Some country air...

Bonjour lecteurs!
Its getting to be that time of year in Strasbourg where downtown comes alive with christmas decorations, the smell of roasted chestnuts, and the taste of hot mulled wine...Noel (christmas) is coming soon! The famous Christkindelmarket opens this saturday! I can't wait to stuff my face with alsacian christmas cookies that seem to come in every shape, size, and flavor...or to drink the Biere de Noel (Beer that tastes like christmas) or hot spiced wine. This is the time of year to forget calories.


Since I last posted I have been on a couple of excursions around Alsace, the first with the entire group.
We left Strasbourg around noon for Ebermunster, home of the only baroque church in Alsace, also famous for the organ of Andre Silbermann.

Then off to Colmar! Colmar is Rick Steeve's favorite city in France. That's got to be saying something right? Well apparently its great in the summer when its typically alsacian buildings are covered in flowers, OR during christmas when they open their traditional christmas market. We went in between these seasons, so not much was happening. It was still charming though!

And what is a trip without a good ole healthy dose of museum? Le Musée d'Unterlinden is a famous museum in Colmar renowned for its collection of the Retables d'Issenheim. Basically...giant paintings on wood panels (before canvas was used in paintings) depicting the life of jesus. I'll admit that I'm not really into Jesus art, but it was really amazing to see the painting techniques progress through time. With the first painting, people looked flat, but with the second, more light was used in the painting. My favorite one even had hints of impressionism, way before the time of impressionism! Even though we were in a giant museum, we only had enough time to see the giant panel paintings because our guide was really really excited about them and wanted to talk about them forever.

Colmar:

After a brief pretzel break, we hopped back on the bus to Lapoutroie. I wouldn't even consider this a town. I felt kind of embarrassed hurling through the dinky little village with our gargantuan tour bus. 

There, we stopped at le Musée des Eaux-de-Vie (basically a museum of liquor). A jolly old man greeted us at the door to show us around. As I looked around, I saw that the walls were covered in shelves of mini liquor bottles. He said that there were perhaps 8 million of them in his museum! He walked us through all the steps of how people made liquors with the materials they had. The room was filled with old trinkets used for distillation. 

Then came the best part of our time at the museum...free tastings!

He asked if I liked the taste of black licorice, and since I do, he began to prepare me a sip of absinthe. To make it sweet, they pour water over a sugar cube that is suspended over the glass with a slotted spoon. The sugar dissolves in the water and falls into the absinthe.

I also tried small sips of Pain d'epices (basically christmas-y spices), pear, peach, green apple, and rose. 

After a while, the free tastings became too much to swallow (haha), so we piled back into the van. Destination: dinner.

Or so I thought. More like operation: make everyone in the bus nauseated. Our bus driver took the route down the mountain with switchbacks. Next time they should consider taking a straigher route after the free liquor tastings...

Finally, we arrived in Munster, home of the smelly munster cheese and our restaurant "A l'Agneau D'or" (at the lamb of gold). This small restaurant was run by a husband and wife team. They are well known for their delicious cuisine. We started out with profiteroles filled with munster, and tartines with new munster, then continued with a seasonal salad paired with an amazing Riesling. It was the kind of place where whoever is paying gets to try some wines to make sure they are good enough, and choose the ones that everyone will be drinking. Quite chic, non? 

In between the appetizer and the main course we had a sorbet made of spiced red wine. Delicious!

The main course was munster gnocchi (and turkey for the meat eaters) paired with Pinot Noir. And to finish the whole night off well, chocolate mousse pie with creme a la feve de tonka. Apparently the spice they put in the creme was more expensive than caviar, AND it kills rats. Hmm. I guess delicacies aren't supposed to be rational. 

The chef came out to give one of our group members a birthday flower and kiss. This man was exactly what I always thought a french chef would look like: large with rosy cheeks, sporting a chef's hat and a GIANT grey curled mustache. 

Now for the next excursion! One of the professors at my university mentioned that a trip was being organized to Barr, France, a wine making village in Alsace. Who would pass up a trip to a wine making village? So off I went.

After a brief train ride through the outskirts of Strasbourg, we arrived in Barr. 

I liked Barr. It is not frequented by massive groups of tourists, so I didn't feel guilty for being there. I mean, I didn't feel like one of "them". You know who I'm talking about. The huge tours that follow guides walking backwards holding a flag so everyone stays together, and shepherding them all obnoxiously into the same subway car or the same restaurant? 

Some friends of mine also had signed up for the trip. We decided to go on a hike through the vineyards! It was so beautiful. You could see the town and all the towns surrounding it. At the top of the hill we found refuge on a grassy knoll, and taking advantage of our surroundings, feasted on wine grapes that the harvesters missed. 

Then we met back up with the group for tour of a giant wine cellar and a wine tasting! They had some seriously old wines in there, covered in inches of dust and cobwebs. 

I wonder if that was a good year?

