Église Saint-Paul de Strasbourg

StrasbourgChurch

If you’ve been to Strasbourg, then you know how it is. The cathedral is big and imposing and it stands in the center of the city and you can visit it. It’s surrounded by outdoor coffee shops where you can sit and look up at it, and if you can manage to hail a waiter you can drink coffee and smell the strong cigarette smell coming from other patrons who sit and drink coffee and smoke cigarettes. But you can’t watch the carabinieri stroll by because this is France not Italy.

OK, I’m not Hemingway, and this is not that cathedral. This is the Church of St. Paul. In any other city, this would would be the cathedral – but here it lives among the ranks of the SCHNN (smaller churches hardly nobody notices) because it is eclipsed by the much bigger cathedral.