Visit to the Mordor.....only Alsace!

Sunday 21 May 2006.

A couple of months ago we visited some friends in Alsace, in the North East part of France, near the border with Germany. We hit the road for an eight-hour drive across the country and two seasons (it was almost spring time in Toulouse, but still winter north of Lyon). It was a long but good drive. Cruising along the motorway at a decent speed.

The first thing we found upon arriving in Alsace was the cold. Christ! It was freezing! It actually snowed overnight the first night we were there. But what mattered was to see our friends Val and Romain. They moved up to Fessenheim for work after Romain got a new job at the nuclear plant there.

We thought they were staying in the middle of nowhere. The soil was black everywhere, the mountains loomed dark and ominous in the background and the Black Forest was...black. But most of all there was this strange feeling in the air. Something oppressive was lingering in this extraordinarily flat part of the country...then, Lisa described the place rightly by saying: "It's the part of the country where millions of people from all over Europe died during the First World War. This land was soaked in their blood." That was it! The strange feeling in the air. As if the Spirits from those who died in the trenches were never to be at peace nor rest. Like the Mordor in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings film trilogy.!!!

Still it was interesting to see another part of France neither Lisa nor I had ever visited before. It was also a good experience to jump the non-exisiting border and go for a quick visit to Germany. That was good. Especially buying crates of beer in the local supermarket across the border. It was funny to see so much beer. Like a third of the whole supermarket was made up of beer crates. You just go in, grab a crate, feel it up with any of the 40 types of beers on offer there, and leave. GREAT!

Val and Romain took us for a tour of Colmar. It is a nice city and I particularly enjoyed the colourful buildings around the town centre. Like in Germany, what also impressed us was the general cleanliness of the place.

Not like in Toulouse where there are quite a few dog turds on the pavements as well as litter scattered everywhere. In Colmar and Friburg, Germany, it was so clean! Dogs (and their owners) are even given clear instructions as to where their basic instincts may be released....

Funny or what??




Romain, Lisa and Val in Germany...........




We had some lovely pâtisseries in a nice and cosy little café where two women dressed in 19th century clothes were knitting a jumper or something like that. It was like being faced with Hamish farmers in the middle of New York. You know, you're not quite sure if it's all real. It makes doubt which century you're in.... In the evening it was Choucroute and beer all round in a lovely typical restaurant with stained glass windows. It was good and really filling. A perfect winter warmer meal!!

One of the four days we spent in Alsace was spent going up to the Haut Konnisbourg castle on a hill. What a sight! Unbelievable and so well well preserved! It was restaured by the German Kaiser Guillaume II in 1905.

Well thank you Guillaume II. A job well done. And it didn't cost a cent to the French tax payer!!!

It was freezing and the cold made the visit physically painful especially as the weather kept changing every 30 minutes. But it was really interesting and made for good photos opportunities.

After that, we hopped across the border one more time and visited Friburg where Lisa and Val envoyed cheese and grilled ham pretzels.

Friburg has an interesting historical central square around the cathedral. It was like a Grimm Brothers' tale. Strange. It made us shudder a bit.

But it's a nice town all the same and the people there were friendly. And all the time, more German beer.. Not as nice as Belgian beer but so much better than French beer.....

Finally, we took a stroll around the town of Neuf-Brisach, a fortress town built by Vauban. A feat of military defensive work.

All his fortresses are built in the shape of stars with several moats and broken lines of sight to prevent would-be attackers from seeing into the town and noticing its defences. That was quite cool. Here is a photo I took of Lisa. Could be an episode of the x-files!