A perennial expat muses about her recent move from Zurich to Munich and her travels around Germany, Europe, and the world. Currently: bracing for Oktoberfest.
I don’t have anything particularly profound to say about
We attempted to hit a casual vegetarian restaurant called Adan (6 rue Sedillot) for lunch, but alas it was closed for a week of vacation. That left us scrambling to find a suitable lunch place that was still serving (eating lunch after 1 PM = bad idea in
We basically spent the day wandering around, window-shopping and admiring the views. Like
Day one of my recent trip to Alsace was spent in Colmar, an adorable little town full of narrow cobblestone streets and half-timbered houses painted in vivid colors. It's just a 2-hour train ride from Zurich, changing trains in Basel (I'm being nice in this post, so I'm biting my tongue about the cleanliness and punctuality of that second train).
After dropping our bags off at the hotel and wandering around a bit, we headed for lunch at Le temps des delices (23, rue d'Alspach), a tiny Italian restaurant recommended by Ali's guidebook. It offered up some of the best food I've ever had in France, and the waitress was friendly and charming. And it was non-smoking, so one could actually taste the food. Great place!
With our bellies satisfied, we headed towards the Musee d'Unterlinden. This museum is touted for its fabulous altarpiece by some guy I had never heard of. I went in a skeptic and came out a convert - it was a pretty fabulous altarpiece, and the rest of the collection contained some real gems, too. A very good art museum for such a small town, that's for sure.
Then it was off for some more wandering. We roughly followed the walking route recommended by the friendly guy at the Tourist Information Office. (Pretty much everyone we encountered in Colmar was friendly - can you imagine? Way to bust down those stereotypes about snotty rude Frenchies, Colmar.)
One particularly charming neighborhood of Colmar is referred to as 'Petit Venise' due to its muddy, dirty canals. One could imagine the patios lining the streets and canals full of tourists on a day only slightly warmer than the one we had; it must be packed in the summer, but we had it mostly to ourselves.
We stayed at a gorgeous, recently-renovated hotel in the middle of town called La Maison des Têtes (um, the head house?). It was a little too newly-renovated, actually - you could still smell the fresh paint. Their breakfast was decent but cost 14 euros extra; next time I'd skip it in favor of finding my own at one of the gazillions of pastry shops around. Seriously, how do the French eat all those pastries and stay so thin?
Overall Colmar was a big hit, and I'd really like to return. Next time I'll go by car so I can explore all the wineries in the surrounding area - Alsace, like many other regions of France, is full of charming wineries. Who knew France could be so much fun?
I never used to be a big fan of France. I wasn't out renaming fried potato products just to spite its citizens or anything like that - I just wasn't that into it. The language sounds ridiculous to me. The food is meaty. The trains... well, you know about the trains.
But my last couple trips there have turned out to be quite enjoyable. I just returned from a couple days in the Alsace region, and they were downright fun. The towns were adorable, the people were friendly and helpful, and I even managed to find a little bit of decent vegetarian food. And a lot of decent wine. And only one of my trains was late. Pictures and trip report coming soon...
Oh, and did you hear that Switzerland invaded Liechtenstein this week? Maybe that will liven the place up...
We spent the weekend Christmas-market-hopping around our little corner of
I’m happy to report that the Glühwein was a hit all around (unlike last year when I made Swiss Mrs. try it for the first time – she found it vile. I don’t know what’s wrong with her, either.)
On Saturday we headed north to Baden Baden (not to be confused with Baden), a medium-sized town in
We were impressed with the wide variety of Glühwein variants on offer, such as white Glühwein, Glühwein with amaretto and oranges, Glühwein with Kirsch, and Glühwein with Jägermeister, just to name a few. We also liked that it was served in real mugs rather than styrofoam cups. One pays a Pfand, or deposit, on the mugs, and can choose to keep them as souvenirs or return them to the Glühwein stand to retrieve this deposit.
The next day we took the train over to
We spent a day in Lyon on our way back to Zurich from southern France. Our guidebook (The Rough Guide to Europe ) promised good things, so we decided to check it out.
As we walked around town, we started noticing more and more people dressed like weirdoes. We figured something must be up. Carnival? Nope, wrong time of year. Some crazy French holiday? It turned out to be some extremely large dance festival-type-thing, and all the costumed folks were meeting up with their respective gaggles for the start of a giant parade. We entertained ourselves watching that for the rest of the day, and then caught the train home.Wednesday evening we hopped on an overnight train to go visit our friends who live on the southern coast of France. Being on a French train and all, we had a couple of unscheduled delays, but in the end we were content to arrive at our destination a mere two hours late (yay, no strikes). We spent these extra two hours talking about how much we love Swiss trains, and vowing to never leave our country again.
