This is the now completed record of Sue Anne and Bruce’s Autumn 2014 visit to the Alsace region of France (up in the northeast corner), with a few other stops along the way. We had originally planned to take this trip along with Sue Anne’s sister Aimée and her husband Steve, our regular traveling companions on a number of fun trips in the past, and with their son Nate as well. But a number of factors caused them all to have to cancel at the last moment. We ended up having a great time there by ourselves, but we’d love to get back some time with the rest of the crew. It was gorgeous, it was fun, and we learned a lot.
We wrote the blog daily as the trip progressed, so it’s arranged here in reverse chronological order. To read it in the customary beginning to end order, click here to get to the first entry, and then work your way back up via the Newer Post link at the bottom of each page. And as has been our practice on previous trips, we wrapped the blog up with a rather long dissertation of the impressions we gained throughout the trip. That’s the next post below here. We might keep adding on to that one for a while as new thoughts come to mind.
Come share our trip with us!
Monday, October 27, 2014
Impressions
We’ve tried to end up each of our travel blogs with a summary of impressions we gained from the trip. We look for insights that transcend one or two days’ activity, developed during our total immersion in the area or only realized after we got home. Our trip to France was different from many of our others, in that we stayed put for most of the time rather than moving along every few days, so we did get a chance to soak up quite a bit of insight along the way.
As always when we visit a place where we’ve been before, there will be a lot of compare and contrast. Add to this the fact that we’ve been around a good bit longer, had lots of other experiences along the way, and easily could find ourselves tuning in on different aspects of things than we had on earlier visits to the same area.
If history is any predictor, we will be getting back to this post a few times to incorporate new thoughts that just occurred to us. These will be just mixed in with the existing impressions and not otherwise highlighted, but we will try to keep up a brief list here of the topics that we’ve added. Check in from time to time and see what might be new.
Although we’ve titled the blog Alsace Trip, there really were four distinct phases, of which Alsace was indeed the central focus. We’ll take them one at a time, and then discuss more general stuff
Ireland
We hadn’t seen this as any sort of a focus in our trip; it was simply where the cheapest airline flight stopped on the way. We had never been there before, nor had we ever flown on Aer Lingus, their national airline. There is the ethical question which asks whether one can claim to have really set foot in a country if said foot has not touched dirt, but we’ll go with the more relaxed criterion that if that country could have arrested you for some sort of offense, then you have indeed been there. Not that we offended anybody. So we claim to have been there, and we’d like to get back.
We weren’t that far away from Ireland during our three years in England, 1980-83. But our travel focus then was on the beautiful local area where we lived, a few trips up into the north and to Scotland where Bruce had family history, and over to continental Europe for a wide ranging set of trips built around Bruce’s annual Army Reserve tour in Germany. The Army provided the nucleus of two weeks in either Berlin or Munich (‘Good duty’ we call these places!), and we built lots of good stuff around it. This was also the time of The Troubles in Northern Ireland, and that probably influenced our travel plans as well.
The views of Ireland from the plane were very pretty. The locally grown food in the airport restaurants was delicious. Our wee sip of Irish whiskey would be well worth repeating. We’re sure we’ll be back, and we will truly set foot in the place.
Paris
Certainly a bucket list destination for everybody. We had been there quite a few times before, both individually and together. It’s always worth a visit. So much life, so much history, so much beauty. Our evening walk along the Seine was a special treat. Here’s Bruce’s impression. We’re not sure whether he clicked the shutter button at the wrong time or attempted a handheld shot when the lighting really demanded a tripod. Or whether the red car interrupted something already underway. But it ended up being art of the highest quality! There’s a lot of vibrancy there.
We got to know the Métro pretty well on this trip. The more modern parts of it are equipped with elevators and escalators, but the older ones use only stairs. And those are the stations we used on most of the trips that involved suitcases. Enough said about that.
We were quite surprised at the number of roving security people we encountered in train and Métro stations, and at major tourist locations. Some were just dressed in casual blue uniforms and armed with nightsticks, while others were in full combat gear with automatic weapons. We didn’t want to risk provoking any of the latter by taking their pictures. They appeared to have been well trained, as all were practicing good trigger finger and muzzle position discipline.
We were very happy with the two English language guided tours we took in Paris, sponsored by pariswalks.com out of London. They were both run by British expats who appeared to have lived for quite some time in France and had a very good understanding of the place. The company proudly notes on its website that all its guides are university graduates. It also offers tours in lots of other cities throughout Europe, and in a few other places in the world as well. Prices seem to be pretty constant at €12. Thanks to Aimée for putting us onto them. Check them out!
Our AirBnB apartment near Place de la Bastille was quite ample for the two of us, but it would have been a squeeze for the originally anticipated five in our party. And the four flights of stairs with suitcases were a challenge. Noted, all this was pretty well disclosed in the AirBnB description. The location was quite pleasant and convenient, especially when the big market was underway in the boulevard. Though it was troubling when we learned that the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, scene of a terrorist attack just three months after our visit, was located only a few blocks away.
Alsace
We were there for two weeks, and it certainly was the focus of our trip. We had both passed through the area briefly, many years back (1960s and 70s), but our impressions then were pretty much limited to appreciating the scenery and not really absorbing much of the history or culture. This time we were able to get pretty deep into many aspects of the place.
Bruce’s European background is primarily with Germany from his Army time and from continued involvement through his career-long civilian job, while Sue Anne’s is with France, going back to her student days. Though there’s been plenty of cross-pollination on both our parts. So we were fascinated by this place that was without a doubt legally in France but had so many features that clearly traced to Germany.
We learned that the area had swapped back and forth between the two countries four times, the results of all sorts of wars and invasions, some even involving the Swedes. Town names, family names, other names—all were pretty much in actual German or a slightly Frenchified version of German. Those were the strangest. They grated on our linguistic senses as speakers of both languages. The two languages were given pretty much equal billing in interpretive signs throughout the area, and we got the impression that most of the people were bilingual—French and German—with very little English in signs or spoken. Analysis of license plates showed quite a lot of German and Swiss tourist traffic throughout the area, especially over the October 3rd weekend of the German Unification holiday.
One exception to the lack of English was plaques gratefully commemorating the World War II liberation of towns by the US Army. All of these featured English, often identifying the Army units involved and displaying their unit crests.
Here’s a good example of the language dichotomy—a bottle and a glass from the same brewery, same logo, same words. But the name of the brewery is in German on the bottle and in French on the glass. The beer tasted good in both languages.
Houses were painted in bright colors, tracing back to the trade or religion of the original occupants, in contrast to the fundamentally dull, beige, exterior appearance of houses and towns that we knew from our previous experiences in the rest of France. Though we learned long ago not to dismiss the beauty of a French home till you’ve seen it with the gate to the courtyard open. It’s often a whole other world in there from what you see out on the street!
