Heading north

At last, rain. The water was welcome for the farm; we were glad it waited until after all of our scenic hikes.

We and several thousand other tourists got on the road on Sunday morning (6/25) to head north. With rain come rock slides, and one of the lanes of the road over the Brenner Pass was closed, so a trip that would normally take 3 hours took twice that. First world problems. I suggested we make a detour to Venice--as long as we were going to be several hours late, we might as well go in the direction with less traffic--but S vetoed the idea.

Along the way north, we zipped past some interesting ruins right next to the road, but with no obvious place to turn off. The interwebs have been unhelpful in determining the name of this place, but I'd gander a guess that it was built starting in the 13th century and knocked down by invaders from the north in the 16th century, since that's the general narrative for most of the ruins we've encountered.

^ After writing that, I gave Google maps one more try, which led me to a youtube video, which led me finally to the name Mühlbacher Klause. Begun indeed in the 13th century, it served as a gate and toll collection station for travelers coming from Venice and Treviso. It took until the early 19th century for it to be trashed beyond use in a Tyrolean uprising against occupying Bavarians, although a 16th-c. peasant uprising and the early 18th-c. Spanish War of Succession also took a toll (so to speak).

Look--non-ruins! That's Schloss Sprechenstein, near Sterzing--built ca. 1240, renovated ca. 1500, and still occupied today.

We stopped in Sterzing/Vipiteno for lunch. Everything but the restaurants was closed, cuz Sunday, but the place was buzzing with tourists regardless.

The tower down the street is the 15th-c. Zwölferturm (the top is 19th-c.)

I don't usually photograph food, but this was yummy and seems easy enough to replicate...

After lunch, it was on to Innsbruck, where none of us had been before despite its relative proximity to Munich. We didn't have a lot of time (Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen), but managed a quick look around.

The famous Goldenes Dachl behind the even more famous golden arches

Helbinghaus--built in the 18th-c. for townhomes

The Inn. There's a Bruck (bridge) to our left, but it didn't make it into the photo.

The Ottoburg

We also visited the Dom, but I was too cheap to buy a photo pass. The organ made a nice Trompe l'Oeil, with pipes arranged to mimic a church sanctuary (photo borrowed from Wikicommons):

By Andrew Bossi - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2954844

We sped through the Swarovski Crystal shop--oh my, so sparkly; emerged into the fresh thankfully non-sparkly air; stopped on the way back to the car for gelato; and then headed north to Steinebach.

Schauinsland

On Wednesday, we attempted to reset our internal clocks by exposing ourselves to the sun from late morning until sunset. After breakfast, Stefan went downtown to rent a bike. He then biked up Schauinsland--Freiburg's nearest tall mountain--while Elias, my mom, and I took the cable car up. To take the cable car, we had to drive to the Seilbahn station, which meant spending half an hour sitting outside our Ferienwohnung in our parked fancy schmancy rental car figuring out how to shift from park into gear. This actually required getting out the manual to learn that one needs to tweak the shifter not once but twice for every gear change and that the button one tries pushing after tweaking just once only puts the car in park. I then tried to remember rechts vor links while driving the relatively big car through narrow streets that we shared with bold drivers, daring bicyclists, and long streetcars. The rental car has a nifty feature that yells at you if it thinks you're going too fast in a construction zone or getting too close to parked cars, so I of course was grateful when we finally arrived at the cable car station near Horben. Efficient public transportation would have been faster.

My inner acrophobe has apparently moved out permanently. I experienced zero adrenaline rush riding the cable car, and when we got to the top of Schauinsland, I easily climbed the viewing tower--a first for me, yet for better or for worse, no big deal. I would have appreciated at least a smidge of panicky thrill, but oh well.

We enjoyed lunch together at the restaurant atop Schauinsland--Pommes and Flammkuchen--then hiked through woods and meadows back down to Horben for cake and coffee, with Stefan orbiting us the entire way on his bike.

Queen Anne's Lace

Mountaintop meadow

Bee on a stalk

Lichen on a stick

Studying the German bucolic (E says "buCOWlic")

Bench with a view

View with a bench

This fire hydrant...

