans through the fields! Well, it wasn't exactly drunk, but we did have two bottles of Sekt (sparkling wine) and some red wine... It was good. When we got back to the flat, I received an education in German music which was both hilarious and interesting, and I wish I'd had my phone with me (in the room) that I could've written down more of the songs (I did write some when waiting for the bus home, but couldn't remember everything...). Speaking of the bus home, talk about bad connections! I would've been waiting in town for over half an hour for my bus, so I decided to walk home, and got home before it even would've left town.

*Today (the 18th) is Forever Day! It's the day from which buying Alex Day's song Forever Yours will count towards the Christmas charts. He's one of the YouTubers I watch (he did the series of him reading Twilight, if any of you remember me writing about that), and is unsigned, and the profits of the song sales are going to World Vision. He's actually released 12 versions of the song, and the total cost of all the other songs are straight going to World Vision. Although I don't live in the UK, I bought six versions of it because good causes are good, and today was also the Project for Awesome. I do love the internet sometimes. Well, most times, really. The song already got to number four on the UK charts. IN LESS THAN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS. I think it'd be amazing if an unsigned artist got the Christmas number one (well, any number one, really), especially if it were Alex, as I've been watching his videos for a while now. Anyway, if you're not in Germany you can watch the video below, or listen to the song here if you do live in this unfortunate country of censored music.



PS the forecast is for snow for the next few days, so I am crossing my fingers and druecking my Daumen as hard as I can that I get a white Christmas!!