Did I Come to Strasbourg to Study or Eat?

TGIF because I am spending this weekend in Lyon, France! I am so excited to be traveling with four of the other Kalamazoo College girls. It will be our first taste of traveling around Europe. We will be leaving tomorrow morning at around 6 am, exploring Lyon all day Saturday, staying in a hostel Saturday night, exploring Lyon all day Sunday, and returning to Strasbourg late Sunday night just in time for school on Monday (ugh). 

Speaking of, today marks the last day of my first week of school at the University of Strasbourg. If I said that I love the classes here, I’d be lying. But, because we are in a separate school for international students, we get to meet people our age from all over the world. Today I ate lunch with a girl from Cyprus who is here to study translation and a boy from China who will be here for the next five years. It is also surprisingly fun to have my classes all in French because I feel more accomplished when I have understood an entire lesson or answered a question correctly. Although I do not plan to continue studying French after my time in Strasbourg, it is still extremely rewarding to see ability to speak and understand French coming along.

Because I don’t want to spend this blog post talking about school, I will show you some of the delicious foods that I (and others) have eaten here.

My first coffee, ordered what seems like forever ago, but was actually not even two weeks ago: 

The tarte flambé is a specialty in Alsace, the region of France that Strasbourg is in. Here’s a petit tarte flambé (smaller than they usually are) with apples, raisons, and cinnamon. It tasted like a mix of apple pie and granola and definitely like something that should have been on the dessert menu.

Here’s Kathleen with a more traditional tarte flambé. Although they look very similar to pizza, I found them to have fewer toppings with stronger tastes, whether that taste be salty, sweet, etc.

We’ve been trying to explore all different restaurants, cafés, and bars, but when we tasted this sangria once, we ended up going back to the same place to order the same thing two nights later.

Here’s the lovely Liv with a coffee au lait (with milk) and... some other stuff. I was not paying attention when she ordered (sorry Marin, bad food and traveling writing skills.)

Because Strasbourg is so close to Germany, a lot of the restaurants have German influences. These German egg noodles are called Spätzle. My favorite part was the sauce, which was fruity but also a bit spicy. Tomatoes are in season right now and, because the French often eat what is in season seeing as many buy their foods daily at the markets, I’ve been eating a lot of tomatoes.

I’ll throw in this picture of a box of Rice Krispies, which I think is funny and definitely different from the ones at home.

              Now on to the best part. Here is another coffee , with my first pain au chocolat (chocolate croissant). 

               Three of us ordered this dessert without paying attention to the name, which was a bad idea. Luckily, we frequent this pastry shop and I'm sure I will be able to get back to you soon with what it is called. The outside was chocolate and inside was pistachio, followed by more chocolate. Whatever it's called, the lady running the shop told me I was eating the first one of the season! 

And this masterpiece is a tarte au chocolat. I’m sure you can guess what it is: 100% chocolate and 100% amazing.