...is a design award winner.

Crossing over to the other side

Clouds and rain moved in pre-dawn on Thursday, our last scheduled day in Vall de Boí, so instead of going on another hike, we went to France. We had not planned to go to France. We went because the drive from Barcelona to Vall de Boí had taken about eight hours, twice as long as we had expected thanks to our taking "the scenic route." (Stefan, who had done all the driving, thought being in the car on curvy mountain roads for several hours was the bees knees. This made me think of all the how-far-can-you-drive-in-how-little-time vacations my family took when I was a kid, and reminded me again of the many ways in which I seem to have married my dad.) Elias and I nixed the idea of spending another long day as passengers on winding mountain roads, and our topo-maps indicated that just north of the Pyrenees, France was pretty flat and the highways pretty straight. The route was longer, but we figured it would be quicker. Thus we found ourselves in the glorious empire of highway roundabouts.

Our sojourn was limited to the Ariège valley, where medieval castles, ruins, monasteries, and cloisters abound. It was in Ariège that the pacifist, anti-materialist Cathars set up camp in the 12^th century and made a heroic effort to survive the 13^th before being quashed and massacred by fed-up allegiance-demanding materialist feudal lords and the Catholic Church.

The highpoint of our day was a stop in Saint Lizier. Reigning over the top of the town's highest hill is the medieval Palais des Évêques (Bishop's Palace), the walls of which enclose the church Notre-Dame de la Sède. When the bishopric of Couserans was terminated in 1801, the palace variously served as a prison, workhouse, and lunatic asylum. A relatively recent restoration of the church revealed, beneath 19^th-century woodwork, a stunning spread of 15^th-century paintings on the vaulted ceiling and on many of the walls. The paintings borrow the Sybils of ancient Greece to prophecy the family tree of--and thus the coming of--Christ.

Down the hill from the Palais is the 12^th century Cathédrale Saint-Lizier, named for Saint Lizier's 6th-century proselytizing bishop. A stately adjacent cloister lets only a little loose with its virtuosic carved column capitals--apparently the standard way for Romanesque cloisters to keep up with the Joneses.


We stopped for the night in Foix, a town dominated by the hill-top Château de Foix. The Château's first tower was built around 1000 CE, the third tower about 400 years after that. The castle served as home to generations of counts of Foix, including Henri III of Navarre, who graduated from counthood to become France’s King Henri IV, and local hero Gaston Fébus. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the castle was used as a prison. Perhaps a prisoner was responsible for this coq graffiti in one of the tower stairwells:

Incidentally, the English-language Wikipedia entry on Foix, written perhaps by a prickly native Foixian tired of all the tourists, somewhat petulantly lists but one local point of interest: the botanical garden, with its collection of cacti succulents. The French entry, in contrasts, skips the garden and goes for the Château.

Despite these delights, what actually drew us to Foix was some even older history: the late Paleolithic cave paintings in the nearby Grotte de Niaux. The oldest and youngest carbon-datable paintings (those containing charcoal) are ~13,800 and 12,800 years old; the paintings made with red iron oxide and manganese oxide are, alas, undatable. For reasons unknown, near the end of the last ice age, over a period of at least one thousand years, Magdelenian Cro-Magnons trekked with torches and oil lamps some 900 meters into the cave into a nicely symmetric vaulted cavern with amazing acoustics, where they then executed masterful drawings of bison, horses, ibexes, and stags. In another part of the cave, not viewable by the general public, there’s a drawing of a weasel--the only known weasel among all the prehistoric cave paintings in Europe. Because the paintings are rare, irreplaceable, and fragile, cavern tours are limited to groups of 25, led by a guide. A slippery 0.9 km later, at the opening of the "Salon Noir" (Black Room), everyone but the guide turns off and sets aside their individual flashlights, to limit the light shining on the paintings. Visits in the Black Room are limited to 25 minutes at a time, so as not to overload the walls with carbon dioxide.

I've been to Europe often enough to get used to seeing 1,000-year-old art; seeing 14,000-year-old art* took my breath away.