Railroad gauges in Alsace were different. Religious history was different. We even read that many laws are still different, though we didn’t penetrate any understanding of this aspect of things.
The countryside was gorgeous. Both sides of the Rhine are mirror images of each other. There’s a wide plain on each side, and then a quick rise into mountains. It’s the Schwarzwald (Black Forest) on the German side, and Les Vosges in France. Stand most anywhere in the plain and you can take in the entire sweep of things. Les Vosges were of modest height, far from Alpine but very lovely. It was rainy the day we drove up in there and we didn’t get too many pictures. But our photographer friend Carolyn who was coincidentally in the area at the same time hopes to get a lot of hers up on her website once she gets past a few technical problems with it. We’re sure that it will be well worth a visit.
And let’s talk about the overflowing abundance of flowers in Alsace. They were everywhere in window boxes and along village streets in waist high boxes on railings. Villages and cities compete for awards or ratings—we are not sure which. But the signs told the tale: Our village was Un Village Fleuri ****. four stars, so to speak.
The roads were busy not only with tour buses, but also with tractors and farm equipment signaling the end of the harvest in the vineyards. Roadside booths overflowed with bags of nuts, pumpkins, apples, and honey.
We very much enjoyed our two days in Strasbourg. Its island location makes for marvelous views. We reached a point on our boat tour when we simply had to stop taking pictures lest we run out of bits. We learned a lot from its city museum.
A day trip across the Rhine to Freiburg, Germany led us to an area not that different from what we had come to know in Alsace. And as we noted in the blog, the entire German influence had disappeared by the time we got to the first town after crossing the département (state) line from Alsace into La Franche-Compte on our way to Dijon.
Here’s a pair of trivia questions regarding the Alsatian composer Émile Waldteufel, mentioned earlier in the blog. They might only be suitable for readers dating to our era. Check out these two pieces of his music on YouTube, Estudiantina and España, and see if you can identify the unlikely places where these two tunes were reused during our lifetime. The answers appear at the bottom of this post.
Dijon
A special place to both of us. Sue Anne spent her UNH junior year there, her first time immersed in a foreign culture and her first time out by herself as an independent young adult. Bruce was then in the Army, stationed in Frankfurt a mere five hour drive away. It was also his first time in a foreign culture (though with a fallback to the local American military community), and also his first time out by himself as an independent young adult. With the added responsibilities of being an officer in the US Army. Those are special times that make for lifelong memories! We were able to get together on a number of occasions. We became engaged on Bruce’s first visit to Dijon, shortly after Sue Anne had arrived. We’ve gotten back there a few times since, but this trip really produced the greatest opportunity for compare and contrast of any of our visits.
We were very impressed by the splendid job that Dijon had done in creating such a pedestrian friendly area downtown. A four or five block stretch that used to be horribly clogged with cars and featured very narrow sidewalks is now totally dedicated to pedestrians. The execution of the project was very nicely done; it wasn’t just a simple matter of putting up a few signs and barriers and leaving everything else untouched. There was new paving everywhere, all very harmonious with the buildings and the open areas at the Place de la Libération. The Place with its restaurants, shops, and fountains attracted a lot of action. And the new streetcar system was very well integrated into the new traffic patterns.
France in General
Opening hours of smaller stores were pretty much what we have been long accustomed to: closed for a long lunch, closed after 5, closed on Sundays. We tended to go to the hypermarket (a rather small one, but still relatively hyper by neighborhood standards) in Ribeauvillé at times that would have been risky at the other places. And even the hypermarket turned out to be closed on Sunday. The Lavandière restaurant in Bergheim didn’t open up for meals till 6, and even at that it was only Tarte Flambée till 7. But you could drink all afternoon.
France has long had a reputation for being highly protective of the sanctity of their language. As new concepts arose, particularly those of a technological nature originating in the US, the Académie Française would stomp down on any attempt to integrate them into French usage and would quickly manufacture a mandatory French language equivalent. Many of these took up lots more words than the original English versions. English is so very adaptable!
Franglais, mixing of the two languages, was a linguistic sin of the first order. No more! We already documented the Undiz lingerie store in Strasbourg. Here’s a picture of an ad we saw in Paris; note the Nouveau Slim Can product description over at the left side.
We had been informally accumulating impressions of this phenomenon throughout the trip, but on our last day Sue Anne made a concerted effort to record lots of them. She quickly filled two pages at the back of her sketchbook with Franglais and other examples of desecration of La Langue. Here they are!
Untours
We wrote briefly about Untours earlier in the blog. This was our first experience with them, and we were very satisfied. They make all the fundamental arrangements (or as many as you haven’t already worked out yourself), they maintain and enforce their standards for the various accommodations that they deal with, they provide a welcome lunch and orientation to the area and a free emergency cell phone, and then they leave you alone unless you need to call on them for assistance. The people at the home office in Pennsylvania were very, very responsive in rearranging things when Aimée, Steve, and Nate had to cancel out, and the two staffers we dealt with in France were both American expats with a great command of the area. Highly recommended!
Here’s one fascinating piece of information that we learned from the very informative part of the Untours orientation meeting that dealt with medical situations. French pharmacies are like little medical clinics in their own right. They don’t just dispense pills; they diagnose minor conditions and prescribe the treatment and/or medication. And during mushroom picking season, you can bring in your harvest and they will sort out the poisonous ones from the tasty ones. Our Maryland friends will probably remember Dart Drug (R.I.P.), with its weekly specials on car parts, lawn and garden accessories, small electronics, and the like. French pharmacies ain’t Dart Drug, and Dart Drug ain’t a French pharmacy!
One downer about French pharmacies—they are customarily marked with a green cross for easy identification, and they have gone utterly wild with animated green LEDs on their signs. These are a horrible affront to the genteel ambiance of a typical French village. We’re hoping that a protest movement will emerge and stomp them out.
Money
We were concerned after our experience in Paris of not being able to get money from an ATM because we had a striped card rather than a chipped one. This led us to an old-fashioned change shop, which exacted a pretty hefty commission. Fortunately this turned out to be a one-time problem. We were able to use a striped credit card or ATM/debit card pretty easily throughout the rest of the trip. Only occasionally would one not work, but the other one then rescued us so we were never stranded. Bring two or more cards if you have them, just in case.
Ambiance
People were friendly, drivers generally courteous, dog poop rarely in evidence (a major change from the past). All very nice. And no cigarette smoke, except in a few outdoor locations. Phew! The Loi du 1 Février 2007 (Défense de Fumer - No Smoking) is now right up there in the Hall of Fame with the famous Loi du 29 Juillet 1881 which is cited on all the Défense d’Afficher (Post No Bills) signs around the country. That latter date is even said to be celebrated by some as a minor holiday. Any excuse for a party!
