Storybook
Travels
The
Route of Alsace is a region we dreamed of as children, with its
castles and spooky forests.
ג€Itג€™s my first time in
France,ג€ I said to the Air France stewardess, and then with a straight
face asked: ג€Is there anything to see in Paris?ג€
She should have answered:
ג€Forget Paris; go see Riquewihr.ג€
Riquewihr (pronounced
ג€rikvirג€) is a medieval village along the storied Route du Vin,
the Wine Route of Alsace in northeastern France.
This is a region we dreamed
of as children, reading fables and fairy tales and wanting to believe
such places actually existed. Castles and cathedrals. A witchג€™s
tower, a torture chamber. Tiny walled hamlets, looming fortresses
and undulating vineyards. Spooky forests and forbidding silver mines.
And you can see it all
in a day.
The Route du Vin is a
worm-shaped stretch of land, 185 km long and barely 1 km wide, squeezed
in between the low-slung Vosges Mountains and the Rhine River. The
route is rich in storybook sites (including 150 castles!), and the
landscape is carpeted with vineyards.
Barely
30 km out of Strasbourg (and that was taking the long route), my
entourage drove through a breach in the walls of Rosheim. The town
of 5,000 is centered around the magnificent Church of St. Peter
and St. Paul, a masterpiece of Romanesque architecture that was
built between 1150 and 1170. Close by is a house dating from about
1130, the oldest secular construction in Alsace.
Four km. down the road
is the flourishing town of Obernai, with its orange-roofed houses
crowded together, many of them 17h century half-timbered relics,
snuggled inside ancient fortifications.
Many of these settlements
radiate from a central town square, usually with a church and a
town hall in the middle. Other towns develop along a main street. The hub for Obernaiג€™s 12,000 souls is a cobblestoned
market square dominated by a belfry that was erected in the 13th
century, topped with a spire in the 16th, and subsequently
gutted by a fire (the exterior is still imposing).
At any time you might
find yourself in the midst of a folk festival, for the Obernois
love a good time. There are colorful cafes aplenty here, and in
the summertime especially, an abundance of tourists.
In days of yore, the town
of Obernai was an independent mini-state. In 1354, under Charles
IV, 10 such self-governing entities in the area formed a mutual-defense
alliance called the Decapolis. This treaty, unlike a similar Decapolis
in Palestine in the first century BCE, was highly effective: for
325 years they fought off all comers, including invasions by the
Anglais and the Armagnacs and a slew of smaller campaigns and sieges.
BACK
ONTO the road, heading south. We pass roadside crucifixes and a
ג€Caution ג€“ Storksג€ sign. The big white bird is the symbol of Alsace;
sometimes they glide alongside our minivan as we head for the Bachert
family winery on the outskirts of Barr, seven km distant.
The Bacherts are simple
country folk but royalty in oenological terms. Only one or two other
farms can bottle Klevener dג€™Heiligenstein. That may not mean very
much to you, but J-Louis Bachert is quite proud of it.
The first grapes of the
Route d Vin were planted by the Romans; it has been an important
wine-growing region since the 8th century. One guidebookג€™s
registrar of 200-odd wine cellars lists such attractions as ג€cellar
from 1563ג€, ג€wine press from 1819ג€, ג€Joseph Freudenreich & Son,
founded in the 11th centuryג€, ג€Louis Sipp [now thereג€™s
a fitting name!], 100-year-old oak barrels.ג€
Only the seven grape varieties
grown in the Wine Route may bear the prestigious ג€Alsace wineג€ label.
A law in 1575 declared: ג€We decree that under risk of a heavy penalty,
neither bourgeois nor foreigner has the right to plant other than
the grape varieties already mentioned. All other varieties are forbidden,
at the cost of penalty of one pound per foot of vine.ג€
Six of the grapes are
dry whites ג€“ Sylvaner, Riesling, Muscat, Tokay, Gewurztraminer,
and Pinot blanc or Klevener ג€“ and one dry rose, Pinot noir.
Alsace wines are always
sold in distinctive fluted light-green bottles, which are reserved
for Alsace wines by law.
Bachert, like everyone
else along the route, offers a taste of his produce (some take a
minimal charge for the pleasure), providing a spittoon if you donג€™t
want to swallow.
For lunch we continued
down the valley to Selestat (pop. 25,000), a city of the Decapolis
two-thirds of the way down the route. We wanted nice heimish
local fare, so our guide, Christian, made a beeline for the
Restaurant Vieille Tour, a splendid bistro on the rue de la Jauge.
We couldnג€™t have asked for anything more homy ג€“ or farther from
nouvelle cuisine.
Speaking across great
piles of steaming sustenance, Christian admitted that Alsace tends
to be pricey. ג€Only Paris and Lyon are more expensive,ג€ he said
between mouthfuls of pepper steak. But, he said, you get exceptional
value for your meal money: ג€French quality, German quantity.ג€
Alsace, he noted, is the
smallest region of France, but has a remarkable 20 Michelin-rated
restaurants.