I would like to leave you with the mascot of alsace, the stork! There are some that get to fly, and others that are chosen to sit in the zoo where they get harassed by small drooling children. 

A stork's nest!

Until next time!

xoxo,

Michelle

Too much to say!

These past couple of weeks have been filled with adventure, so much so that its a daunting task to write all about them in the blog. I will keep it as simple as possible or else this blog entry would turn into a novel.

My vacation for tousaints went something like this:

Left Strasbourg for Paris on the 23 of October

Stayed for 3 nights in Paris with the entire group!

Went to Brussels for 2 nights with two girls from the group

Took a 7 hour train to Munich to spend Halloween with Kevin

My 3 hour train turned into 8 hours to get back home to Strasbourg!

Now for details:

PARIS:

On my list of places I want to go, I had never before considered Paris, France. It just seemed too typical to include. I had also heard from many that it was a disappointing place to visit after all of the high expectations. However, on the train to Paris I realized I was going to PARIS FRANCE! So I shoved aside my preconceived notions of the city and took it for what it was. And it was amazing! I feel so grateful that I was able to visit such a beautiful city. It's true what they say about it being a romantic place, something about it is just soooo lovely and wonderful. We ate very well in Paris, especially the chocolate mousse! We saw the play "La Lecon" by Eugene Ionesco, walked to the Louvre at night:

and saw the eiffel tour sparkle (it lights up every hour), and skipped down the champs elysees. Not bad huh?

My favorite part: seeing the Van Gogh's in La Musee D'Orsay.

Interesting part: The pedestrian bridge over the Seine is covered in padlocks with couple's names on them. It really made me miss a certain someone. 

Surprising part: I did not "go out" at all in Paris. We were all so tired from walking all day that we just wanted to sleep!

Pop quiz: What is this place? (Answer at the end of blog entry)

BRUSSELS:

Of course our train from Paris to Brussels was cancelled (the strikes) so we hopped on another one and sat in the stowaway area. Even though the trains here have been really complicated and not very reliable because of the strikes, there is something magical about watching the countryside roll by and watching the houses change from little french homes to brick belgian homes. 

I stayed in the Hello Hostel in Brussels for 2 nights with Mary Alice and Lainie (from Michigan).

I would describe our trip as one of gastronomic goals. We ate everything quintessentially Belgian:

Belgian fries: I took mine with sauce piquant. No idea what it was made out of, but delicious.

 

Belgian waffles (seriously the best thing in the world, I didn't even know that's how they were supposed to taste. It was like a cake/cookie/waffle, completely magical)

Belgian beer (mine's the one in the middle)

Belgian chocolate

HEAVEN!

We found this great little bar in Brussels with 46 beers on tap at a time. They ask you how you are feeling and they choose a beer for you. They are always right! We were always satisfied with our beers, no matter how strange they were. 

We also visited the flea market where I picked up some nice little trinkets:

Then we walked around Brussels without using the Metro. It's really not that big after being in Paris, so we chose to hoof it. So worth it! We walked up the hill to the museum area and went to the Rene Magritte museum. He has always been one of my favorite artists, so I was really excited to go, especially because it was only 2 euros for students! They didn't have any of his really famous paintings there but it was interesting to see how he progressed as an artist. 

We walked to the Palace and the royal gardens, past the european parliament building, and found our way back to the bar to quench our thirsts with some Geuze, a strange specialty beer of Brussels that involves spontaneous fermentation and a mixing of 3 lambics from different years! Wasnt half bad!

Also, a bus we frequently saw in Brussels, sorry I couldn't help myself:

MUNICH:

Time to relax! I love to travel to new places but sometimes it just feels great to kick back your feet, sleep in, and eat well. I am a creature of comfort. Originally, I thought I would go to Amsterdam after Brussels, but Munich called my name and I went. 

On saturday, Kevin, Hannah, and I went to Garmisch. They Olympics were held there in the 1930's. Its an adorable bavarian ski village. The train ride took our breathes away with the fall colors and the Alps...

We then visited the Olympic ski jumping area:

...and took a gondola to the top of the mountain to really get a sense of where we were:

Absolutely breathtaking!

Sunday we had Halloween! We got to carve pumpkins and roast the seeds, and also decorate for the party with cobwebs. I dressed as a zebra, even made my own mask, and Kevin went as the fruit stripes gum (the one with the multi-colored zebra on it) that we loved when we were kids. 

Kevin's bookshelf: 2 belgian beers courtesey of yours truly, a german mas, my zebra mask, my pumpkin who had a bad knife incident, and Kevin's with unfortunate skin problems. We had a great time!

My return trip home was twice as long as it should have been, I was quite miserable. At least there was a pretty sunset to watch as my train broke down. 

Tomorrow I am going on an excursion to Colmar, south of Strasbourg! Can't wait!

*POP QUIZ ANSWER: Starbucks!

Mes sentiments distinguees,

Michelle

xoxo