Alsatian Villages

 

The town hall in Barr

Last week I took you to Strasbourg, and today we're traveling on from there deeper into Alsace. This region is characterized by charming villages and large vineyards - and a very eventful history when the region belonged to France and then to German states and then to France again and then to the German Reich (1871) and so on and on. Since the end of World War II it has been part of France, however, with their own local law in certain areas that differs significantly from the rest of France. Germanic and French influences are blended; today, most Alsatians speak French, but you still hear a lot of German as well as Alsatian which is an Alemannic dialect closely related to Swabian (and therefore, not unfamiliar to me). German is taught already in kindergarten in Alsace, and German elementary kids east of the Rhine in that area learn French. 

We first stopped in Barr, a small town with cobblestone streets, charming timber frame houses and narrow alleys.

One of the streets was decorated overhead with a long line of colorful butterflies. We couldn't find out what was the reason for this, so we simply enjoyed it.

One of the windows for a wine shop was decorated with decals that showed the traditional costume of the region. It bears some similarity with the traditional costume that is worn in the Black Forest (Germany has more traditional clothing beside Dirndl and Lederhosen).

We followed the Route de Vins d'Alsace which meandered along backroads and, at least for the first part, didn't touch any of the more famous places. We were pretty much on our own in the small towns and villages we visited.

We first drove through Dambach-la-Ville and then decided to stop and explore the sleepy little town a little bit more. It is bordered by two old town gates.

Again, we walked along narrow alleys, crossed beautiful squares and saw many old buildings. There was almost no one out there - it was siesta time. We had all the time in the world to explore this charming little place.

Beautiful archways were almost everywhere that allowed views into courtyards, small doors in old walls, pretty windows with shutters (and the shutter holders I had written about earlier), and fountains made out of barrels.

These two windows were in the basement where the cellar is. We are not quite sure what the function of these openings are. They are too high for shoving coals in the cellar for heating in the winter; maybe they are there for air ciculation in a root cellar.

We discovered little details everywhere.

We finally reached the upper town gate and saw who made their home on top of it. When I think of Alsace, I always think of storks as well.

The last time I had seen storks was in 2018 in Turkey, so I was very happy to see some again. 

Eventually we went back to the parking lot right next to the old town wall.

The wine - an Alsatian rosé - was delicious after all the exploring. With this, I cheer to the T gang that comes together for T Tuesday that is so generously hosted by Elizabeth and Bleubeard.

T is for Travel

 

Frauenkirche, München

You may have noticed (or not) that I was missing from blogland for the most part of May. The reason is simple - on May 9th we boarded a plane to München (Munich), Germany to finally see our daughter again. It's been almost two years since she left California in the middle of the pandemic to start her new adventure of living and doing her Masters in Germany. We wanted to see her life in München before she will move to a different city in Germany for her job in research after she will have graduated from LMU (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München).

It's difficult to describe my feelings of seeing her again after such a long time (I won't even try). She met us at the airport (we landed in the late afternoon), and after seeing her tiny tiny appartment and checking into our hotel, we did what you do in Munich on a warm night - we vistied a Biergarten (beer garden), the first one of many.

A Biergarten is a truly Bavarian thing - as long as you order a drink there, you can bring your own food. This is the case in all Bavarian beer gardens, but I am not sure whether this is true for the rest of the country - where there aren't that many beer gardens in the first place (maybe Iris has an answer to that). Of course you can also order food in a Biergarten - it is good, but kind of a limited offer and certainly not much for vegetarians and almost nothing if you prefer to eat vegan. A Biergarten is rustic and so is the food.

In the picture I'm holding a glass of dark Weißbier in my hand, and you can also see the top of a glass of Weißbier. If you order just Weißbier, you always get the lighter (in color) version of it, but if you want the darker one (which I prefer), you explicitly have to say so. Bavarian breweries produce excellent Weißbier (in the rest of the country, this is often referred to as Hefeweizen, and it is known under this name in the US as well). We went to so many beer gardens (we avoided indoor dining as much as possible) that it deserves its own blogpost some time later.

Of course we extensively explored the city - more about that in upcoming posts.

We enjoyed the local food (more about that in future posts for Kathy's Food Wednesday), but I really want to emphasize on pretzels - THE Bavarian bread product. You can get pretzels all over the country by now, but I do have to say that the Bavarian ones are extremely tasty. They're called Breze here and Brezel in the others parts of Germany (note the missing l).

This is a particular big, beer garden style Breze that Kaefer is holding here. We don't eat pretzels with mustard - I don't know why this is so popular in the US. It's a disgrace to the pretzel. You eat it with butter or sometime with cream cheese and chives (very popular in München), and the only time you have sweet (!) mustard with it is when you eat Weißwurst, a typical Bavarian sausage that should be eaten before 11:00 am (some places offer them until 2:00 pm. If you see them being offered after noon you know you are in a tourist trap).