France finally caved in to the standard of the rest of the world and posted yield signs at every entrance to the roundabouts. They did the same at most every intersection between a minor road and a major one, immensely softening the rigid priority from the right concept that they had so strongly clung to for years. Only occasionally, in very small towns, would there be a Priorité à Droite sign at the edge of town to remind us that things hadn’t changed there. It is hard to imagine what the scene must have been at the roundabouts for the first month or two after they got rid of the horrid concept of right of way to those entering the roundabout, but it seems to have worked out fine. We never saw anybody challenging it.
Computer Stuff
WiFi at the apartments in Paris and Alsace worked fine, as did the free service at the airports in Dublin and Paris. Free service at the airport hotel in Paris was deeply throttled, but still quite sufficient for normal email and web work. One caution, which we learned in Europe last year and encountered again at the hotel in Dijon, involves an Internet service where the clerk at the hotel desk presses a button on a little machine, which then spits out an ID and password for you on a slip of paper. That worked fine, but those credentials can only be used by one device. After that, you would have to try to negotiate for a second account if you wanted to use something else. So, if you do have multiple devices with you such as a tablet and a laptop, it would be wise to consider one to be primary, and set that one up first. Just in case.
Our little Pandigital wand scanner worked fine at transferring Sue Anne’s drawings from her sketchbook to our laptop, using either a USB cable or a micro-SD card and a USB adapter. It did tend to create gray backgrounds, but it was easy to clear these out using our standard, free, image processing program IrfanView. It’s a regular part of our arsenal at home and on the road, useful for color adjustments and for editing out stuff like edge effects (especially sketchbook binder rings), cropping out the vacant space that comes from scanning something narrower than the scanner, getting rid of inadvertent smudges, and the like.
The scanner comes with a cradle that also includes a motorized sheet feeder, but we didn’t need that so we left it at home to save space and weight. We commandeered one of Bruce’s socks as its traveling case, to ensure that nothing would accidentally mar the scanning surface.
Upon reading the detailed information in the users manual, we discovered that there is a calibration procedure that should be invoked from time to time to adjust the scanner’s color rendition. We didn’t want to tamper with things during the trip, but we did run the procedure when we got home and it helped a lot. There is still a hint of gray in the background that’s easily removable in IrfanView, and the colors are now much closer to true without the need for very much tweaking at all.
Electricity is 240 volt 50 Hz everywhere, though with an occasional 120 volt outlet in the bathrooms. I wouldn’t recommend trying it with a US hair dryer, as those outlets have a reputation of being set up only for electric shavers and similar devices of very low current demand. Bring adapters, and be sure to verify that your devices are specified up through 240 volts. Most computer stuff is, but read the label to be certain. The French recently converted to 3-prong grounded outlets, but most existing 2-prong plugs or adapters still fit fine.
Art
Sue Anne filled her sketchbook with a wide array of images from throughout the trip. All of them have appeared here in the daily blog posts, and they will make a reappearance in her monthly art blog www.colorfuljourney.us over the next few months, with possibly a different slant in some of the commentary from the orientation we had here in this travel blog.
She was very happy with her little portable watercolor set that she learned about from an artist friend here at home. Thanks, Gretchen. It was great. Here are a few more details for anybody who would like to pursue this. It is called the Koi Water Colors Pocket Field Sketch Box. It is perfectly designed for on-location sketches in a sketch book. No easel, no palette, no need for a third hand. And my new water brush worked great too. It has a reservoir of water in the handle, so there’s no need to have a water cup with you. So handy and fun. You can see descriptions of a few different models of the paint box at Amazon, and I’m sure they’re also available at art supply places like Jerry’s, Dick Blick, and Utrecht. Amazon also lists lots of the water brushes.
We’ve already mentioned our satisfaction with the wand scanner. It produced so much nicer images than we could get from photographs of the drawings. It will definitely be part of our kit on future trips.
We had originally expected that we might have to rescan everything on our flatbed scanner when we got home, but now we’ve decided that most of those from the wand are great the way they are. Its minimum resolution is greater that what we normally use on the scanner at home, and our editing program did a fine job clearing up the gray backgrounds and tweaking the colors.
As always when we visit a place where we’ve been before, there will be a lot of compare and contrast. Add to this the fact that we’ve been around a good bit longer, had lots of other experiences along the way, and easily could find ourselves tuning in on different aspects of things than we had on earlier visits to the same area.
If history is any predictor, we will be getting back to this post a few times to incorporate new thoughts that just occurred to us. These will be just mixed in with the existing impressions and not otherwise highlighted, but we will try to keep up a brief list here of the topics that we’ve added. Check in from time to time and see what might be new.
Plaques commemorating WW II liberation · French Pharmacies · Waldteufel
Although we’ve titled the blog Alsace Trip, there really were four distinct phases, of which Alsace was indeed the central focus. We’ll take them one at a time, and then discuss more general stuff
Ireland
We hadn’t seen this as any sort of a focus in our trip; it was simply where the cheapest airline flight stopped on the way. We had never been there before, nor had we ever flown on Aer Lingus, their national airline. There is the ethical question which asks whether one can claim to have really set foot in a country if said foot has not touched dirt, but we’ll go with the more relaxed criterion that if that country could have arrested you for some sort of offense, then you have indeed been there. Not that we offended anybody. So we claim to have been there, and we’d like to get back.
We weren’t that far away from Ireland during our three years in England, 1980-83. But our travel focus then was on the beautiful local area where we lived, a few trips up into the north and to Scotland where Bruce had family history, and over to continental Europe for a wide ranging set of trips built around Bruce’s annual Army Reserve tour in Germany. The Army provided the nucleus of two weeks in either Berlin or Munich (‘Good duty’ we call these places!), and we built lots of good stuff around it. This was also the time of The Troubles in Northern Ireland, and that probably influenced our travel plans as well.
The views of Ireland from the plane were very pretty. The locally grown food in the airport restaurants was delicious. Our wee sip of Irish whiskey would be well worth repeating. We’re sure we’ll be back, and we will truly set foot in the place.
Paris
Certainly a bucket list destination for everybody. We had been there quite a few times before, both individually and together. It’s always worth a visit. So much life, so much history, so much beauty. Our evening walk along the Seine was a special treat. Here’s Bruce’s impression. We’re not sure whether he clicked the shutter button at the wrong time or attempted a handheld shot when the lighting really demanded a tripod. Or whether the red car interrupted something already underway. But it ended up being art of the highest quality! There’s a lot of vibrancy there.
We got to know the Métro pretty well on this trip. The more modern parts of it are equipped with elevators and escalators, but the older ones use only stairs. And those are the stations we used on most of the trips that involved suitcases. Enough said about that.
