Okay, so after about two hours I’d had enough of the little German town and headed over the river back to France. Strasbourg is also home to a number of European institutions, so I headed over to have a look.

European Parliament

The title of this is either “Europe has heart” or “Europe at heart”; I can’t remember if there’s an accent over the “a” or not.

I take a lot of pictures of sculptures

What was a little annoying is that I discovered that it wasn’t actually possible to visit European Parliament when I was there. They take groups, it seems, but individual visitors are only allowed at certain times… as a result I walked around the edge of the building and ended up taking random photos instead.

Random ball thing in the pseudo-courtyeard

Same thing for the European Court of Human Rights. The architecture of this is supposed to evoke a boat pulling up to the riverbank, which isn’t obvious from this picture. There was a relatively high-profile case going on around this time; some Irish women were charging that Ireland’s law against abortion deprived them of certain rights.

Yeah, can't get in here either

The last building I visited here was the Council of Europe. By this time I figured it’d be a good idea to take a picture of myself somewhere… so I found a post and (after multiple attempts) managed to take this one. It came with a price though…. as I was picking up my camera from the lantern-thingy I’d put it on, I knocked it to the ground instead. RIP Nikon Coolpix.

I don't know if this photo was really worth it in the end

The rest of my day was spent trying to find a FNAC to replace it. Luckily (or not; I am really starting to hate this camera), they had the same model in stock.