Strasbourg was one of the towns I had uncovered as I was researching France back home, and was on our list of places we'd wanted to visit. I think this was primarily because it was on the German border, and thus embodied a lot of German charm; however, at that point we had soaked in German charm for more than two weeks and French charm for mere days, so we weren't so sure that we wanted Strasbourg so much anymore. However, since Doug had been there on his '89 trip and liked it--he described it as a quaint, a little run-down, hushed, and hidden little town--we figured it would be a good place to visit. We could always go on to Metz if we wanted to, right?

We spent the entire day, once again, on the trains, although for once the weather had actually been nice. Since our room over a bar in Voiron had offered no breakfast and we hadn't had the time to get a lunch in Lyon, we satiated our appetites (which really weren't very vigorous, for some odd reason) on the fixin's we bought back at the Provence open air market. Nuts, salami, the last of our boiled eggs, chocolate...it could have been worse.

But when we arrived at Strasbourg, Doug hardly recognized it at all. It was a bustling city now, with renovated buildings, high-rises, modern streets, and busy everything. How times had changed! Tourists were everywhere, and the streets and maps were crowded and totally confusing--it reminded me a lot of a compact San Francisco. We had stopped into the TI in the station to get hotel information, but were shocked that the grubby little Strasbourg Doug remembered now had $300/night hotels. The cheapest listing in the hotel guide was $75/night, and we figured for that price we ought to be in Switzerland, so decided instead on the next train to Metz. When we found out that it wouldn't be for another hour and a half, we decided to make the most of Strasbourg and stroll around.

Since we had polished up nearly all of our food reserves, and had polished up all but maybe $6 of our French money, we thought a good quest would be the local supermarket where we could get a small, cheap dinner. According to a friendly man who ran a flower cart in the huge square, it would be a few blocks into the city center. So we walked, and walked, and walked, and walked, and then stopped..."Are you really this hungry?" I asked my husband, who quickly responded with, "No. Why are we walking all this way? We'll miss our train!" So we gave up our quest for real food and used 20 of our last 30 francs in a boulangerie which happened to have just one vanilla eclair and one vanilla/chocolate mousse cup thingee[105] left before they closed up for the evening. We really couldn't think of a better dinner, honestly.

We caught our train to Metz and arrived late again at about 9 pm. Metz was Doug's "old stomping ground"--the town in which he worked for two months in 1993--so he knew it well. The only thing he did not know was where the best valued hotels would be, however, since he had lived in an apartment, but it didn't take long for him to find yet another room above a bar: a place with a bath, wc, television, and which also took credit cards[106], for some $44/night. We also knew it was our place when, as we walked in, they were all watching X-Files dubbed in French.

The end of an era--The California Cafe eats it.

"How they seemed to have changed everywhere," I thought to myself.