Our first trip into Strasbourg wasn't all culture - before we got to the Cathedral, we'd already had a stop in a Starbucks, the local shopping mall for some cosmetic necessities that I didn't understand and then we'd had lunch in one of those weird modern urban restaurants that's trying to have a little of everyone's culture to make them feel at home. It didn't help that I've been reading and thinking a lot about migration and community lately, I was particularly sensitive to the fact that this really wasn't somewhere a local would have taken us.
But then we walked across to the Cathedral and steeped ourselves in several hundred years of patient construction. Again, this is community building - literally through building something bigger than themselves. It felt really good to stop and be awed by the hugeness of it. As I've noted in a caption above, the whispering of the crowds started off imperceptibly and then grew and grew as people became less conscious and then they were shut down again by a member of staff going "Shhhhhhh" over the PA. I wish I'd recorded a portion of it!
