Alsace

First of all, I must mention that everyone had told us that it was pointless going to work during August because no one would be there. Everyone heads to the south of France to soak up a bit of sun and sand and generally relax. So we decided to take the whole month off work (well, Michael did, I still didn’t really have a proper job yet) and instead of heading towards the crowds, we decided to headnorth to Strasbourg and the Alsace countryside, away from them!

We shared the trip with our friend Sammy, who'd just finished her PhD in Oz and was on a well-earned post-thesis holiday. We hired a car (air-conditioning included of course!) from Dijon and took the fast route to Strasbourg, home to the European Parliament. It was a beautiful place to visit. The River Ill surrounds the island which is also town centre. The centrepiece is the Cathédrale Notre Dame (apparently they have one in every city in France!), which is a massive stone cathedral in the heart of the old city. Inside is a late 16th century astrological clock that strikes the solar noon (when the sun is theoretically directly above Strasbourg) at 12.30 every day. Going to the top of the tower and viewing Strasbourg from above is well worth the 324 steps (should have done it a few more times to remove the beer from our systems!).

Price was an issue when we were deciding where to stay for our 3 days in Strasbourg. We thought it would be a good idea for the three of us to share a room and, after much debate, we hesitantly settled on a no star hotel in the centre of town. We weren’t too sure about staying in a hotel without any stars to recommend it but we were pleasantly surprised when the hotel man showed us the room. It was much better than we’d imagined (and much better than a few 2 star hotels I was to use later on in the year).

We walked all over the island, stopping only to refresh ourselves by tasting the local beers (there are so many!). One evening after taking a boat ride around the island, we stumbled across the Fête des Lumières, a display of how different coloured lights and water could be used to make pretty pictures on a big stone building by the river. It was fantastic. After the show, Sam went back to the hotel (she was still in jet-lag mode too) and Michael and I got to wander around La Petite France, a very pretty area in the old part of the town.

From Strasbourg we headed west to the start of the Route des Vins (Wine Route) in Marlenheim. The whole area of Alsace has a very conflict-filled history and so a lot of the places have both German and French names and one or the other has stuck depending on who was the ruler of the region at the time. It's amazing to look out east and see Germany right there. Unfortunately we couldn't cross over for a visit because the car deal we got limited our travels to France only.

There were too many interesting places to visit and not enough time to visit them all. And so it was that even though it was the Route des Vins, we only went to 2 wine tastings! Each of the places we saw along the way was different. And the food! One night we ate out at a restaurant recommended by the guy who ran the B&B we were staying at. And it was the hugest meal ever! Being in Alsace, Michael thought he’d try the local fair and ordered the set menu with sausages and sauerkraut as the main meal. I can’t even remember what Sam and I ordered because Michael’s overshadowed everything. It was the biggest plate of food I’ve ever seen and Michael almost ate it all, and then had to get through his dessert. I don’t know if we just have small stomachs or whether the locals are just huge eaters! Either way it was certainly value for money.

The next day we went to the Château Fort du Landsberg, a ruined fortress at the end of a long, hot and exhausting uphill bushwalk (punishment for eating too much?). We got to pick our way along disused tracks around the fortress, shimmying past stinging nettles, to climb onto the dangerous-looking ruins. The walk down the path led to a hiker’s refuge where Sam and I had Alsacien salads (consisting of the obligatory sausages and sauerkraut!) and much appreciated beer. Michael found his stomach was still packed full of the goodness of the night before’s meal and so had as little food as possible!

