The Ryndex

I told an Alsatian that my parents and I were exploring a corner of France that we had never visited before. She replied, with a sniff, that we weren’t visiting France — we were visiting Alsace.

This is the rich region in the northeast of France with a strong German influence. You could say that it was historically part of Germany, but historically part of France before that, historically part of Germany before that, et cetera, et cetera, with a side order of historical independence. It was German entering the twentieth century, and the German language is still widely spoken (along with the Alsatian dialect).

We rented a Ford Focus C-Max from Hertz using the deal negotiated by our company. It gets 100 kilometres on 5.6 Litres of diesel, comfortably seats five (which is good, because there were five of us), and is both practical and unattractive. We drove through the regions of Champagne and Lorraine on the excellent French autoroutes, cutting wide and straight through the country at 130 kilometres an hour. We stopped only for toilets, picnics and tollbooths — 30€ for the entire trip to Strasbourg. It’s like going up and down the Coquihalla five times!

In Strasbourg, we stayed at the Comfort Inn, which I recommend. It was clean, modern and inexpensive and they deserve our good word of mouth. On the other hand, the map on their website is terrible, and should be ignored. It’s right in the centre of Strasbourg, so we walked around the entire old city the first night — a pre-tour preparation for the next day, which is a good way to get your bearings, set tourist goals and provide concrete destinations for the next day of meandering.

We at that night at Flamme’s, which is an inexpensive chain restaurant that serves flammekuche (or tartes flambées). If I wanted to offend both the Italians and Alsatians, I would describe it as a type of pizza that uses a cream sauce instead of tomato, with various combinations of onions, ham and mushrooms. Dad had a beer with a bitter Orange liqueur (Picon) and the moms and I had Alsatian wine in the traditional green-stemmed glasses.

The next day, we ate breakfast at a patisserie around the corner — the 9€ breakfast buffet in the hotel didn’t tempt us. We saw the pastry chef leave the store to the florist next door to buy a single red rose, and the petals showed up on special Mother’s Day cakes a few minutes later.

We visited Le Petite France, which is a neighbourhood of Strasbourg lined with canals, colourful half-timbred houses and many, many little shops for the tourists. We saw baby swans.

Later, we passed by the cathedral, which is particularly pink and covered in frothy gothic frippery. It’s colour comes from the sandstone quarried from the province of Vosges, and it’s very striking and elegant. The spire looks airy and fragile, and pokes improbably high into the sky. There’s an interesting astrological clock inside, and an ostentatiously elegant baptismal font. While we were visiting, a children’s choir was singing, which added nicely to the atmosphere.

The square around the cathedral is filled with the usual tourist dreck, featuring cuckoo clocks and storks (the regional bird) and truckloads of postcards. That night we ate at Kléber Place. Mom had a bit plate of choucroute, also known as sauerkraut, which is one of the foods that I don’t eat, because it is slimy and gross. In the spirit of the region, however, I ate a spoonful. Mom said that it was much less acidic than the Canadian sauerkraut. I thought it had cloves in it, but they turned out to be juniper berries — where do you go in the Supermarket to buy juniper berries? In conclusion, sauerkraut is tolerable.

The next day, we got up and searched for coffee. It was Sunday, and Mother’s Day in France, and the French traditionally celebrate by hiding all the coffee in the city. The tourists walk up and down the streets looking for the coffee, and if they find some, they get a prize (coffee). We didn’t find any coffee. This is a city ten times the size of Medicine Hat, and it was impossible to find a coffee in the centre of the tourist district. Then the adults started pressuring me to go into McDonalds “just for the coffee”. That’s how it starts, but I’ve been too damn smug about not eating fast food for too long and everyone would tear a strip out of me if I gave in. So I told them to go in and get their coffee, not to buy me one and I would meet them in the square with pastries from the only open bakery ten blocks away.

Of course, the coffee machine in the McDo’s was broken and I still get to be the smuggest ever. Smug smug smug!

We got our stuff from the hotel and left Strasbourg to go tour the wine route. This is a twisty stretch of road connecting lots of medieval villages and fifteen thousand hectares of grapes.

Alsatian wines are named after the species of grape they’re made from, such as Reisling, Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris, Gewürtztraminer. Most of the wines are white and sweeter than most other French white wines. The only red wine is Pinot Noir. The sparkling white wine of Alsace is called Crémant, which is as rigorously controlled and regulated as the production of Champagne, but without the brand recognition.

