Jess's Christmas Adventures · Diary No. 1

Strasbourg: Storks, Bredle, and One Very Big Tree

Christmas trip·Strasbourg, France

I woke up at 5:30am. There's no negotiating with my body clock. In my head the flamingos were already up, standing in the cold shallows on one leg each, wondering why I wasn't bringing breakfast. Sorry, flamingos — not my round today. I'd been hoarding days all autumn, the way squirrels hoard acorns: a swapped shift here, a saved afternoon there, until I had enough for the big one. One whole week before Christmas off, spent on one great train loop across Europe. I'd packed the night before: flask of tea, a notebook with Barnaby's latest dictation in it (something about a delivery that goes to the wrong address; he won't tell me the ending yet) and five cities' worth of room left to fill, and a ticket with the first stop's name on it: Strasbourg.

Eurostar from St Pancras to Paris, a short hop across the city to the Gare de l'Est, and then the TGV east, an hour and three quarters of whooshing past frosty fields. Strasbourg was stop one — after that the loop ran east through Germany and beyond, all the way to a sleeper train home at the end of the week. But I had the whole first day planned the way I plan a zoo round: animals first, lunch second, and the famous Christmas market saved for the afternoon, when the lights come on.

The zoo

First stop: the Parc de l'Orangerie, Strasbourg's oldest park, where there's a small free zoo and a mini farm tucked among the trees. But I wasn't really there for the goats. The Orangerie is home to the city's white-stork centre — the place that helped bring Alsace's storks back from the brink — and the storks treat the whole park as their own. There are nests everywhere: in the tall trees, and perched on the chimneys of the Pavillon Joséphine like great woven hats. Keeper's confession: I stood underneath one for a full five minutes just admiring the engineering. Layer upon layer of sticks, lined and relined, built up year after year — a nest big enough to hold a keeper, honestly.

The best part is that these days some of the storks don't bother migrating south at all. They stay right through the winter. So while I was picking my way along the frosty paths, one great white bird came clattering overhead — that wonderful wooden-castanet sound a stork makes with its beak — and settled onto a chimney pot as if it owned the lease. Which, to be fair, it probably does. I watched it tuck one leg up and survey the park like a supervisor checking the morning rounds. I know that look. I have received it from several species.

Lunch

By midday my stomach was making its own announcements, so I found a little café in the cathedral quarter with steamed-up windows and the smell of butter and spice pouring out of the door. Ordering "just a taste" of the local baking turned out to be a tactical error. Out came bredle — little spiced Alsatian biscuits in stars, hearts and crescents — and a slab of pain d'épices, dark and honeyed, which I promised myself was for the train home and definitely ate most of immediately. Hot chocolate to finish, thick enough to count as a course. This is what lunch is supposed to be.

The market

The afternoon belonged to the Christkindelsmärik. Strasbourg has been holding this market since 1570 — older than the zoo profession, older than most of the buildings I work in — and it spreads itself across square after square: wooden chalets on Place Broglie, stalls in the cathedral's shadow, lights threaded through every tree. The first thing I smelled was cinnamon. The second thing was cinnamon again. No complaints. Grown-ups queued patiently for mulled wine while I did the rounds with a second hot chocolate, playing it considerably cooler than I felt.

I took my mandatory wrong turn somewhere between the cathedral and the old tanners' quarter — one confident stride down the wrong lane, straight into a quiet street of half-timbered houses where a cat watched me from a windowsill with total professional indifference. The rule held, as it always does: the wrong turn was the right one, because it looped me back to Place Kléber just as the light was going. And there it was: the giant Christmas tree, lit from root to star, so tall that everyone in the square was walking around with their chin up and their mouth slightly open. Me included.

Onward

But Strasbourg wasn't the finish line. It was the start. I caught the evening train east out of the city, Germany unrolling past the windows in the dark, the better part of four hours to Nuremberg, with a fresh bag of bredle from the market riding in my coat pocket as the official travelling picnic and my notebook open on the fold-down table. One city down, four to go. I fell asleep somewhere past the frosty fields, cheek against the cold glass, and woke rolling into the next stop with cinnamon on my gloves. Happy doesn't cover it.

— Jess

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