Herbstferien Part 3: Weekend in Lille

For the last big adventure of fall break, I headed across the border for a weekend in France.  My friend Lisa is living and working in Paris now, and we got to know each other as interns for the same project for WorldDenver while we were both going to grad school at DU.  Lisa and I had been talking back and forth trying to decide where to go for our weekend away, and I’m so glad we settled on Lille.  As soon as we started exploring, I fell in love.  It’s a big city that feels like a little college town.  The proximity to Belgium is evident in the food, the architecture, and the beer, but it’s still definitely France.  And trust me, with that combo, everyone wins.

After dropping our luggage at the hostel Saturday morning, we headed into Vieux Lille to grab coffee, escape the rain, and strategize our weekend.

After that, we headed through the rain towards Palais des Beaux-Arts via the Grand Place.

The Palais des Beaux-Arts was awesome!  I’m pretty sure that I read somewhere that it’s France’s second largest museum and the largest outside of Paris.  But it was actually extremely manageable.  We spent about two hours there and were able to see works from the ancient Egyptians all the way up to the well-known 20th century stuff.  My favorites were probably some of the van Goghs and a few sculptures by Rodin. (Just an aside, if you’re ever in Paris, you should go to the Rodin museum.  The collection is amazing and the gardens are beautiful.)

After the museum we walked up to the citadel, which is actually just a giant park with a zoo(and a mysterious government building to which we were denied access) and then wound our way back to the city center and went shopping around the Grand Place, checked out some churches, and took a little break to sip some beer in the afternoon sun.  Everywhere I turned, there was some beautiful view, and the pictures just don’t do it justice.

Transformed! Look at the Grand Place without all those dreary gray clouds.

Heaven is this cheese shop a few blocks from the Grand Place. Look at the cheese. Respect the cheese. Love the cheese.

I can’t remember the name of this church, and it’s killing me. It was beautiful. This picture does not do it justice.

Inside Lille’s Cathedral. It is very weird and modern on the outside, and on the inside it looks like this.

One of my favorite pictures from the trip, which I shamelessly stole from Lisa’s Instagram

 

We got a recommendation from the hostel to try a place a block or two away for dinner.  Despite the fact that the menu was printed in Comic Sans font, it was legit.  We ordered Welsh, a traditional Lille dish, which turned out to be a slice of bread and a slice of ham in a casserole dish FILLED WITH CHEESE and served with a basket of fries.  After dinner we grabbed a few drinks from a bar towards the city center.  Really, we should’ve gone straight back to the hostel, because when we got back for the night their bar was more popular than most of the other places we saw that night.

Sunday morning we headed straight for the market in Wazemmes.  It’s a really big deal in Lille, and Lisa and I didn’t realize how big.  It is HUGE!  Overwhelming.  And they sell everything.  I mean everything.  It goes on for blocks.  And it felt like the whole town was there.  Everybody.  To say the least, it was nuts. After we grabbed some fruit we decided to take a break from sensory overload and had some coffee accompanied by treats from Aux Merveilleux.  These tiny bits of meringue heaven were so delicate and so unbelievably delectable.  I will never forget them.

After that we went to the zoo and saw red pandas and capybaras (among others), and then we grabbed treats for the train and headed back to Paris.

Liz’s pro travel tip: turn your train ride into a first class experience by packing as much food as possible, and don’t forget plastic cups for your wine.

 

We spent Sunday night cheering on the Broncos at a bar in Bastille.  After that it was back to Bochum to gear back up for school and the real world again.

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Since I basically feel like a Lille evangelist now, here are some great resources that helped us decide where to go and what to see.  Also important to note is that Lisa is a master of the French language, which made our lives much easier.  I think part of Lille’s appeal is that it wasn’t crawling with tourists, but that also means English is spoken less frequently!

About Travel’s Top Attractions in and around Lille
Cultural City Guide from The Telegraph
WikiTravel’s Guide to Lille
UseIt Travel’s Lille Map

 

Herbstferien Part 2: My week on the Bodensee

The Bodensee (aka Lake Constance) is probably one of the most beautiful places in all of Germany.  It’s a great big lake fed by the Rhine and surrounded by Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, not to mention vineyards, forests, Baroque churches, and the Alps.  It was the perfect setting for adventuring away from the Ruhrpott.

Sunday was R&R day, so we slept in and then just went to see the sights of Konstanz.  Konstanz is gorgeous – it escaped bombing during WWII and so all the structures are still originals from, you know, the 12th century.  Add that to the Alpine lake location and it really doesn’t get any better.

The view from the top of one of Konstanz’s churches (Münster, I’m pretty sure)

 

Monday was one of my favorite days of the break.  Susanna and I borrowed a couple of bikes, took a ferry across the lake to Meersburg, and then rode the 10 km trail along the Bodensee to Birnau, a super baroque church surrounded by vineyards.  Baroque churches like this kind of drive me crazy, but in a fun, European novelty kind of way – there’s so much going on, like, where are you even supposed to be looking?  It’s overwhelming.  But anyway, it was great.  Susanna and I had a picnic lunch in front of the church – behind us was that beautiful, pink monstrosity and in front of us were vineyards and trees and lake and sunshine.  Gorgeous.

Our view at lunchtime

Basilika Birnau

 

After our lunch we biked back to Meersburg and strolled around the town for a little bit.  After we met Susanna’s aunt and uncle for dessert, we bought some fresh apples and headed back across the lake for dinner with friends.

Tuesday, Susanna and I caught the bus with her friend Christian to take a hike at Marienschulcht.  Despite the rain that day, our hike was lovely and actually reminded me of being back home in Arkansas.  The ravine and falls are surrounded by forests and it felt just like I was traipsing around in the Ozarks.