*"Art" or "craftsmanship"? The tour guide warned against projecting modern sensibilities on prehistoric images.

Vall de Boí

I thought I was being only a little smug last week, when I wrote about how Spanish impediments to internet access supposedly pertain to government anti-terrorism measures. Yet I have to hand it to Spain: I'd be surprised if any foreign evil-doers here manage to check in with one another online more than once a week, and then only if they're hanging out at resort hotels or in cities large enough to have cell phone stores (and only if they have time to pull themselves away from their dastardly plots to make multiple return trips to said stores--though perhaps that's why one has minions). Fortunately for us, our vacation plans involved no government-toppling, and once we were reunited with our luggage (lost somewhere between Newark, Lisbon, Barcelona, and possibly London), the lack of access didn't hold us up.

Last Sunday, we survived harrowing cultural differences in behind-the-wheel boldness and successfully navigated our way out of Barcelona in a rental car. Stefan had plans for us to go hiking for a few days in the Vall de Boí, a rugged valley in the central Spanish Pyrenees, leading into the Aigüestortes-Sant Maurici National Park.

We stayed in tiny Erill la Vall and hiked and hiked and hiked some more. We had learned in Barcelona that signage in Spain is more for locals who already know their way around than for clueless out-of-towners, so on our first hike, along a "well signposted trail" severely lacking in formal signposts, we were grateful for the...
stone cairns (can you find them in the picture?) that led us...
up assorted rivulets and water falls to...
Estany (lake) del Pessó. On the way, we found this piece of...
prehistoric petrified toast, and saw great expanses of...
wildflowers.

Our second hike followed the rocky edge of a dammed lake, the Embassament de Cavallers...
over...
giant chunks of granite, up to a lovely green expanse full of...
cows. Deterred by...
the accumulating clouds, we skipped going all the way to Estany Negre de Boí and instead spent the afternoon doing a more sheltered hike along the Ribera de Sant Nicolau, to...
Estany de Llebreta. This third hike was by far the easiest, with the softest paths and least elevation gain (a mere 300 meters), but the combination of wildflowers, grassy valley, rolling river, and mountains brilliantly lit by afternoon sunlight (it didn't rain) made it the loveliest hike of all. Sometimes being knave of the valley beats being king of the hill.

The prophesy fulfilled

Years ago, when the speed limit on Illinois freeways was still 55 mph, I used to accompany my dad on assorted trips and say things like, "Dad, you're speeding: the speed limit is 55 and you're going 62." He would say, "I'm going 7 mph faster than the posted limit. It's OK. Stop giving me a hard time." I would say, "no, it's not OK. You're breaking The Law. The Law says 55, and you're going 62." I would pester him until he got so pissed off that it was clear he wasn't in a good frame of mind to appreciate my constructive admonishments, even though they were for his own good.

Now I am all grown up, and I'm in the driver's seat. My safety record is superb. I am alert and defensive on the road, and I have been receiving "accident-free" discounts from my auto insurance company for well over a dozen years. And I have an eight year old who sits in the back seat and says, "you should have turned left there. You're in the wrong lane. You're not signaling. Why didn't you take that parking spot? What, you think this car is so huge it won't fit? Can't you drive this thing? You're going too fast."

Someday, when Elias has a child of his own, he will tell me his version of this narrative, and I will gloat.

Get me to the church on time

Elias and I have decided to learn circus tricks while we're in Freiburg, so this morning in the back yard he practiced with his new Diabolo--a sort of free wheeling, off-string yo-yo--and I took baby steps toward juggling Koosh balls.

After our workout, we made a quick trip to the corner bakery to buy rolls and Bretzen for lunch. As usual, the shopkeepers found an excuse to toss an extra roll into the bag--this time because one of the ones they were selling us was "too small" (i.e. exactly the same size as the others). They do this every time and have naturally earned our total devotion.

