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.

Elsass, part II

One of the very fine things about the German language is that it produces tidy verbs like uebernachten (literally, to overnight) that sound so much less clunky than in English. In Elsass, we overnighted (see?) in a small hotel in the pretty little village Andlau. (Yes, it's redundant to say "pretty" when you're talking about little villages in Elsass.)

At breakfast, Elias and I tried the hot chocolate, which in France seems to be made by taking one Lindt dark chocolate bar and one Lindt milk chocolate bar, melting them together, and putting them in a cup. Even for hardcore chocoholics, it is a formidable beverage.

After breakfast, we took a stroll through town, and I discovered it's next to impossible to accurately capture, in a single photograph, the charm of densely packed Fachwerkhaueser on narrow streets; so I gave up trying to photograph whole alleyways and streets and focused on windows instead.

Near the middle of Andlau is an abbey that was founded by spurned-wife/future-saint Richarde in 880 A.D. Most of the Romanesque church dates from the 12th century or later, although the oldest crypts are from the 11th century. Note the lack of floor-to-ceiling paintings (although if you look at the bottom right corner of the photograph to the right, you can see the faint remnants of a former wall decoration).

From Andlau, we drove to Haut Koenigsbourg. Rather than visiting the Château--beautifully restored by Wilhelm II in the late 19th century--we gawked at the miles and miles of tourists and then continued on to the pretty little village Bergheim for lunch.

Afterward, we attempted to chase more ruins. Imagine: three crumbling Châteaux--St. Ulrich, Girsberg, and Haut Ribeaupierre--on three outcroppings atop one small mountain! We parked at the trail head outside Ribeauvillé and after hiking a while, we learned that French trail signs are about as useful and accurate as German ones. Remember this, remember this, remember this, and bring a good map. Alas--it's painful to say--we never made it to any of the ruins.

After our disappointment, we bought a case of wine in Zellenberg, then turned east across the Rhine to Freiburg.

Elsass, part I

On Thursday and Friday, we made a westward excursion across the Rhine to Elsass (Alsace). Our tour began in...

...Gengenbach (in Germany, opposite Strasbourg). The town boasts a well-preserved medieval Altstadt of Fachwerkhaueser (wattle-and-daub houses) with an oddly out of place baroque Rathaus (city hall). Gengenbach's Stadtkirche St. Marien (city church of St. Mary) dates to the 12th century, but like most centuries-old churches around here, it has been renovated and revised and Baroquified and de-Baroquified assorted times. The church interior currently sports a late-19th-century take on a Romanesque floor-to-ceiling paint job (see here for the real thing). In sum, Gengenbach presents a loving ode to anachronisms.

We proceeded onward to Strasbourg. More Fachwerkhaueser, more charming narrow streets, lovely canals and a beautiful river, one picturesque scene after another--and then we turned a corner and went weak in the knees when our random meanderings brought us face to face with...


...Strasbourg's whomping huge, amazingly ornate cathedral. It filled our view and took my breath away. I've never been so overwhelmed by a building.

More strolling, followed by the requisite 4pm coffee and cake, and we were off again, now into the Vogesen--Elsass's answer to the Black Forest. And lo, we saw ruins, so of course we had to pause for a little ruins chasing. First stop: the Château de Spesbourg. According to a sign, the Château was built in 1250 by the Baron Alexandre de Dicka de Stahleck. What a great name. In the 14th century, the Château was taken over by the knights of the nearby village Andlau. In the 16th century, the good citizens of Barr (another nearby village) burned down the castle to avenge the dishonneur of a young Barroisie. (NB: don't abuse the hired help.)

From Spesbourg, we could see the next ruins over--the Château d'Andlau--and I figured I'd trot on over while Stefan, Elias, and Helen hiked back to the car. It was a good trot, but in vain: the ruins were closed for renovations. I guess even ruins need a little TLC every few centuries.

Copenhagen*

Yesterday we drove to Strasbourg International Airport, a place that, apart from the International bit and the lack of an ornamental reflection pond, could easily be mistaken for the airport of my childhood: Willard Airport in scenic Savoy, Illinois. This similarity, coupled with a 20-minute absence of check-in personnel beneath a sign flashing "Check-in Ongoing" for multiple flights, had me in smug giggles for a good half hour. Later, just before our shuttle bus departed for the tarmac, a flight attendant dashed breathlessly on board carrying a toddler. "Ha ha," laughed the other nine people on the bus, "oui, that little girl is ours! How funny that we forgot her in the airport!"

From Strasbourg, we flew to Copenhagen, capital of Denmark, where Stefan is meeting up with research collaborators at the university. One of our first observations about this lovely city is that the Danish not only think water out of a tap is potable, they think it's worth drinking. They even give it out without comment and for free at restaurants! In exchange for this free-flowing libationary excess, we are learning to calculate the Copenhagen cost of a meal by multiplying whatever a reasonable cost might be by the number 5.

*Not in Southern Germany.

