Sickness in Strasbourg

As part of my program, we have a few educational field trips scheduled. One of them was to go to Strasbourg, one of the two main meeting areas for the EU (the other being Brussels).

Unfortunately, I developed a cold the day before we planned to leave. I had luckily packed some DayQuil, so after taking it, I felt good to go. Not perfect, but at least able to move.

I got to the train station bright and early to make our 8:24 am departure. At the station I was even shoved aside by a man with a TV camera because a French minister was going to Strasbourg on our train.


The train was very nice. It only took about 2 hours to get between the two cities. It all felt very efficient.

When we got to Strasbourg, we had time to grab a quick bite to eat. I wasn't hungry, but grabbed some quiche anyway. I ate about half of it before completely losing my appetite. Uh-oh.

Then, I was forced to stand in a gross, underground metro station waiting for everyone to get back from their various eating trips. At this point, I was almost crying because I wanted to sit down so badly. By the time I got onto the metro, I knew I was not going to get better just by sitting down.

We got to the hotel, and checked in, only to discover that only one room was ready. We decided to stash all our bags in that one room. The plan was to go to the European Parliament and then to the European Court. By the time we were about to leave, I was having violent chills.

My program director took one look at me and told me to stay behind at the hotel. I went up to the one ready room to try to manage to get warm and to sleep.

I stole one of the blankets from a bed but decided to sleep on the floor. Whatever I had, I didn't want to be responsible for getting someone else sick. I turned on the shower in the bathroom for a little bit in order to make steam, which helped. After that, I just turned on the TV and fell asleep using my backpack as a pillow.

I woke up about every half-hour only to go back to sleep again. I was still pretty cold. Eventually though, I couldn't sleep any more. I turned on France 2 in time to catch the beginning of my new favorite show Un cas pour deux (A Case for Two).

This is a German show from the late 80s early 90s dubbed in French. It is about a private investigator who works for a defense attorney trying to clear the names of wrongly-accused people. One of the recent episodes was about a Priest charged with killing his step-father. (Really it was his sister who did it.) This was titled "Dieu est mon temoin" ("God as my witness").

The next show to come on was "Rex". This is a show about the relationship between a detective and his police dog. Another excellent German import.


Rex not only saves his master from getting shot, but if he has the chance, he will steal his ham and cheese croissant!

After Rex was over, my classmates had returned from their day out. My room was also ready. I stumbled into an actual bed and took a nice, four-hour nap. When I woke up at 8pm, there was no sign of chills. I took this as a good sign and went back to sleep for the night.

The next morning, I felt a little iffy, but better for the most part. My program director Francesco came into my room to talk to me.

"How are you feeling?"
-"Better"
"What do you think was wrong? Do you think you had the flu?"
-"I must have"
"Well probably the swine flu."
-"I hope not"
"Who cares? You lived through it. If you got the swine flu, we'll all get it."

That was reassuring.

We had to check out of the hotel, so I had to tough through the day. I felt surprisingly better, except for the sniffles and a cough.

We first went to the Council of Europe. The Council is in no way attached to the EU--they are kind of more like the UN. The building was, as the tour-guide put it, very 70s.




We mostly heard about the various things the Council does. They meet four times a year, and one of the sessions was coming up, so they were repairing stuff all over the building (like those lights).

On the train to the center of town, we saw the two buildings that I had missed the day before. The Court of Justice:
And the European Parliament:

We had about five hours to kill before our train home, so we decided to see the sights of Strasbourg. It was a relatively upscale town. It might have been because of my sickness, but I didn't think it was particularly interesting.


The one really cool thing was the cathedral of the town, Notre-Dame de Strasbourg. It is ridiculously tall. I could not get it all in one shot. This has inspired me to possibly subtitle this blog "Famous buildings that are too big and that I am too close to to get a good picture."











I really liked the inside of the church because I could sit down. I'll admit it, I did a little praying too: "God, please let me feel better and not give everyone in my program swine flu. Amen."

There was a really cool clock at the back of the church. It had four different indicators of time, and it had mechanical things that moved at certain hours. For example, a rooster fluttered his wings at 1 pm every day.



After the church, we wandered around some more. We found a market where I purchased a delicious bottle of sprite to hydrate myself. I had not felt better.


The train ride home did not seem to take two hours. I worked on a little homework and drank a nice hot cup of hot chocolate. All I really wanted was some chicken soup though.

I had told my host mom that I would be back too late to eat with her, so I wanted to stop and grab some food at the grocery store before going home. I looked like a zombie combing the soup section for anything that looked like chicken soup. I found some ramen-esque noodles and bought some peanut butter, the closest thing to saltines I could find, and a 2 liter bottle of 7up.

I felt SO MUCH BETTER.

The next day I managed to make it to class, despite a still-raging cold. I told my host mom about how I had been sick and about how I had bought some soup for myself. Next thing I know, she is shoving a HUGE bowl of vegetable soup at me. I think it might have been split-pea soup. It was good, but it was very filling. When I finished it, next thing I know, she starts serving me pasta on top of it. I was like, "just a little, I'm not that hungry"

She argued with me. She clearly takes the adage "feed a cold and starve a fever" seriously. I thought I was going to burst.

Oh well. I did feel better the next day. Maybe she was right.