After lunch, we hopped in the car, and I drove through Freiburg for the first time without Stefan by my side offering constant coaching. The rule that still perplexes me is rechts vor links ("right before left"). Rechts vor links means that when you arrive at an unmarked intersection at the same time as another driver, the driver to the right has right-of-way. The presence of various signs overrides rechts vor links: a modest yellow diamond (you don't have to yield--you're on the main street), a thick black upward arrow with a horizontal line through it (likewise), or a yield or stop sign (you have to yield). But the vast majority of intersections here are unmarked, and it doesn't matter if the street you're driving down is three times as wide as the alleyway T-intersecting with it: if the alley is on your right, the car emerging from it has right of way.

In theory, Rechts vor links means that everyone habitually slows down at intersections, making cities safer for drivers, bicyclists, and pedestrians alike. But my observations of other drivers suggest that once you get used to driving, you get used to braking suddenly and weaving out of the way if necessary, so you don't really have to follow that 30 km/hr speed limit, and traffic can always move at a good clip.

But hey, who am I to complain? Americans die from pretty much everything, including automobile accidents, at faster per capita rates than Germans. Today I considered myself lucky to have messed up rechts vor links just once (I think), and thankfully as the rechts-driver rather than the links. There I was, waiting patiently to turn left out of what I was sure was a parking lot egress, when a driver and a bicyclist coming from the left stopped in the middle of the main road. When I finally realized I must be on an actual road and was supposed to make a left turn in front of on-coming traffic, I held my breath and drove boldly forth. On the way home, I irritated the drivers behind me by slowing down every time I approached a road to my right.

If you've read thus far, you're probably wondering why I was putting lives at risk driving in the first place. Elias and I were heading to St. Petrus Canisius catholic church in Freiburg-Landwasser, where, thanks to one of Professor D.'s students, I have permission to practice on the 33-register, 2-manual + pedals, 1993 Rieger organ twice a week. Once school starts, I'll need to find either another organ or after-school care for Elias, but for now, I'm delighted to have access to an instrument again.

Roadtrip to Freiburg

I’ve just come off two hours of listening to an eight-year-old sing the same one and half phrases of Puff the Magic Dragon over and over, non-stop, out of tune and with a mix of original and newly invented words. The kid scores points for enthusiasm; his parents score points for endurance. Thank goodness we’re finally in Freiburg.

We left Steinebach this afternoon a little before 1 p.m. and took the Autobahn to Lindau, the city farthest west in Bavaria before you enter Baden-Wuerttemberg.

Driving on the Autobahn is just like driving on American highways, except that every driver gets to choose his or her own speed, regardless of the posted speed limit. For example, if the speed limit is 120 km/hr, you might drive anywhere between 60 and 140km/hr, unless you are driving a Ferrari, in which case you get to drag race with other Ferraris at 200km/hr. Be sure to check your blind spot before changing to the fast lane, as cars too far away even to be seen in the side-view mirror will be on top of you in the blink of an eye. In case road construction necessitates merging, do not take advantage of the driver who’s trying to let you into her lane, but instead wait with all of the other fast cars so you can all try to change lanes together at the last possible moment.

We pulled off the highway in Ueberlingen in the hopes of finding a cafe, but found something even better: ripe, fresh fruit, everywhere. Miles and miles of immaculately pruned pear groves and apple orchards; fruit stands offering strawberries, blueberries, and cherries; and vineyards and fields of hops. We bought enough fruit in Ueberlingen to supply us for our first few days in Freiburg, and then ate most of it before we reached the end of the Bodensee.

From there it was up onto a plateau to Donaueschingen, source of the beautiful blue Danube (Donau), and into the Black Forest, which is neither black (as expected) nor exactly a forest (unexpected). Turns out the Black Forest is more a region than a contiguous forest; many of the trees on level ground disappeared, probably centuries ago, to make way for farm land. The long, steep descent into Freiburg was more in line with expectations, with stunning, steep cliffs and dense forest.

And then we arrived in Freiburg. We strolled through the center of the old town, over mosiac cobblestone streets and past the Muenster with its pealing bells (announcing that it was 7:47 p.m.?), and found dinner at a middle-eastern restaurant near the University. We enjoyed inexpensive falafel and hummus and--bestill my beating heart--copious and myriad fresh and crispy vegetables! Hooray for university towns!