The name Wissembourg sounds German, but it stands on French soil. In fact Wissembourg is the French equivalent of what the German call Weißenburg, meaning white castle. Wissembourg is a small town at the tip of North-east France.
Today however I did not see any white castle. This place is a small town in the region of Alsace in Northeast France that lies on the French German border, (Yes the Alsace-Lorraine region which was annexed to Germany in 1871 and given back to France after WW1 at Versailles in 1919), and so it we could take the train from Germany to Wissembourg, no customs, nothing.
And as expected, the city looked more German than French, if you ask me. Its like you do not get the Paris feeling where people sit outside cafes in rows of tables facing the road, or everyone being well-dressed on the streets. The typical aspects of a German town such as the Marktplatz as well as the Rathaus (I don't know what are the French words for it), as well as Fachwerkhäuser which can be seen all over the place. The shopkeepers there are able to speak German as well, and most of the menus are explained in German as well. It turns out that throughout the course of history, the Alsace region were acutally ruled by changing French and German hands. No wonder now I remember seeing pictures of Strasbourg (60km south of Wissembourg, also in France) that looked more like Germany than France. And I found out from Malcom that to go to Strasbourg, the cheapest way would be to change trains at Wissembourg, since I could travel to Wissembourg for free with the Semester ticket.
Anyway we did not do much at Wissembourg today as we arrived pretty late in the afternoon. It was just a little walk and some cakes as well as eating raw oysters. The raw oysters were really good and I liked it a lot, its really tasty and I just ate it like that without squeezing lemon juice. We did some shopping in the supermarket but I found the prices in that supermarket to be much more expensive than the ones in Germany. I ended up buying pork meat in cubes as well as pig's liver and made some nice soup for dinner just now.
I swear that if I go there again, I'd eat one whole plate myself.
Now that I have found out the way to explore the Alasce region.... more places await me. But tomorrow its the long anticipated Baden-Baden trip!
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