We were quite surprised at the number of roving security people we encountered in train and Métro stations, and at major tourist locations. Some were just dressed in casual blue uniforms and armed with nightsticks, while others were in full combat gear with automatic weapons. We didn’t want to risk provoking any of the latter by taking their pictures. They appeared to have been well trained, as all were practicing good trigger finger and muzzle position discipline.
We were very happy with the two English language guided tours we took in Paris, sponsored by pariswalks.com out of London. They were both run by British expats who appeared to have lived for quite some time in France and had a very good understanding of the place. The company proudly notes on its website that all its guides are university graduates. It also offers tours in lots of other cities throughout Europe, and in a few other places in the world as well. Prices seem to be pretty constant at €12. Thanks to Aimée for putting us onto them. Check them out!
Our AirBnB apartment near Place de la Bastille was quite ample for the two of us, but it would have been a squeeze for the originally anticipated five in our party. And the four flights of stairs with suitcases were a challenge. Noted, all this was pretty well disclosed in the AirBnB description. The location was quite pleasant and convenient, especially when the big market was underway in the boulevard. Though it was troubling when we learned that the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, scene of a terrorist attack just three months after our visit, was located only a few blocks away.
Alsace
We were there for two weeks, and it certainly was the focus of our trip. We had both passed through the area briefly, many years back (1960s and 70s), but our impressions then were pretty much limited to appreciating the scenery and not really absorbing much of the history or culture. This time we were able to get pretty deep into many aspects of the place.
Bruce’s European background is primarily with Germany from his Army time and from continued involvement through his career-long civilian job, while Sue Anne’s is with France, going back to her student days. Though there’s been plenty of cross-pollination on both our parts. So we were fascinated by this place that was without a doubt legally in France but had so many features that clearly traced to Germany.
We learned that the area had swapped back and forth between the two countries four times, the results of all sorts of wars and invasions, some even involving the Swedes. Town names, family names, other names—all were pretty much in actual German or a slightly Frenchified version of German. Those were the strangest. They grated on our linguistic senses as speakers of both languages. The two languages were given pretty much equal billing in interpretive signs throughout the area, and we got the impression that most of the people were bilingual—French and German—with very little English in signs or spoken. Analysis of license plates showed quite a lot of German and Swiss tourist traffic throughout the area, especially over the October 3rd weekend of the German Unification holiday.
One exception to the lack of English was plaques gratefully commemorating the World War II liberation of towns by the US Army. All of these featured English, often identifying the Army units involved and displaying their unit crests.
Here’s a good example of the language dichotomy—a bottle and a glass from the same brewery, same logo, same words. But the name of the brewery is in German on the bottle and in French on the glass. The beer tasted good in both languages.
Houses were painted in bright colors, tracing back to the trade or religion of the original occupants, in contrast to the fundamentally dull, beige, exterior appearance of houses and towns that we knew from our previous experiences in the rest of France. Though we learned long ago not to dismiss the beauty of a French home till you’ve seen it with the gate to the courtyard open. It’s often a whole other world in there from what you see out on the street!
Railroad gauges in Alsace were different. Religious history was different. We even read that many laws are still different, though we didn’t penetrate any understanding of this aspect of things.
The countryside was gorgeous. Both sides of the Rhine are mirror images of each other. There’s a wide plain on each side, and then a quick rise into mountains. It’s the Schwarzwald (Black Forest) on the German side, and Les Vosges in France. Stand most anywhere in the plain and you can take in the entire sweep of things. Les Vosges were of modest height, far from Alpine but very lovely. It was rainy the day we drove up in there and we didn’t get too many pictures. But our photographer friend Carolyn who was coincidentally in the area at the same time hopes to get a lot of hers up on her website once she gets past a few technical problems with it. We’re sure that it will be well worth a visit.
And let’s talk about the overflowing abundance of flowers in Alsace. They were everywhere in window boxes and along village streets in waist high boxes on railings. Villages and cities compete for awards or ratings—we are not sure which. But the signs told the tale: Our village was Un Village Fleuri ****. four stars, so to speak.
The roads were busy not only with tour buses, but also with tractors and farm equipment signaling the end of the harvest in the vineyards. Roadside booths overflowed with bags of nuts, pumpkins, apples, and honey.
We very much enjoyed our two days in Strasbourg. Its island location makes for marvelous views. We reached a point on our boat tour when we simply had to stop taking pictures lest we run out of bits. We learned a lot from its city museum.
A day trip across the Rhine to Freiburg, Germany led us to an area not that different from what we had come to know in Alsace. And as we noted in the blog, the entire German influence had disappeared by the time we got to the first town after crossing the département (state) line from Alsace into La Franche-Compte on our way to Dijon.
Here’s a pair of trivia questions regarding the Alsatian composer Émile Waldteufel, mentioned earlier in the blog. They might only be suitable for readers dating to our era. Check out these two pieces of his music on YouTube, Estudiantina and España, and see if you can identify the unlikely places where these two tunes were reused during our lifetime. The answers appear at the bottom of this post.
Dijon
A special place to both of us. Sue Anne spent her UNH junior year there, her first time immersed in a foreign culture and her first time out by herself as an independent young adult. Bruce was then in the Army, stationed in Frankfurt a mere five hour drive away. It was also his first time in a foreign culture (though with a fallback to the local American military community), and also his first time out by himself as an independent young adult. With the added responsibilities of being an officer in the US Army. Those are special times that make for lifelong memories! We were able to get together on a number of occasions. We became engaged on Bruce’s first visit to Dijon, shortly after Sue Anne had arrived. We’ve gotten back there a few times since, but this trip really produced the greatest opportunity for compare and contrast of any of our visits.
We were very impressed by the splendid job that Dijon had done in creating such a pedestrian friendly area downtown. A four or five block stretch that used to be horribly clogged with cars and featured very narrow sidewalks is now totally dedicated to pedestrians. The execution of the project was very nicely done; it wasn’t just a simple matter of putting up a few signs and barriers and leaving everything else untouched. There was new paving everywhere, all very harmonious with the buildings and the open areas at the Place de la Libération. The Place with its restaurants, shops, and fountains attracted a lot of action. And the new streetcar system was very well integrated into the new traffic patterns.
France in General
Opening hours of smaller stores were pretty much what we have been long accustomed to: closed for a long lunch, closed after 5, closed on Sundays. We tended to go to the hypermarket (a rather small one, but still relatively hyper by neighborhood standards) in Ribeauvillé at times that would have been risky at the other places. And even the hypermarket turned out to be closed on Sunday. The Lavandière restaurant in Bergheim didn’t open up for meals till 6, and even at that it was only Tarte Flambée till 7. But you could drink all afternoon.
France has long had a reputation for being highly protective of the sanctity of their language. As new concepts arose, particularly those of a technological nature originating in the US, the Académie Française would stomp down on any attempt to integrate them into French usage and would quickly manufacture a mandatory French language equivalent. Many of these took up lots more words than the original English versions. English is so very adaptable!
