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
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