BACK
ON the trail, we made a quick side trip ג€“ well, actually, an up
trip ג€“ to Haut Koenigsberg. It is a curious sight from the valley
road. You look up and see the Vosges mountain range. Then you look
skyward above that and see one mountain rising vertically above
the rest ג€“ and on top of that is Haut Koenigsberg, a vast
fortress castle dating back to the 1100s.
On
the way up are two parks of note: one populated by eagles, and the
other, surprisingly enough, by monkeys, a threatened species that
was brought in from the Atlas Mountains in Morocco and are now thriving
here.
We chose not to tour the
castle, because we had something much more exciting in mind: a supermarket.
After a quick eyeful of the endless vista, we zipped back down to
the valley.
A few more kilometers,
a few more quaint villages. Then, finally, Riquewihr.
The 1,000 inhabitants
of this perfectly preserved medieval townlet are hopelessly outnumbered
by tourists at high season, but it is a community quite accustomed
to invasion. The first documented reference to Riquewihr is from
1094, though it is much older than that.
Hard by the Vosges on
one side, with the Rhine River on the other and chestnut and pine
forests close by, little Riquewihr looks like a make-believe hamlet
arranged in a small toybox.
Running down the middle
of the huddled houses is sloped, cobblestoned General de Gaulle
Street, with cafes, courtyards, shops and ancient artifacts.
Tucked inside the ramparts
are a fortified belfry gate-tower from 1291, a chateau, drawbridge,
arrowslits, houses dating back to 1494 ג€“ and totally unexpectedly,
chilling remnants of a tragedy-stricken ancient Jewish community.
A narrow lane off De Gaulle Street is identified as ג€rue des Juifs.ג€
This was once a tiny Jewish
ghetto, I found out later, that was wiped out in a massacre in 1416,
in an age when Jews throughout Alsace were subject to massacres,
expulsions and blood libels.
It is probably no coincidence
that here on tiny Jewג€™s Street is Thievesג€™ Tower, with its dungeon
and showcase torture chamber.
FROM
GASTRONOMY TO ASTRONOMY
Strasbourg,
ג€Town of the Roads,ג€ lives up to its name. Situated at the intersection
of France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland, with the
Rhine as its main street (not to mention its location on the Route
du Vin), Strasbourg has seen a lot of historic traffic.
In a 75-year period alone,
from 1870 to 1945, the city of 400,000 was French, then German,
then French again, Nazi German, and most lately French, though by
now some locals just grumble that theyג€™re Rhinelanders and leave
it at that.
To confirm this civic
schizophrenia, Strasbourg is today the parking lot of European diplomacy.
It is the headquarters of the Council of Europe, the European Parliament
and the Court of Human Rights.
What else can one say
about a town where Jewsג€™ Street and Sucking Pig Market Square are
separated only by a cathedral?
Well, thereג€™s this: the
name of the river running through it is possibly the worldג€™s worst
toponymic-typographic nightmare: itג€™s called ג€lג€™Ill.ג€
This liג€™l delight was
a highlight of my day in Strasbourg, but Iג€™m like that. Most visitors
are more interested in the cathedral, one of the wonders of the
world.
Strasbourg Cathedral has
to be seen to be believed. Its soaring 142-meter spire, an ornate
40-story skyscraper, is all the more astonishing in that it is a
product of 1439.
The earliest work on the
building dates to 778, when Bishop Remi inaugurated a crypt. In
the 12 centuries that followed, architects, engineers, and craftsmen
from every era added to it: pillars, statues, chapels and 2,000
square meters of glorious, detailed stained-glass windows, a 13th-14th
century embellishment.
Still, nothing is more
intriguing than the Astronomical Clock, which dominates a corner
of the massive interior. Crafted in the mid-1500s and rejuvenated
in 1838-42, it is a colorful 18-meter-high display of clocks, dials,
whirring figurines and gongs, on seven levels.
One large dial indicates
the months of the year, date, sun time and the saint of the day.
(Sure enough, on the day I visited, February 14, the little figure
was pointing to ג€Valentine.ג€) Another computation calculates the
dates of the main religious feasts. Above that a cherub rings a
bell every 15 minutes and another flips an hourglass every hour.
On the next level is a Copernican planetarium, the signs of the
zodiac and a depiction of the known solar system.
A ball, half black, half
gold, rotates in tandem with the actual lunar phases.
Four dolls, representing
childhood, youth, maturity and senility, file past a skeleton. When
the last of them has passed, Death strikes the hour.
On the upper balcony of
the madly wonderful creation, at exactly 12:30 p.m., the 12 Apostles
parade past Jesus who blesses them as they bow, while a rooster
crows three times.
Is it any wonder those
punctual Germans cover Strasbourg?