Franglais, mixing of the two languages, was a linguistic sin of the first order. No more! We already documented the Undiz lingerie store in Strasbourg. Here’s a picture of an ad we saw in Paris; note the Nouveau Slim Can product description over at the left side.
We had been informally accumulating impressions of this phenomenon throughout the trip, but on our last day Sue Anne made a concerted effort to record lots of them. She quickly filled two pages at the back of her sketchbook with Franglais and other examples of desecration of La Langue. Here they are!
| Franglais and other desecrations |
American |
| Le Sup |
Magazine
supplement |
| Delookeur |
Stylist
for a new ‘look’, hair salon |
| Divia |
Dijon
streetcar system (Actually the Roman word for Dijon, but a great play on words) |
| Toutounet
|
Mutt
mitts, translates to ‘doggie clean’ |
| Sucx |
Name of
candy store |
| Slim Can | Container for Perrier water |
| Duketown Cupcake | Now defunct shop in Dijon |
| Tex A
Way, c’est Mexi Frais |
Tex Mex
place - Frais means fresh |
| Jennyfer |
Fur shop |
| Maxi
livres |
Bookstore |
| Pourcent
Aĝe - 56% off over 56 |
Eyewear
store with discounts by age |
| Body
Slim, Cure Minceur Express, Booster de Caféine |
Diet
supplements |
| Vous
pouvez nous faxer votre ordonnance |
You can
fax us your order |
| Dojo Zen
|
Some sort
of exercise |
| Kit Cake
Pops |
A variety
of candy |
| Moule à
Angel |
Cake |
| Popcorn | Popcorn |
| Quizzine |
SNCF
(national railroad) food quiz online |
| Kidexpo |
Upcoming
big sales event for kids |
| Cyclable |
Bicycle
shop |
| Musculation |
Vitamin
supplement |
| Un pull |
A
pullover, a sweater |
| Undiz |
An
underwear store |
| Hotel
Cheap Beds |
Self
explanatory! |
Untours
We wrote briefly about Untours earlier in the blog. This was our first experience with them, and we were very satisfied. They make all the fundamental arrangements (or as many as you haven’t already worked out yourself), they maintain and enforce their standards for the various accommodations that they deal with, they provide a welcome lunch and orientation to the area and a free emergency cell phone, and then they leave you alone unless you need to call on them for assistance. The people at the home office in Pennsylvania were very, very responsive in rearranging things when Aimée, Steve, and Nate had to cancel out, and the two staffers we dealt with in France were both American expats with a great command of the area. Highly recommended!
Here’s one fascinating piece of information that we learned from the very informative part of the Untours orientation meeting that dealt with medical situations. French pharmacies are like little medical clinics in their own right. They don’t just dispense pills; they diagnose minor conditions and prescribe the treatment and/or medication. And during mushroom picking season, you can bring in your harvest and they will sort out the poisonous ones from the tasty ones. Our Maryland friends will probably remember Dart Drug (R.I.P.), with its weekly specials on car parts, lawn and garden accessories, small electronics, and the like. French pharmacies ain’t Dart Drug, and Dart Drug ain’t a French pharmacy!
One downer about French pharmacies—they are customarily marked with a green cross for easy identification, and they have gone utterly wild with animated green LEDs on their signs. These are a horrible affront to the genteel ambiance of a typical French village. We’re hoping that a protest movement will emerge and stomp them out.
Money
We were concerned after our experience in Paris of not being able to get money from an ATM because we had a striped card rather than a chipped one. This led us to an old-fashioned change shop, which exacted a pretty hefty commission. Fortunately this turned out to be a one-time problem. We were able to use a striped credit card or ATM/debit card pretty easily throughout the rest of the trip. Only occasionally would one not work, but the other one then rescued us so we were never stranded. Bring two or more cards if you have them, just in case.
Ambiance
People were friendly, drivers generally courteous, dog poop rarely in evidence (a major change from the past). All very nice. And no cigarette smoke, except in a few outdoor locations. Phew! The Loi du 1 Février 2007 (Défense de Fumer - No Smoking) is now right up there in the Hall of Fame with the famous Loi du 29 Juillet 1881 which is cited on all the Défense d’Afficher (Post No Bills) signs around the country. That latter date is even said to be celebrated by some as a minor holiday. Any excuse for a party!
France finally caved in to the standard of the rest of the world and posted yield signs at every entrance to the roundabouts. They did the same at most every intersection between a minor road and a major one, immensely softening the rigid priority from the right concept that they had so strongly clung to for years. Only occasionally, in very small towns, would there be a Priorité à Droite sign at the edge of town to remind us that things hadn’t changed there. It is hard to imagine what the scene must have been at the roundabouts for the first month or two after they got rid of the horrid concept of right of way to those entering the roundabout, but it seems to have worked out fine. We never saw anybody challenging it.
Computer Stuff
WiFi at the apartments in Paris and Alsace worked fine, as did the free service at the airports in Dublin and Paris. Free service at the airport hotel in Paris was deeply throttled, but still quite sufficient for normal email and web work. One caution, which we learned in Europe last year and encountered again at the hotel in Dijon, involves an Internet service where the clerk at the hotel desk presses a button on a little machine, which then spits out an ID and password for you on a slip of paper. That worked fine, but those credentials can only be used by one device. After that, you would have to try to negotiate for a second account if you wanted to use something else. So, if you do have multiple devices with you such as a tablet and a laptop, it would be wise to consider one to be primary, and set that one up first. Just in case.
Our little Pandigital wand scanner worked fine at transferring Sue Anne’s drawings from her sketchbook to our laptop, using either a USB cable or a micro-SD card and a USB adapter. It did tend to create gray backgrounds, but it was easy to clear these out using our standard, free, image processing program IrfanView. It’s a regular part of our arsenal at home and on the road, useful for color adjustments and for editing out stuff like edge effects (especially sketchbook binder rings), cropping out the vacant space that comes from scanning something narrower than the scanner, getting rid of inadvertent smudges, and the like.
The scanner comes with a cradle that also includes a motorized sheet feeder, but we didn’t need that so we left it at home to save space and weight. We commandeered one of Bruce’s socks as its traveling case, to ensure that nothing would accidentally mar the scanning surface.
Upon reading the detailed information in the users manual, we discovered that there is a calibration procedure that should be invoked from time to time to adjust the scanner’s color rendition. We didn’t want to tamper with things during the trip, but we did run the procedure when we got home and it helped a lot. There is still a hint of gray in the background that’s easily removable in IrfanView, and the colors are now much closer to true without the need for very much tweaking at all.
