The journey to the land of storks: a weekend in Alsace

Les jours Feries

One of the weirdest things of the life in Paris is the constant feeling that you’re on vacation. This fact is due to an enormous number of school holidays that are taking place every six weeks (and each lasts two weeks!) as well as to many free days whose peak is definitely the flowering month of May is their peak. The 1rst May is the International Worker’s Day, the first May Thursday belongs to the Ascension Day (that is often connected with Friday; that makes you 4 free days). The 8th May is the famous 2nd Word War Ending and the third Monday is the Monday of Pentecost.

As you can see, May seems to be a month made for trips out of noisy and dirty Paris – that’s actually what many people are doing. Me and my dear flatmate Crki, we aren’t an exception and decided to do a small trip to Alsace. Alsace is a region situated at Franco-German borders and it is famous for its delicious white wine, heavy food, beautifully painted ceramic pottery and storks. By a funny coincidence, my family decided to go there too, even if in Prague we don’t have such a lovely long weekend - the Ascension isn’t celebrated there. But, from all the days of the year, my parents accidentally picked for their journey these days that are in France free and this fact allowed me to join them. (In fact, they got many problems with accommodation booking because everything was overbooked - and they didn’t understand why,..).

Strasbourg

So, the sunny Thursday of Ascension during the morning, I and Crki were heading from the train station Gare de l’Est to Strasbourg, one of the most famous cities of the region and the first stop on our journey. Strasbourg is rather small and calm city, except its old historic centre that is overfilled with tourists. A bit like in the surroundings of Charles Bridge in Prague….Facing the enormous mass of people with cameras, we decided quickly to leave these central streets (full of smoked meat shops and bakeries) and to discover a bit the city periphery. After a nice quiet walk, we discovered a beautiful natural park full of daisies that seemed to us as a perfect place to a small chill-out during the hot afternoon. We bought a delicious ice-cream in the nearby stand and then walked around the park where we found a small funny zoo with apes and different bird species. In addition, everywhere around us, there were flying storks. Now we understood well why the main article of the souvenir shops was the plush stork! They were really everywhere!

After such a nice visit, we were a bit hungry so we decided to pass the evening in a nice (“sympa” in French) pub that served burgers, good beer and delicious Alsatian wine.

Wine tasting

Next morning, we met my parents that planned for us a nice trip around other towns and villages of the regions. Actually, the names of these places remind me rather than a French or German culture some Iceland legends. For example, the first picturesque village we met was called Hunawihr…

As my parents have planned their trip mainly to taste and to buy local wine, we went directly to one winery in Hunawihr and the wine tasting could begin. Wine tasting is a real science: there is a given order that you should follow – you have to start with the wines with the less distinctive taste, and step by step you proceed to the ones with more pronounced flavours. Practically, it means that you’re going from the variety called Sylvaner through different kinds of Rieslings to Pinot Gris.

Usually you end up with a special Alsatian sparkling wine called Cremant d’Alsace (don’t confound it with Champagne that is strictly from Champagne). At the same time, you have on your hand a list of all the wines that you taste so you can directly mark the ones you’d like to buy afterwards. And, once the tasting is finish, you just find out another winery and you start again. The evening than, could be a bit blurred and colourful, but it is really worth it!

The best wine growers that we met were an energetic lady called Boxler and a slightly drunk and very welcoming man called Mullenbach. They are both very friendly and the atmosphere in their wineries, situated in the town called Niedermorschwihr, is really familiar!

Except the wineries, we visited also a few villages in the region that seemed to us all like places from some German fairy-tale of Brothers Grimm’s – the gingerbread stands with traditional decoration talk for themselves. This decoration is often so excessive that one parent’s friend compared these villages to the Shire of Hobbits. Well, there is really something about this idea…. As the text can’t express such unreal impressions, let’s images talk for themselves: