“Clang, clang, clang went the trolley.

Ding, ding, ding went the bell.

Zing, zing, zing went my heartstrings…”

– Esther Smith (Judy Garland), “Meet Me In St. Louis”

Ok, it is not the same St. Louis in the Judy Garland 1944 movie. That one was in Louisiana, USA. I am talking about Saint-Louis in France. Saint-Louis is actually a commune in the Haut-Rhin department of Alsace in north-eastern France.

After an overnight stay in Frankfurt, Germany, I flew to Basel, Switzerland for my conference. I arrived at the EuroAirport Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg, an airport located at Saint-Louis near the border tripoint between France, Germany, and Switzerland. It is serving the Swiss city of Basel, Mulhouse in France, and Freiburg im Breisgau in Germany. To go to my hotel, I took a bus at the airport station. My hotel was also located in Saint-Louis, just few steps away from the border of Basel. I still need to walk for about 15 minutes from the bus station to my hotel. Using the Google map on my phone, I look for the direction. However, the actual map was not showing and what was shown are just the pathways I need to follow. It was like I am blind but luckily, I arrived at my destination.

During my stay, I was in Basel at daytime for the conference and in Saint-Louis at nighttime. I had a limited time and I chose to visit the Swiss cities of Bern and Geneva. I was in France just for sleeping, hahaha!

I really don’t have time to visit any place in France. But on the day of my flight back to Japan via Frankfurt, I decided to have a short walk from my hotel about 2 hours before going to the airport. While walking, I passed by the Catholic church Église Saint-Louis. St. Louis IX was the King of France from 1226 at the young age of 12 until his death in 1270 during a Crusade in Tunisia. He led the Seventh Crusade to the Holy Land in 1248–1250. He was the only French King to be canonized as a saint, which was done on August 11, 1297.

I came across the Temple Protestant and then the Monuments aux morts de Saint-Louis, a war memorial commemorating the residents of Saint-Louis who died in the First and Second World Wars, the wars in Indochina and Algeria and other conflicts.

When I thought I already had enough glimpse of Saint-Louis, I went back to my hotel to pack my things.