Day 6, Monday, April 30 (all
the rest have 31)
Strasbourg is the cultural
center of Alsace, a territory between Germany and France which has
changed citizenship many times. It is currently French, politically,
but thoroughly mixed culturally. Another great cathedral, Notre
Dame. Tallest medieval building in Europe, 426 ft. (seen one great,
magnificent, towering, unbelievable cathedral, seen'em all). Stained
glass windows the size of your house. Tapestries even bigger. It
also contains an astronomical clock. Not an hourly, daily, monthly
clock like you have on your wrist but a clock which starts at the
beginning of the world. Can you dig it? I think it was here it
finally hit me that the people who built these cathedrals had a sense
of persistence which is entirely foreign to us. In a discussion with
a friend, Jim, on board, he said it best. They had a different
concept of time than we do. Imagine planning and starting a building
which you know you will never see even more than the foundation
started, if that. You have no exact idea how long it will take but
you know it will be centuries. The cost is so staggering that it
would equal a country's complete economic worth. These concepts did
not matter and may not have even been taken into consideration. Was
it hutspa, arrogance, faith? Or do they portray the magnificence of
the human spirit? If I can dream it, I can do it. These thoughts
rattle thru my brain often.
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