Things only improved from there. Our friends picked us up at the train station and whisked us back to their home by the sea in St. Pierre la Mer, a tiny village of 500 inhabitants which swells to 100,000 during the tourist invasion of the summer vacation months. We spent the morning wandering the outdoor market by the beach, marveling at treats such as fresh almonds (which had furry green coats) and baby artichokes.
The afternoon was spent hopping from winery to winery, sampling everything the region had to offer. Riana has already detailed the specific wineries we visited on her blog, so you can go there for the details.
The next day started with a decadent breakfast of homemade baklava and macarons, after which we headed to Narbonne to explore the town. We explored the indoor food market, the cathedral, and the winding cobblestone streets that made up the town center. I picked up some truffle oil (which I haven’t been able to find in Zurich) at a small oil boutique run by a loquacious old French man who seemed convinced I could speak French (I have mastered the art of laughing and nodding at the right points in a conversation even when I have no idea what’s going on). We had a sumptuous lunch at an adorable little wine shop/deli/cooking school/pastry shop and then wandered around some more.
The afternoon was filled with more wineries and wine tastings. As we drove through the winding, hilly roads, we often came up behind slow-moving farm vehicles hauling loads of freshly-harvested grapes. We briefly considered getting jobs as day laborers and helping out with the harvest, but quickly came to our senses when we realized that there would be no I-love-Lucy-style grape stomping involved.
On Saturday we woke up before dawn and piled into the car for the drive out to our friends’ top-secret mushrooming spot. Thanks to the damp weather of the past few days, we found more ceps (similar to porcini) than we could carry. Back at the sea house, we cleaned the mushrooms and lunched on fresh mushroom omelets.
We then frittered away the afternoon walking barefoot on the beach. I was a little disappointed that it was too cold to swim, but it was nice to be able to enjoy the beach without oppressive sun and heat or throngs of tourists. Despite my aversions to sun and crowds, I really love beaches.
For dinner we headed to a restaurant at one of the wineries we had visited earlier. We had to special-order a vegetarian meal for me in advance (apparently French chefs require ample preparation time before slapping some vegetable side-dishes on a plate without meat). The food was decent, but the real star of the evening was the all-you-can-drink wine bar which was included with the meal. The desserts weren’t bad, either.
Stuffed from our three-course dinners, we decided to wait until the next morning to eat the decadent chocolate peanut butter cupcakes that Riana had made. We enjoyed them in the car on the way to Montpelier, where Riana and Benji dropped us at the train station and sent us on our way to Lyon.
And by “conquer” I mean “ride the gondola up”. This was our second trip to over 3800 meters of elevation in two weeks, but unfortunately my body does not seem to have gotten any better at making the adjustment to a low-oxygen environment. At least this time we didn’t attempt any hiking (although sadly, there were no monks).
Snow in July is such an appealing sight that I'm trying to sell my husband on the idea of spending June through August in the southern hemisphere each year, so we can just skip summer altogether. Surely there're some rich globe-hoppers out there who need us to house-sit for them while they're spending their winters somewhere warm?
Wanting to fit in one more trip before the visitor parade, we went to visit Sara and husband in a French suburb of Geneva this weekend. This gave us a chance to see first-hand some of the celebrations after France’s unexpected victory over Brazil in the quarterfinals of the World Cup.
The cheering and honking started immediately after the final whistle, and didn’t stop until sometime after we had gone to bed. There was a man dressed up like a giant soccer ball celebrating on a neighboring balcony (alas, it was too dark for the pictures to come out). If people were getting this crazy within the privacy of their own apartments, I reasoned, what wild, wacky stuff must be going on out on the street! We quickly donned our shoes and headed out to enjoy that rare beast, the French Victory.
We followed the noise to what seemed to be the main intersection of the little town, to find a crowd of all ages, races, and genders (yes, all 2 of them). Cars continuously drove through honking, with various passengers hanging various body parts out the windows and screaming.
Highlights of the festivities included a group of colorfully-dressed African woman dancing in the street, soccer moms trying to keep track of their young kids, guys running around holding lit fireworks, and a beer-bellied man on his balcony watching over it all in nothing but his bikini underwear. Don't worry, we got his picture.
