The French Side Celebrates
One day after the empty streets of Freiburg, Strasbourg — one border over, same holiday — was packed. The French side celebrates Easter in the streets. Half-timbered houses, crowds at the base of every facade, and the cathedral at the center of it all.
I had studied French language during my High School and University days and though it had been a long time since, then I still had a bit of the language in my head, and using it, though rusty, helped bring it back.
The planning
The contrast with the German side was the story of the holiday: same river, same weekend, opposite behavior. In Bavaria everyone is home or at church and the shops are shut. In Strasbourg the streets were full and the holiday was lived outdoors.
The gear
With the size of the crowds, I decided to put away the Fujifilm camera and stick with the Nikon. There were too many people, to worry about being spotted snapping an image, and beside, so many other people had cameras up catching photos. I also chose to stick with a prime lens instead of the zoom. The 56mm Sigma lens is a good mid-sized lens and with the wide f/1.4, I knew that I could capture a variety of depth of field.
What went wrong
Nothing recorded for this day.
The shot that came out
The half-timbered house, and the street underneath it — packed. That’s where the day’s story lives: not in the buildings, but in the people against them.
The difference between Freiburg and Strasbourg was stunning. Where the streets in Freiburg were empty and quiet, the streets in Strasbourg were packed, noisy, and full of people from many cultures and ethnicities, all mingling peacefully and enjoying the holiday weekend. Children ran from stall to stall looking for sweet treats. The smell of food was everywhere — food stalls, outdoor cafe seating, open doors into restaurants. It was a sensory kaleidoscope.
And in the middle of it, a brass band — the French version of the Salvation Army. They took time on their holiday to play for the bustling crowd: a mix of hymns and secular music in one of the squares. Navy uniforms against the stone, fingers on valves, a bystander recording it on a phone. The cathedral towered over all of it, but the band was playing for the street.
The trombones. Diagonal slides cutting across the frame, the players’ focus unmistakable — this was work and devotion at once, a holiday offered to strangers.
And the facade over it all — monumental, permanent, watching. The crowd moved through the square; the stone stayed. But on this day, the stone was the backdrop and the people were the subject.
Step inside and the noise stops at the door. The cathedral holds a different kind of holiday: the grandeur of vaulted ceilings, the color and history of paintings and the altar, and quiet parishioners sitting in the pews reflecting. The somber silence inside is the other half of the day — and it’s not a contradiction. The city was celebrating the same weekend two ways at once: the jubilation in the square, the reflection in the pews.
The nave, with visitors in it — for scale, and for the reminder that a cathedral’s size only registers when people stand in it.
Watercolor on the Rhine
What I learned
- Interiors are color-management problems. The stained glass carries all the saturation; everything else should stay quiet so the window can sing.
- Age photographs well. The worn surfaces, the candle-dark corners, the mosaic bands — patina is texture, and texture is what the camera loves.
Coming next: Karlsruhe
Camera: Nikon Z6
Lens: Sigma 56mm f/1.4 Prime Lens
Exposure: 1/640 f/10 ISO 500
Tracker: NA
Location: Strasbourg, France
Captured: April 4, 2026