In complete contrast to Landsberg, was the Château de Haut-Koenigsbourg. German owner, William II of Hohenzollern, authorised restoration of the castle in the early 1900s, when Alsace was under German rule. In 1919, under the Treaty of Versailles, France became the owner of the assets of the German crown and hence Haut-Koenigsbourg. It is now a tribute to the life and weaponry of the late Middle Ages through to the mid-1600s. It’s one of those tourist attractions that has rooms with scenes set up with themes of the times and a few too many people around to fully enjoy it. For us it was another long hot walk to the top and then we had to pay to get in! And not just a little but a substantial amount. Luckily we didn’t have kids otherwise we’d have been bankrupt after a visit there! We tried to tack on to the end of a tour group (where you have to pay more!) but it was in French, which Sammy didn’t understand so she went off by herself to explore while we tried to learn something from the tour group. It was a bit of a miss in the hit and miss stakes so we gave it a miss and just explored by ourselves too.

When we got back to the car, we found a flyer advertising a winery at nearby Mittlewihr that also sold eau de vie (literally water of life), brandy made by the distillation of fruit. One family in an area would own a distiller (alambic) and they would take it to surrounding villages, where the townspeople would bring their fruit (apples, pears, plums, cherries or any other fruit they could grow) to have it distilled into eau de vie. Not only was it a means to make good use of fruit from the orchards but it was also an important method at the time of communicating between villages. It wasn’t until the early 20th century that the French government gave an official title to the distillator, bouilleur de cru, and restrictions were put into place concerning the level of alcohol and the amount of eau de vie each bouilleur de cru could produce. In the past the right to distil was passed down from generation to generation however in the mid-1900s these rights were abolished and taxes introduced on all production. The result has been a gradual reduction in the number of producers of eau de vie (other than large commercial companies) and the slow death of a national tradition.

Michael had first tasted my grandfather’s eau de vie with my Dad in Australia a number of years earlier and loved it (not just because the homemade stuff can get upto 60% alcohol!). In Australia, it’s illegal to distil without a licence and so the tradition of brandy has never really existed. Maybe that’s why the beer drinking tradition started – you’re allowed to brew your own beer?

Anyway, some government officials have been fighting the laws of distillation recently and the government is constantly looking at ways to ensure the tradition doesn’t die completely. But from our experience talking to people in Alsace, it hasn’t worked yet. Let’s hope it does in the future, for Michael’s sake – he’s addicted to the stuff!

So obviously Michael was very interested in going to the winery in Mittelwihr (you could see the sparkle in his eyes). We hadn’t known that eau de vie was produced in Alsace (I’d thought it was just a central France thing but it’s a France-wide thing!). So when we were looking for accommodation that evening we kind of gravitated towards Mittelwihr and ended up at a B&B run by a nice chatty old lady. The B&B happened to be just across the road from the winery!

We went over at about 6pm, hoping to have a quick taste and maybe buy a bottle for dinner. THREE HOURS of talking and tasting later (!) we walked out of there a bit unstable. The lady who ran the winery was the most talkative person I’ve ever met in a winery. She chatted about everything under the sun! Unfortunately, it was all in French and so all Sam could do was taste more wines and get bits and pieces of the discussions that Michael or I translated for her. I think the lady had a strategy because at the end of the 3 hour tasting, we’d tried 15 wines and 5 or 6 eaux de vie and bought a dozen bottles between us! But we’d had a good time and that was the main thing (even if the bank accounts didn’t enjoy it that much!)

Next on our list of sights to see (like the hundreds of other tourists in the area) was Mont St Odile, a peaceful conventon a mountaintop overlooking the plains of Alsace. It was definitely worth the visit and somewhere you can see most of, on the cheap. There’s a story about the saint the convent is named after. Legend goes that when the wife of Etichon, a duke of Alsace, had their first baby, it was a girl born blind and very ill. Etichon ordered her to be killed but his wife helped the baby girl escape to a convent. She lived in the convent until she was twelve, when she was christened by a bishop and suddenly recovered her eyesight. She was given the name of Odile, the girl of the Light. She wanted to return to her family’s home and her brother offered to help her to do this but Etichon killed Odile’s brother upon their return for going against his wishes. Etichon then repented and, wanting to make it up to his daughter, tried to have her marry a rich prince. Odile refused and escaped into a rock that miraculously opened up and hid her as she was about to be captured. Etichon was thrilled by the miracle and allowed Odile to become a nun, giving her the Castle of Hohenbourg, which she turned into a monastery.