Electricity is 240 volt 50 Hz everywhere, though with an occasional 120 volt outlet in the bathrooms. I wouldn’t recommend trying it with a US hair dryer, as those outlets have a reputation of being set up only for electric shavers and similar devices of very low current demand. Bring adapters, and be sure to verify that your devices are specified up through 240 volts. Most computer stuff is, but read the label to be certain. The French recently converted to 3-prong grounded outlets, but most existing 2-prong plugs or adapters still fit fine.
Art
Sue Anne filled her sketchbook with a wide array of images from throughout the trip. All of them have appeared here in the daily blog posts, and they will make a reappearance in her monthly art blog www.colorfuljourney.us over the next few months, with possibly a different slant in some of the commentary from the orientation we had here in this travel blog.
She was very happy with her little portable watercolor set that she learned about from an artist friend here at home. Thanks, Gretchen. It was great. Here are a few more details for anybody who would like to pursue this. It is called the Koi Water Colors Pocket Field Sketch Box. It is perfectly designed for on-location sketches in a sketch book. No easel, no palette, no need for a third hand. And my new water brush worked great too. It has a reservoir of water in the handle, so there’s no need to have a water cup with you. So handy and fun. You can see descriptions of a few different models of the paint box at Amazon, and I’m sure they’re also available at art supply places like Jerry’s, Dick Blick, and Utrecht. Amazon also lists lots of the water brushes.
We’ve already mentioned our satisfaction with the wand scanner. It produced so much nicer images than we could get from photographs of the drawings. It will definitely be part of our kit on future trips.
We had originally expected that we might have to rescan everything on our flatbed scanner when we got home, but now we’ve decided that most of those from the wand are great the way they are. Its minimum resolution is greater that what we normally use on the scanner at home, and our editing program did a fine job clearing up the gray backgrounds and tweaking the colors.
Answers to Trivia Questions
Waldteufel music
- The major theme of Estudiantina was used in an ad jingle for Rheingold Beer.
- Perry Como’s 1953 hit Hot DIggity was sung to the tune of España.
Friday, October 24, 2014
Home to New Hampshire, Friday October 17
Our wake up call did just that at 7AM, the shuttle bus bounced its way to the airport before daybreak, and our last French pastries were buttered and spread with ‘confiture’. The check in was easy enough that we don't remember it.
We saw towns and cities and grand country homes in England from the air. And then a brief cloudy swoop across the Irish sea. The approach into Dublin was hazy but very green. We pretty much decided that a proper trip to Ireland is in the future.
Our lunch featured prawn sandwiches on wholewheat bread, and chocolate hazelnut cookies. The quality of food in the buffet eating area looked amazing. We could have stayed there for three days eating our way through the menu. Downstairs, a shop sold nothing but Irish whiskey. We perused the two souvenirs shops. One was highbrow featuring Belleek porcelain; the other green tee-shirts with rude sayings. Equally worthwhile when your layover is four hours. We bought whiskey.
The airport waiting area had been decorated for Christmas during the three weeks while we were on the continent. Color scheme: purple and white. The decorations: giant bows and candy striped panels and lots of white mini lights.
We were happy to learn that there was a US Customs preclearance facility there, which meant that there would be no customs hassle when we got back to Boston, and that we would probably be able to catch the early bus back to New London.
We had a long involved conversation with a fellow passenger in the lounge. Her husband had recently died, and she had poured herself into a hundred mile hiking trip in France and Spain. And she scattered his ashes here and there.
Only when it came to boarding time did we look at our boarding passes and realize that we weren’t sitting together. Bruce ended up sitting next to a young student new to the Boston area; Sue Anne’s appeared to only speak Chinese. The meal of Indian style chicken curry was quite edible. Sue Anne loved how the green clad Irish flight attendants, female, were constantly offering tea and charming words like ‘lovely’ and ‘brilliant’—words we had come to know well from our time in England.
It was dusk as we arrived in Boston, and the plane took one circle up toward the north and back down via Cape Ann before landing. You know you are in home territory when recognizable landscapes appear out of the window, including Rockport where we had been just last month.
We got to the bus stop before the early bus arrived. The next one would have been a two hour wait. A 90 minute trip back to the Park and Ride in New London, and then a 15 minute drive home. One's own bed is always the best.
We’ll be back in a few days with a summary of our impressions from throughout the entire trip. Stay tuned!
Thursday, October 16, 2014
Paris, Thursday October 16
It’s our last night in France, and we’re at a hotel near the Charles De Gaulle airport, just north of Paris. We were able to wander around Dijon a bit in the morning before starting our train/bus/shuttle trip that got us here just before supper time.
With the
weekend getting closer, we decided to see if there was any more action
in the market hall than there was the last time we looked. Yes, there
was, though it still wasn’t going at capacity. But these cheeses were
certainly well worth capturing a view of.
As were these mushrooms.
Then as we walked along the street came this sign, one of many in a shop window.
Translation
Theory, it's when you understand everything and nothing works.
Practice, it's when everything works but you don’t know why.
Here, we have succeeded at both:
Nothing works
and
Nobody knows why.
Yours for 27 Euros!
Then a stop at the tourist bureau to pick up a few pamphlets, for us and to bring home to give to one of Sue Anne’s companions from their long ago Dijon adventure.
The office is in part of the palace of the Dukes of Burgundy. Not bad digs.
Here’s a chapel in a room next door.
Two more scenes from a shop window, this shop illustrating all the delicious? offerings of electronic cigarettes. They are all over the place here!
And we’ll wrap up our final walk around Dijon with this sign from a shop that’s now out of business. Perhaps L’Académie Française clamped down on them?
Then, not illustrated, we stopped at a kabob place for a delicious Doner Kabob sandwich, checked out of the hotel, and trundled our bags down the cobblestones to the railroad station.
It was a two hour ride on the TGV train to Paris Gare de Lyon, with just one or two stops. Nice views along the way, especially the view of Lac Kir, a recreational area just outside of Dijon. It was originally named Lac Artificiel, out of pride for their having constructed it, and then was renamed in honor of the mayor. Best known for his heroism as a member of the French Resistance, he is also immortalized as the creator of the cocktail named Kir.
A large, husky man sitting across from us on the train with his little daughter voluntarily picked up our bags and put them up in the overhead rack, a task that would have been very difficult for the vertically challenged likes of us. Then when we arrived in Paris he took them down and carried both of them to the vestibule at the end of the car. And to top things off, as we were about to part ways at the end of the platform, he sent his daughter over to give us each a goodbye hug!
Nice.
Signs told us that there was a bus shuttle to the airport, which was a welcome relief from the expectation of a subway ride with luggage, followed by another train ride. We had been to these stations before and knew that they had no elevators or escalators. The signs however were not very helpful in telling us where to find the shuttle. But we finally succeeded. A few more questions to ask once we arrived, since the hotels are all off the airport proper and served by their own shuttle routes. But it all worked out, we’re here, we had a good supper, and tomorrow we fly back to Boston via a rather long layover in Dublin. But now most of the decisions and the hassles are behind us.