Marienschlucht. Pictures don’t do it justice.

 

Wednesday we met back up with Susanna’s aunt and uncle and went on a hike along the upper Danube.  More trees, more wilderness, some fields, some cows, no rain but definitely some mud.  Also, a castle/fortress.  I’m not exactly sure what it’s supposed to be, but here it is.  I’m pretty sure it was 11th century, maybe 12th.  Wednesday’s picnic lunch view was the Danube on the right and the Very Old Building to our left.  Seriously, how awesome is that?

Look at the Danube! Look at those cliffs!

I think in the moment I was more impressed with this tree stump than the Very Old Building you can kind of see peeking out in the background.

 

Susanna’s aunt and uncle took us to dinner that night and then dropped us back off in Meersburg so we could catch the ferry back across the lake to Konstanz.  I’m pretty sure this was also the night we got ice cream and watched The Lion King in German.  Don’t tell us we don’t know how to have fun.  Thursday, we rested our tired little feet, and I spent most of the day relaxing at the lake park in Switzerland (because you can just hop over the border and do that here, NBD).  We capped off the day by meeting some more friends at a restaurant for flammkuchen night (flammkuchen = pizza bread with a cream sauce base and cheese and ham and onions and it is truly so simple yet so unbelievably delicious).  It was a lovely, chill night, and a perfect way to cap off my week on Lake Constance!

Herbstferien Part 1: Oktoberfest!

I got SO MUCH TRAVELING done in my two week fall break, and today I will give you part one of my experience – Oktoberfest in Konstanz!  Fellow Fulbrighter Susanna studied abroad there, and she was so kind as to invite me along to visit her old friends and some family that live around the Bodensee.  Konstanz is a gorgeous town in the southern province of Baden-Württemberg bordering the Bodensee, the Danube, and Switzerland, and on a clear day you can look across the lake and see the Austrian Alps.  Definitely a change of scenery from the Ruhrgebiet!

Oktoberfest prep began the week before break began – my number one task was to head to T.K. Maxx and get a bargain-priced dirndl.  Susanna was the right girl to take with me, because she made a beeline for the Tracht and started throwing every dirndl she thought would fit me into my hands.  I’m not going to lie, we spent two hours in that dressing room.  So many dirndl.  So many.  But I emerged victorious and ready for my first Oktoberfest experience!

Let the record show that Susanna is a Dirndl enabler. Help.

We spent all of Tag der Deutschen Einheit traveling by train.  It was a long day.  But a nice thing was we went right through the Rhineland.  Truly beautiful.  We stopped for a two-hour break in the town of Koblenz, a town on the Rhine that was pretty much destroyed in World War II, but they reconstructed it to look almost exactly as it did before.  There’s also a lovely castle across the river and some very lovely churches.  From Koblenz to Karlsruhe, our train view was the gorgeous Rhine River, punctuated every couple of miles by a castle up on a hill.  Rhineland Pfalz and Baden-Württemberg are two of the most beautiful states in Germany!  Le sigh.

Koblenz: Where no one ever has to make any tough decisions

Once we got to Konstanz, we headed to Maddie’s apartment, our first host of the week – she lives in the heart of Konstanz in an adorable apartment building where a cat roams freely.  We pretty much went straight to bed after 10 hours on trains, but most importantly we made plans to cook a traditional weisswurst breakfast the next day to get us ready for Oktoberfest.  During said breakfast we reviewed all the important Oktoberfest songs like “Fliegerlied,” “Schatzi Schenk mir ein Foto,” and “Atemlos durch die Nacht” (check them out they are so German).  We had a few last minute errands to run for the coming week and to get ready for our night, and then we went to the apartment building next door to eat with Susanna’s friend Lena and her family.  Lena’s parents cooked us a delicious meal of Schwäbisch Käsespätzle. nommmmmmmmmmmmms.  Oh my gosh you guys I ate so well.

LOOK AT THIS BREAKFAST SPREAD, Y’ALL

After dinner we went back to Maddie’s to prep.  Maddie and Lena both work at Uni Konstanz’s international office, so in addition to some of their friends who met at Maddie’s place we also met a couple of international students.  Hair braided and decked out in dirndl, we headed to the beer tents.

Back of the beer tent during a brief and rare moment of [relative] calm

 Once we made it into the Hofbrau tent we scoped out a table (we got super lucky and found one where those who had reserved it just never showed up), grabbed our beers, and prepared for a night of singing and dancing.  Everyone in the tent was standing up on the benches, and after every song we all sang a little Prostlied.  Two very awesome Swiss ladies joined us at our table and were probably having a better time than we were.  That’s one thing I’ll probably remember best about my Oktoberfest experience – on every side we were surrounded by super happy, friendly people who did the dance to the YMCA with us and would always Prost with us.  The atmosphere at Oktoberfest is unbelievably fun and unlike anything else!

The thing I really liked about Konstanz’s Oktoberfest is it is pretty small in comparison to, say, Munich.  Konstanz only has two main beer tents – Hofbrau and Paulaner – and their carnival area was much smaller and less crowded (yes!  Oktoberfest is more than beer tents!).  The Konstanz Oktoberfest was also noticeably not touristy – it seemed like most people there were from the Bodensee area.  I’ve never seen Munich’s monster Oktoberfest for myself, but what I’ve heard is that it’s packed with lots of very drunk tourists and reeks of… well, you can probably figure out what it reeks of.  If you’re in Germany during Oktoberfest season, I’d definitely recommend going outside of Munich for your beer tent needs where entrance fees are less expensive, participants more German, but the atmosphere still as kitschy, exciting, and fun as you’d find anywhere!

Prost to Oktoberfest