I usually prefer red wine, and it seemed silly to purchase only red wine in a region famous for its white wines, so I decided to only purchase bottles of Crémant. The bubbles tickle my nose!

The other thing that tickled my nose was great heaving gobs of snot. You see, I have allergy problems about this time of year, where my body decides that it has had enough of breathing and tries to spackle my head cavities with thick, green effluent. Well, technically, it’s more yellow than green, and not really effluent since it’s much too viscid to drain (even with the mightiest blows). It’s like trying to suck overcooked zucchini through a straw. And the best part is that I know from experience that it will last four weeks.

So we toodled hither and thither among the route des vins d’Alsace until we found ourselves at Mount-Sainte-Odile at lunchtime. This is a convent high above the grapes founded by Sainte Odile, who was born blind to a noble family and rejected by her father. Her nursemaid took care of her until her sight was miraculously cured, and her horrible father wanted to marry her off. She refused, so he gave her his summer house to convert into a convent. She became the patron saint for those with eye problems. We had a picnic lunch here, with an excellent view over the wine route, vineyards and medieval towns.

Our other mountaintop destination for the day was the Chateau at Haut-Koenigsboerg, built 400 years ago and then fell into ruin. During the last German occupancy at the start of the twentieth century, a Baron decided to have it completely and authentically restored, so it’s an impressive place to visit today. We walked around the chateau and then happily sat in the gift shop to have some coffee and rest our feet.

We ended the day in Colmar with plenty of time to walk around the old city in the centre. It’s a very, very pretty tourist city, even more colourful than Strasbourg. After checking into the hotel, it was getting pretty late so most of the shops were closed or closing. While walking around, we noticed that most of them would be closed the next day (Monday) so we changed our plans to visit Colmar on Tuesday instead. I ate a Roesti Montagnard that night, which is a type of thick hash-brown pancake with cheese in a skillet.

The next day, we headed back to the Wine Route and up into the highest point in the mountains — the Grand Ballon. We ate with another incredible view, although we Canadians are generally more impressed with historical monuments than with beautiful panoramas. I touched an electric fence, and got a surprising shock. Did you know that electric fences aren’t constantly electrified? They pulse. I recommend touching one. Go ahead, unless you’re scared.

Then we left the literal mountains to buy figurative mountains of wine. Like I said, I stuck to the Crémants of different varieties — brut, demi-sec, rosé. The Fixes bought me a bottle of Tokay Pinot Gris, which was nice but unnecessary.

There was a particularly nice woman in the little town of Soultzmatt, who took us into her cellar to see the big wooden barrels of wine. She explained that they had 1100 hectares of vines for Edelzwicker, which is the blended white table wine that you would normally buy by the pitcher in a restaurant, and typically of a quality less controlled than wine sold by the bottle. They had 120 hectares of vines for bottle wine, and 20 hectares for vendange tardive, or ice wine. Hooray for ice wine! She told us that the wines would flower in eight to fifteen days, and that the family was currently pruning the feet of the vine — a job requiring skill because pruning the feet affects the harvests for years to come. Later in the year, the head of the vines are pruned, which selects the best grapes for the harvest just for this year.

We went back to Colmar for supper, and it was a bit more lively than the night before. I had a baeckehoffe, which is a type of marinated meat, potato and onion stew served in it’s own oval casserole. I stole some of dad’s choucroute as well. Mmmm.

We spent a bit of time window shopping, which was pleasant. We also stopped at Isabelle’s sorbet palace, where she insisted that we take dozens of little samples of all the flavours. I ended up getting the beer flavoured sorbet, which surprised me by it’s summertime sweet deliciousness. Mmmmm.

There were some churches in the city, but for a change, I’m not going to go into detail about them. They were neat, and one of them had a storks nest up on the roof. Colmar also has little canals running through the city, but they were nearly drained and under construction. Mom looked at shoes in the shoe shops and I finally bought some of those pants, you know, with the zip off legs that the kids were wearing a few years ago. They were such a good deal, although a bit tight.

The next day, we started home, passing through Riquewihr on the way home, which has been dolled up and leans heavily on the tourist with slightly excessive charm. We went into a horrible Christmas store that forbid photos and videos and had plush ropes forcing you on a path through the entire store, single file, no deviating or turning back please! Four euros for a lemon granita and we headed back to the autoroute.

I bought my own plate of choucroute in the restaurant on the way home.

P.S. Click on the long skinny panoramas for a Alsastastic surprise!