Now a quick flashback to Dijon
L'Eglise Saint Benigne is one of Dijon's many churches. The façade is stone and the roof colorful glazed tiles in a eye catching pattern.
Yesterday I drew this tiny carousel, dated 1900. I liked the airplane labeled Le Petit Prince. There is a streetcar and a rooster too. And the usual horses.
I was pondering on carousels and why we parents wave every time our child or children pass by. We are saying “I will always be here for you as you go off into the world on your many adventures”. And the children always wave to say “Here I am, I have not forgotten you”.
We’re not done with the blog. We plan to wrap things up in a day or two, after we get settled at home. Don’t go away.
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Dijon, Wednesday October 15
Lots of walking around Dijon today, remembering how it used to be, seeing what’s still the same and what’s changed. And eating good food.
First, this scene of a morning delivery to our hotel. Ah, the clatter of small wheels on ancient cobblestones.
A quick drive to gas up the rental car and turn it in, and then we walked back to the center of town past this sculpture, which has become somewhat symbolic of the place (nobody knows why, they certainly aren’t indigenous, but you see little copies in souvenir shops all over town), and the grumpy looking image of the sculptor, François Pompon.
A bit further along comes the new streetcar line that crosses the main square right where the pedestrian area begins. Love those big picture windows. This picture doesn’t show it, but the streetcars are actually in a train, five cars long, and fully articulated. You can walk through the whole thing.
The name of the transit service, Divia, is the Roman name for Dijon, and quite possibly the ‘via’ part is also a play on words having to do with transportation.
Bruce stayed at the fancy hotel in the background on his first trip to Dijon, before we discovered the Hotel du Sauvage.
Rental bikes, another mode of transportation and another play on words. Vélo is the informal French word for bicycle, and Vélodi sounds nicely melodic. Perhaps it has even a deeper connection. Keep reading to learn about the owl.
The Owl
The owl has also become somewhat of a symbol or mascot of the city. It pays
homage to a small statue carved in the side of the cathedral, which
achieved a fame of its own. The owl is smooth because it is old and because people touch it for good luck. Sadly somebody vandalized it a few years
back, but fortunately some one had created a mold, and they were able to
restore at least the essence of it. But the owl is recognized all over
town by markers in the sidewalk that take you on a walking tour and
point out special attractions. And, of course, also as little critters
for sale in the souvenir shops.
The old Market Hall is still going strong, but only on selected days. It was open today but just a few of the shops were actually in operation.
The fountain is still there with the three little frogs, the three little children, and a fourth named Jasmine.
We did mention food earlier. Here’s what we consumed today, both meals at places at the Place de la Libération. Lunch was outside, but the light rain had started by supper time.
Pizza is now ubiquitous. The French do it quite nicely with their sense of fresh ingredients and interesting combinations.
Those two pizzas for lunch kept us going for a long time, and for supper we both felt quite satisfied to simply eat crêpes, Sue Anne’s with jam and Bruce’s with Nutella. Sadly our favorite sidewalk crêpe maker from long ago was no longer in operation, but we enjoyed the light meal in a sit down restaurant setting,
It was also a big day for on-location drawing. Here’s today’s take, with commentary by Sue Anne.
This is the well in the court yard of our hotel.
I love to draw elaborate iron gates. This one frames Dijon’s memorial archway which is like the L’Arc de Triomphe in Paris.
Most of the architecture in Dijon is from 1880 to present day. There are a few medieval structures and they do look ancient and dirt covered. This block is empty on the upper floors and modern on the ground floor. The sign in red says “I no longer smoke, I vapor.”
President Woodrow Wilson is well remembered in Dijon. This park is called Place Wilson, pronounced as ‘Plahss Veel-sohn’. It was very close to my apartment from my student days.
My apartment building is sort of boring looking in beige stucco. So I drew the nice looking 1900 era house which I saw every day from the kitchen.
A major gathering point in Dijon is called the Place De La Libération. It is a semi circle facing the ducal palace. Here is the finish to my pizza meal, an espresso plus a cookie, not yet unwrapped, marked ‘Instant Pleasure’. The orange place mat and the red cushions against the yellow stone made for a fun drawing experience.
I couldn't draw the elaborate Dukes’ Palace, nor the large semi-circle that faces it, but I could draw a small part of the line of shops. This particular shop that now sells regional specialities including mustard was once the location of a very fine jewelry store that was owned by my landlord and his wife. They kindly resized the engagement ring that Bruce presented to me on his trip to Dijon in October 1966, and offered the service at a prix d’une amie.
The Place De La Libération, and much of the downtown too, is now all a pedestrian zone. No more small, smelly cars zipping by too close, too fast. Hooray.
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Dijon, Tuesday October 14
After two wonderful weeks in Bergheim, Alsace, we checked out of our Untours rental house, said au revoir and merci to our friendly host, and hit the road heading south. It was a gorgeous day, with warm temperature and blue skies. Traffic was light, and the drive was easy. Then a right turn near Mulhouse, and we were on our way west to Dijon.
At some point along the way we crossed the line from Alsace into the next département, Franche-Compté, and it suddenly became clear that we were truly in France. We only spotted one German looking name anywhere in the next town, and the color of the houses changed dramatically from the cheerful mix we had come to know in Alsace into the assorted shades of beige that we had long associated with France.
We arrived in Dijon mid-afternoon, drove around a bit to get our bearings, and without too much difficulty found the Hotel du Sauvage, a 16th century mail coach inn that had been Bruce’s residence whenever he came to town to visit Sue Anne during her junior year experience here. We learned about it from the famous Europe on Five Dollars a Day, which was really a fact back then. (Or perhaps from Frommer’s?) Prices have gone up a bit by now. Our breakfast tomorrow will be $11.
Here’s the view out the window of our room, across the courtyard and out toward the street.
And another rendition of the same view
Bruce opted for a brief nap after the day’s drive, while Sue Anne set about reuniting herself with the scene of her first big foreign adventure. Then after a bit more rest for both of us, we set out for dinner and a walk around the town. The big change since ‘back then’ is the pedestrian streets, that used to be clogged with cars and parking lots. They really did a lovely job creating these. There was a lot more involved than simply putting up a few signs. Everything looked very harmonious, and they also set up their new streetcar system to complement the resulting traffic patterns.
A few pictures as we walked through the area
Carousel in the background, and a small, very peaceful pair of opposing protest groups over toward the left. The protests involved differing views on immigration policy, and the action consisted exclusively of the people holding signs and glaring at each other.
A view down one of the pedestrian streets. Skateboarders count as pedestrians.
Dinner in an outdoor restaurant at the Place de la Libération, across from the palace of the Dukes of Burgundy.