Colmar

This morning, we walked to the toy store in the Altstadt so Elias could buy the handcuffs he's been coveting since we first saw them three weeks ago, when we were staying in Waltershofen and it was inconvenient to load up on Stuff. For three weeks, we've been telling him not to worry, there isn't going to be a sudden run on handcuffs, they'll still be there--and what do you know, they sold out yesterday. The very charming shopkeeper took down Elias's name and promised to set aside a pair for him when the next cuff shipment comes in on Monday.

We then meandered over to the Gummibaer specialty store, across from the Muenster, where the serious Gummibaer connoisseurs and tourists shop, and thus began our new vice. We went for the vegetarian Bearle, of course; for the carnivores, flavors include prosecco, chilli pepper, licorice, coffee ("with caffeine"), and red wine.

This afternoon, we visited Colmar, across the Rhine in France. The third largest city in Elsass (Alsace), Colmar survived WWII with little damage. Fortunately, it also survived an urban planning effort in the 1960s to demolish some of the older parts of town, and the city center, with the photogenic "petite Venise" ("little Venice"), is now a popular tourist destination. Colmar was settled by the 9th century and granted Stadtrecht (city rights) in 1214; its oldest remaining house dates from 1350. I look forward to setting my camera-wielding parents loose in Colmar this fall, as there are photo ops around every corner.

Gottenheim and Breisach

Elias, in bed reading, wanted to know why he had to go to bed, whereas Stefan and I get to stay up late and drink Ovaltine. I told him it was because we’re grown ups and we have all the power. Seeking justice, he asked, “so will I get to stay up until 9:30 and drink Ovaltine when I’m grown up?” You got it, kid.

Now that his head has hit the pillow, we’re finally enjoying some quiet. From the moment Elias and I stepped out the door this morning, until now, he’s been chattering non-stop. Setting the bar high for most of his verbal communication today, he started by finding out how “Puff the Magic Dragon” would sound if he used his fingers to hold his tongue outside of his mouth while he sang. Then he lowered the bar.

After Stefan went to work in Freiburg, Elias and I walked from Waltershofen to Gottenheim—about 5km along the ridge of the Tuniberg, following paved bike routes that meandered past vineyards and fields of corn and overgrown asparagus. Upon entering Gottenheim, we discovered a park with a zip line. Elias could have stayed all day, but instead we headed down to the Bahnhof and caught a train to Breisach.

Breisach is on the east side of the Rhine River; on the other side is France. The town is an odd mix of the very very old (some bits and pieces go back to the 12^th century), 1950s post-war modernism, and industrial storage tanks. About 85% of the town was destroyed in World War II.

High atop the town is the St. Stephansmünster, built between the 12^th and 15^th centuries, and restored after the war. Near the Münster, we found a small stone memorial and a chilling plaque: “To the memory of the Breisacher Jews, who on 22 October 1940, together with all Badisch, Pfälzisch, and Saarländisch Jews, were deported to the concentration camp Gurs in the French Pyrenees. We cannot alter the past, but the future lies in our hands” (2004). The Breisach synagogue, built in 1804, was burned down in November 1938, shortly after Kristallnacht; another memorial (which we didn’t go see) stands on that site. There's apparently still an active Jewish community in Breisach that serves the town and the surrounding communities.

After lunch, Elias and I played a round of mini-golf at the dumpy mini-golf course across the street from the RV park on the Rhine, then went for a walk around Breisach’s Eckartsberg. Eckartsberg is a terraced vineyard; its walls include parts of the original city walls dating from the 14^th century, and on top are some remains of old city fortifications with the European flag flying in the breeze to symbolize unity.

The walk along the Eckartsberg is designated “Lyrik am Weg,” a walking tour that includes plaques with poems. We observed two genres of poems: those of the “O Rhein, your wines are so great” variety, and those of the “O Rhein, you separator of formerly fighting nations now at peace” variety. Among the former was this tidbit from Goethe: “Trunken müssen wir alle sein! / Jugend is Trunkenheit ohne Wein...” (“We must all be drunk! / Youth is drunkenness without wine...”). There's more to the poem, but I was greatful to Goethe for those first two lines. Perhaps 8-year-olds jibber-jabbered in his time as well.

Among the latter variety were poems such as this by Lina Ritter (1888-1981): “Warum trennt uns e Rhi? / Ass mir zeige chenne, wie / me Brucke bäut.” The poem is in Alemannisch, the dialect spoken in this region, so the sign translated it into Hochdeutsch: “Warum trennt uns der Rhein? / Damit wir zeigen können, / wie man Brücken baut” (“Why does the Rhine separate us? So that we can show how one builds bridges”).

The Eckartsberg walk took us close to the freeway over the Rhine, and Elias decided we should walk to France. Alas, the site of his first steps on French soil did not show the country in its best light.

Stefan met up with us in Breisach after work. After more wandering and dinner, we drove home—stopping off at the very fun zip line in Gottenheim, the highlight of Elias’s day.