SNOW!!! So I saw snow for the first time this winter with a trip to Metz!  Metz is located in eastern France near the German Boarder.  This town has actually switched hands between France and Germany many times so the culture and architecture and cuisine is a hybrid of the two.

I came prepared for the cold, snowy day with three sweaters, but some of the other members of the group unfortunately were not.  We started with a tour of the city. Unfortunately some things were closed because it was a monday.  We continued to see a cathedal.  I’ve seen SO MANY cathedrals in the past few months, but each one has its idiosyncrasies.  This cathedral was fully decorated for Christmas!  It also only had 1 rosette which is rare.  Furthermore, many of the stained-glass artwork was done by a Jewish man (and nonetheless almost all of them were portraits of Jesus). There was live music coming from the organ during our visit.

We went for a nice lunch.  They served us both bread and pretzels with our meal (remember what I said about French and German culture).  I had a dish that was a mixture of potatoes and onions and cumin (which I thought was a Mexican spice…?) baked with Munster cheese.  Munster cheese comes from the French town Munster ( not to be confused with the non-cheese-making German town Munster ). So I had Munster cheese in the same region as Munster 🙂  The dessert was a tarte made of Mirabelle which is a yellow-colored plum/prune.

Throughout the day we saw and went to a few Christmas Markets!! They are adorably decorated with bright colors and holiday cheer!  I was surprised by the various things being sold: everything from jewelery to oysters to nougat to iphone cases.

We finished our day with a visit to the Centre Pompidou of Metz (a sister museum to the Centre Pompidou of Paris… In Paris it’s actually connected to a library which I wrote about in a previous blog post). This museum is full of temporary exhibits of modern art.  We started on the top floor.  We walk into a hallway and men hand us flash lights… then we walk into the exhibit and it’s a large pitch black room.  We quickly realize it is a photography exhibit on the walls and we are to look at it using our small flash lights.  This exhibit had a truly unique effect.  It was very isolating, since you could barely see and needed to use your own flashlight to personally see each piece of photography.  The artwork was very intriguing and I spent the most time in this exhibit.  It was almost all black and white photography which went well with the black room.  The next floor was very very bright and white.  It was art work of Sol Lewitt, an American who studied at Syracuse University! He was fascinated with lines and his work was re-created from his plans by art students.  There were many rooms with different interpretations of lines in black and white.  The last exhibit was of a theatre by picasso, unfortunately it was hard to follow because I don’t have a background in his life history.