With this story in mind I wandered around the grounds losing Michael and Sam to their own wanderings. I love getting lost in another world, letting my imagination go wild in places like this. I came across two chapels during my exploration. One was the Chapel of the Angels and was filled with beautiful mosaics depicting scenes of angels. I really like mosaics because I think you have to have a good visual imagination to create a picture with random coloured glass or tiles. The second chapel was also beautifully decorated with mosaics and I read that St Odile used to come and pray for her dead father’s soul here. You’ll be happy to know that legend has it that her prayers eventually released him from Purgatory.

Last but not least on this tour of the Alsace Wine Route was the corn maze at Ribeauvillé called Labyrinthus. We came across it by accident and it turned out to be one of those accidents worth having! Each year, the Labyrinthus is redesigned and a new story is told by actors playing their parts in the dead ends (cul-de-sacs?) of the maze. This time it was a chance for us to get to know the stories of famous French writer Alexandre Dumas in his novels D’Artagnan, The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo. If we could find the actors that is! After twisting and turning and following first one theory then another, we finally fell upon a stage set in the prison cell of the Count of Monte Cristo. But the actor needed a helping hand from the spectators. And what better helping hand than tall, muscular Michael? So Michael got to help tellt he Count’s story to the entertainment of all the little kids in the crowd! The only downer of the day was that it was so bloody hot! And it was even worse being out in the sun with no escape…not even the 2m tall corn plants could give us enough shade from the blazing sun!

On the way home Michael tried to take us to Le Corbusier’s church, the Notre Dame du Haut, on the outskirts of Ronchamp. Apparently Le Corbusier revolutionised concrete architecture and the church at Ronchamp is his most famous work. After driving around aimlessly for what seemed like hours, we finally came to the car park of the famous architect’s strangely shaped church. Unfortunately for us (or was that just Michael?), it had closed its gates just minutes before we arrived. Michael was so disappointed. It was a shame because he’d wanted to visit the construction ever since his grandmother spoke about it when he was little. To this day we haven’t been back to sneak a peek inside (but I’m not really sold on the architectural design myself).

The next day was another rest day and where else would we rest but inside an air-conditioned car! We’d heard that the Jura Mountains were always a few degrees cooler than in the plains of Dijon, so we packed ourselves once more into the car and headed southeast and upwards. First stop was Poligny, where we found a tourist information centre and a couple of free but not very detailed maps of the area. We noticed heaps of lakes around so we drove as best we could with the little navigation facilities on hand (this was well before navmans and google maps!) and made it to a lake (not entirely sure which one!). We pulled the car in, looking forward to a splash to cool down, but then the car stopped…behind a queue of cars lined up to pay a fee to park near the lake! Paying to swim in a lake in the middle of nowhere that was owned by no one? No way! We flat out refused to pay for nature and so after careful study of the maps we decided on the Cascades du Hérisson as our backup destination of choice.

And a good choice too (we don’t mind paying for waterfalls!). We found ourselves on a bushwalk uphill in the shady forest, winding across and back over the river and small falls. It was soooo hot! But then it was cooler further up the hill than back at the car so it was kind of refreshing without the benefit of feeling the freshness! As we started to drag our feet in the heat of the climb, and Sam started to look really red in the face, we decided to stop at a waterfall about two thirds of the way up the hill (after an hour of walking). Water trickled over the edge of a cliff and landed lightly on the rocks below. Some of us decided to have a shower and cool off a bit (me!). It was beautiful. Only thing was, in the picture on the information sheet you get when you enter, the falls were supposed to be massive. But these were like a mini waterfall. As we sat on the rocks sunbathing like lizards, I tried to imagine what they would really be like if it wasn’t the hottest summer on record and decided that I really didn’t care because it was better than sitting in the horrible hot apparte in Dijon!