Ciarus

Youth Hostel =/

by clairey_tm about CIARUS

We stayed in the CIARUS youth hostel, for a youth hostel it was very clean and well maintained. We had a 3 bed room, 2 lower and 1 bunk! The second time we had 2 bunks!
The breakfast was continental and consisted of Criossants etc. The evening meal was different every night, with a choice of pasta, pizza, chicken and veg. Its got a bar, an information area, restaurant, gardens and a conference room (with TV) and down stairs in the basement there are pool tables, table tennis and a selection of arcade games.

Strasbourg

by rickyvilla81

"My 1995 voyage here"

I first came here in spring of 1995 on a college exchange trip. I totally fell in love with the city and its quirky ways, its easy-to-understand germanic accent, and its not so easy to understand Alsacian language. That is not the language that your dog speaks, but it may as well be - however it is taken seriously here, with TV programmes and street signs, you will even here groups of old poeple conversing freely in the peculiar sounding tongue. I stayed with a family in Neuhof, half German, half French, all Alsacian, and took part in classes at the Lycee Jean Monnet in Neudorf, not far from Racing Strasbourg's Stadium Meinau. I visited the european Parliament and took part in one of those phoney debates in which soppy euro sixth formers from all over europe get together to look stupid and appease the politician's whims of bringing europe to the young. I nabbed a few free t-shirts and played around with the furry end of the microphone with my friend Jack. All in all my impression was of a city that was very individual - something that is very refreshing in France. I also took the time to visit nearby Colmar, another beautiful Alsace town, but of course, if you've seen one gothic house, you've seen them all.
Oo - and Strasbourg is full of Storks and swans. They love em here.

"And since..."

I've been here a few times since, on short visits, or passing through. One of the better stays was in 1997 with my mate Terry, we got the coach here from London and stayed five nights in the CIARUS hostel (which i recommend). We crossed over to Germany, to Kehl, but also took the train as far as Freiburg, which was pretty. They have all these little streams in the street. Tel thought it was to stop cars parking there, in fact he was convinced, until I pointed out that they had been there for a few hundred years. But in Strasbourg we hired out bikes and rode all over the place, it was great fun!
Here is Tel, about to cross the Rhine from Germany back to France.