Monday, October 13, 2014
Freiburg, Monday October 13
We’re catching the blog right up to today. It’s another relatively short one, and tomorrow is moving day for us so we don’t know how much time we’re going to have available then, or what the Internet facilities might be at our next stop.
Today we decided to spend the day in Germany. We had heard nice things about the city of Freiburg, just across the Rhine, so we thought it would be fun to take things in from that side of the river. It would be an opportunity for compare and contrast with our Alsatian experience.
One compare that came out pretty much the same for both sides of the river is the long, wide views of the Rhine valley, bordered in the distance on both sides by hills—Les Vosges on the French side, and the Schwartzwald (Black Forest) in Germany. Contrast is that the road signs on the French side seemed more complete and easy to follow than the German ones. Architecture and food were pretty similar in both places.
Freiburg was indeed a nice place. We parked in the lowest level of a subterranean garage, checked our orientation on a large map sign, and headed in the direction of a church steeple, figuring that it would indicate an interesting part of town. It did. There was a big market going on, but first we homed in on a restaurant, the Goldener Engel (Golden Angel) for lunch. Link to their website. The food was distinctly German but on the other hand pretty much the same as we had been eating in Alsace for the past two weeks. Bruce had a venison stew with spaetzels, not that different from the meal he had in Strasbourg last week but with the addition of the very traditional red current sauce that customarily accompanies game in Germany. Sue Anne enjoyed her Weisswurst, potatoes, and onions. In keeping with the restaurant’s name, angel figures looked down from the ceiling beams throughout the place.
Then it was time to wander around the market. Here’s the view from the front of the restaurant, and then a more detailed view of the marvelous building in the background. It appears to have once been a market or store of some kind.
Today we decided to spend the day in Germany. We had heard nice things about the city of Freiburg, just across the Rhine, so we thought it would be fun to take things in from that side of the river. It would be an opportunity for compare and contrast with our Alsatian experience.
One compare that came out pretty much the same for both sides of the river is the long, wide views of the Rhine valley, bordered in the distance on both sides by hills—Les Vosges on the French side, and the Schwartzwald (Black Forest) in Germany. Contrast is that the road signs on the French side seemed more complete and easy to follow than the German ones. Architecture and food were pretty similar in both places.
Freiburg was indeed a nice place. We parked in the lowest level of a subterranean garage, checked our orientation on a large map sign, and headed in the direction of a church steeple, figuring that it would indicate an interesting part of town. It did. There was a big market going on, but first we homed in on a restaurant, the Goldener Engel (Golden Angel) for lunch. Link to their website. The food was distinctly German but on the other hand pretty much the same as we had been eating in Alsace for the past two weeks. Bruce had a venison stew with spaetzels, not that different from the meal he had in Strasbourg last week but with the addition of the very traditional red current sauce that customarily accompanies game in Germany. Sue Anne enjoyed her Weisswurst, potatoes, and onions. In keeping with the restaurant’s name, angel figures looked down from the ceiling beams throughout the place.
Then it was time to wander around the market. Here’s the view from the front of the restaurant, and then a more detailed view of the marvelous building in the background. It appears to have once been a market or store of some kind.
Then a quick walk through a souvenir shop, again for compare and contrast. The wall of cuckoo clocks was very distinctly German. And there were few if any storks.
We didn’t have anybody in mind for this child’s shirt, but we got a good chuckle out of its packaging.
Then Sue Anne got to work with her sketchpad.
A street market surrounded the cathedral. The church door is here in the background. I started the drawing with the red stone column in the center. It had faces carved into four sides. Then I drew bits and pieces of the flower stall at the right. There were a lot of beautiful autumn wreaths that I know are meant to be placed on graves. You can see them near the base of the column. I once unknowingly purchased one for its decorative value when we lived in England, and had a hard time answering the seller’s question, “Where is your grave?”
Then a hand with a large ice cream cone passed right in front of my face. So that image became part of my rather odd composition and mixture of objects. I’m sure we’ve all had this sort of thing happen with photographs.
Then a hand with a large ice cream cone passed right in front of my face. So that image became part of my rather odd composition and mixture of objects. I’m sure we’ve all had this sort of thing happen with photographs.
For odd drawing #2, here is a dramatically dressed tour guide, gesticulating wildly in an effort to develop an interest in history in her audience of teenagers. She is not succeeding.
And odd drawing #3 for the day. I drew three squashes that had been scratched into while they were growing. The opened area of the flesh heals into a legible scar. So we have vegetables with messages on them: a Heartfelt Welcome, a Thank You, and an All Is Well.
Above the squashes, I drew a sign, a bag and a container. I think there may be a spelling error in the sign, either mine or theirs. But I know what it means to say: make your own sauerkraut. Or possibly buy our homemade sauerkraut. I passed on those options, even though I do enjoy sauerkraut. I just don’t think the guys at customs would let it pass.
Then we headed back to France, kind of feeling our way out of town since the road signs weren’t too very complete. There was one scary moment when a detour sign (Umleitung) almost sent us down a streetcar track, but we recovered before committing ourselves.
Our objective was to stop at a memorial to the Maginot Line that we had passed on our way out of France earlier in the day. We did succeed in locating it. Although the museum part (inside the fortified structure) wasn’t open today, there was a good bit to be seen on the grounds, and the signs told the story.
The Maginot Line was built after World War I to keep the Germans from getting back into France. Unfortunately for the French the Germans didn’t play fair. Instead of a full frontal assault, they simply conquered neutral Belgium first and then came down into France behind the Maginot Line fortifications.
This is the back side of the casemate, the fortified structure.
This would greet you at the main doorway. It would certainly help repel those pesky salesmen.
This greeting was intended for the Germans.
There were also outdoor exhibits of armor and artillery, mostly American in origin and provided to the French for their use. And here’s a section of a Bailey Bridge, that amazingly versatile piece of engineering, designed by the British and quickly adopted by the US as well. It could be configured to take just about any load across just about any gap. Determine the required length and load capacity, look it up in your handy pocket-sized Field Manual, and connect up the required sections. This section is configured as a ‘double-single’, two trusses on a side stacked one high. They can go up to ‘triple-triple’.
The information on the sign is quite amazing. It says that this was part of a bridge that crossed the Rhine and was in service for military traffic through 1961, then opened to civilian use for another 25 years before finally being retired.
Bruce dedicates this piece of the blog to two Army colleagues who were proud members of the Corps of Engineers, Major (later Colonel) Charles Eastburn and Lieutenant Rick Osterberg, the Best Man at our wedding.
And that’s our quick trip to Germany. Tomorrow we check out of our great quarters in Alsace and head to Dijon, where Sue Anne spent her junior year of college and Bruce often came to visit from his Army station in Frankfurt. Two nights in Dijon, and then it’s back to Paris for the flight home.
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