Of course it goes down well with a glass of beer or two.

Here, Kaefer is having a Weißbier and I have a Dunkles Halbes. 

Apart from exploring München, we also took the trains to the beautiful lakes in the vicinity of the city and even a bit further away.

Beautiful, quiet Ammersee ...

... famous Starnberger See ...

... and romantic Königssee in the Bavarian Alps.

And yes, we had beer on these trips (Elizabeth, I hope these are enough drinks to qualify for a T post).

Franziskaner Weißbier is one of my favorites, but not the only one. Weißbier has its own special shaped glass - actually, every kind of beer has its own glass. I will go deeper into the "beer science" when I will write about beer gardens.

After about a week or so we left München for a little trip with Kaefer. We first re-visited my old stomping grounds, Tübingen, where I had lived for 22 years and Kaefer was born 24 years ago.

This was on our way to France where we spent a few days in Alsace. When I still lived in Tübingen I often went to Alsace for a long weekend or so. It was wonderful to see all the villages and small towns again. Nothing much seemed to have changed here.

Barr

Kaysersberg

Ribeauvillé

After a short stay in Freiburg, Germany we drove to Switzerland where we visited Luzern (Lucerne) and the Vierwaldstättersee (Lake Lucerne), some of the few Swiss places I hadn't been before.

Kapellbrücke (Chapel Bridge)

Through Liechtenstein - a rather odd little state - we crossed into Austria at one of the smallest border crossings I had ever seen.

Vaduz, Liechtenstein

Our final destination was the region of Südtirol (South Tyrol), an autonomous province in the North of Italy right in the midst of the Alps. I had been here as a child and I felt the same awe about this beautiful area again. We visited the Campanile di Curon Venosta Vecchia with its infamous history as well as beautiful Vipiteno or Sterzing as it is called in German. The population in Südtirol speaks predominantly German as a result of its history with Austria. The other two languages spoken here are Ladin (a Romance dialect) and Italian.

Campanile di Curon Venosta Vecchia

Vipiteno / Sterzing

Back in Germany we took the train to Würzburg for a Bartz family gathering over the weekend. Würzburg is two high-speed-train hours North of München, still located in Bavaria in a region called Franken (Franconia). This area produces great wine that is sold in a special type of bottle called "Bocksbeutel". Würzburg is an old city on the river Main, with old bridges, a fortress, a castle and a dome/cathedral - it's a lovely place.

Alte Mainbrücke and Festung Marienberg, Würzburg

The hardest day was the day after - when we had to say goodbye to Kaefer, not knowing when we will see her next. After we had landed in San Francisco and wanted to drive home, our car wouldn't start. Just the thing you want after an almost 12-hour flight! We called AAA and thankfully after only 20 minutes roadside assistance arrived and jump started the car. It took another 90 minutes to drive home - we were done and just sunk into blissful sleep in our own bed.

Unpacking the suitcase the following morning was pure joy!

A Cabin in the Woods

Since we didn't take any trip over the summer, I suggested to the Geek to spend a weekend further up north at the coast. A friend of mine had told me about a cabin where she had stayed 15 years ago and a short Google research revealed that it was still there. St. Orres in Gualala (pronounced wa-LA-la) is a hotel with a very good (and prohibitively expensive) restaurant - and they also rent a few cabins further away from the hotel for an affordable price. I called them and was delighted how friendly they were. I booked one of the cabins in the woods (they also have a couple "ocean view" cabins, but the ocean is behind the trees by now) and a week later the Geek and I were on our way to Gualala, which is only a two hours drive from here on Highway 1.

We got the same cabin my friend had 15 years ago and it seems that nothing much has changed since then apart from a few updates. We had a nice big room with a sitting area, a private bath and the deck in the redwoods.

It was a charming little place.

 The bottle of good red wine wasn't a service from the hotel. We had stopped at Annapolis Winery on our way to Gualala and bought this bottle after a nice wine tasting.

The view out of the windows into the redwoods.

The deck certainly was my favorite place...

Everything was thought through so well. All kinds of utensils on top of the refrigerator like coffee maker, plates, silverware, napkins, wine glasses; they even provided a corkscrew! An emergency light in case there was a power outage or some other more serious emergency (we are more familiar with those now).

Talking about emergencies: since the coast has ratty cell phone reception at best, there was an old fashioned pay phone in the center of the premises. There even was a phone book!

The premises were pretty, too. The hotel is built in what I call "Russian" style, and so were some of the buildings here as well.

But the best part was the breakfast. It was brought to our door every morning in a box and had fresh fruit, homemade bread, an egg dish, orange juice, homemade granola and milk. We ate it out on the deck and felt very pampered.

I don't think this was the last time I spent a weekend here.