Mulhouse

Mulhouse is, forgive me for saying it, the Detroit of Alsace. It is the second largest city in the region, with only Strasbourg being larger. However, it lacks the charming city center and the quaint old buildings that draw in the tourists to cities like Colmar or Strasbourg. Seems that the combination of the industrial revolution and allied bombings during the 1940's left the local tourism board with a big challenge on their hands.

So Mulhouse is re-inventing itself as the city of museums. Not your ancient-history-arts-and-riches types of museums. Rather, it has the kinds of museums that fit the profile of this working-class town. The Eco-Museum is a living-history museum of a working farm of the mid 1800s. (Kind of a Conner Prarie goes to Europe.) Then they have the museum of trains, the museum of electrical appliances, and my personal favorite....the museum of wallpaper.

But the jewel in the crown is the French National Museum of the Automobile. Even if you don't like cars, you will enjoy spending a day here. We spent the day there last Saturday (Jan 21).

The picture above shows Chris and Jill Hagan standing outside the entrance to the Museum. They came up with the idea to visit the museum. They, along with Wade, Patrick, Mindy, Gabi, Theresa and I, went down for the day. Since the weather has been kind of crumby lately, it was a good day to spend indoors looking at old cars.

The museum has something on the order of 400 cars on display dating from the late 1800s to the present. Though you might find a Ford or two, the flavor is heavily European. Following is a small sampling.

Above is a 1933 Alpha Romeo roadster. Candy Apple Red has always been a classic color.
Above, the most famous car in the history of France, the Citroen 2 CV. The model above is a 1954. You still see these old beasts on the city streets and the open roads.

Here is Theresa shopping for her next car. This is a Bugatti from the 1930s. Bugatti was a French car maker with their main factor in Molsheim, just West of Strasbourg. They went out of business in the 1960s but the name was recently revived by Volkswagon and the Molsheim factory now makes a small number of cars by hand each year. The museum's collection of Bugattis from the 20s, 30s, and 40s is it's claim to fame.

This a a Bugatti Royale from the 1920s, I believe. The car is a behemoth. It's road weight is around 3 1/2 to 4 tons. The tires are about 3 feet in diameter. You can probably guess that Bugatti did not make his money on volume, but rather made and sold a small number of cars to the high end of the market.

The Museum is also called the "Schlumpf Collection" because it was originally amassed by a local-boy-made-good named Fritz Schlumpf. Fritz and his brother Hans made a boatload of money in the early 20th centry by speculating in the financial markets and running a number of textile factories in Mulhouse. By all accounts, Fritz was a real b*#&))+d. Ruthless, cunning, and selfish. Somewhere along the way, he became absolutely consumed by a passion to build his collection of automobiles. He kept buying them, and buying them. He converted one of his old wool factories into his own private museum.

Then came a turn of events that could only happen in France. Fritz was so consumed by his passion to collect, that he had to liquidate his factories to sustain his habit. The local workers lost their jobs. Not too happy about that fact, the workers invaded the museum and took over the premises. They burned a couple of cars and refused to leave until the got some justice. They stayed there, waiting on the property for two years. In the end, the Schlumpf brothers fled to Switzerland, the French government took over the museum, and the poor workers were left to look for other jobs in Mulhouse.

Such is life. C'est la vie.

For those trivia buffs at home, the hood ornament at the top of this article comes from a Rolls Royce Silver Ghost.

Houses Part Deux

Continuing on the housing theme, I put this picture in a separate post in hopes that you can actually double- click on the picture to see a larger image. Try it....if it works then great. If not, well ...sorry bout that.


This house is in the village of Eguisheim. Written above the windows in local dialect it says "this house stands in God's hands. God beware for fire". I believe this house was built around 1600, when Alsace was still loosely linked with the Germanic states. I point this out because you've probably noticed that the writing is not French.

This is the window above the ground floor. Typically, this is where the family would live and the lower floor might be occupied by the family business. If you look you can also see some decorative carving of the beams.

Houses

With the end of the holidays, we are falling into a routine. Monday through Friday is work. Saturday and Sunday are times to shop and to take short trips. The routine is reinforced by the weather. It seems that the Rhine Valley predictably gray during the winter. The air tends to get trapped between the Vosges mountains and the Blask Forest, causing each each day to be cloudy with a temperature between 28 to 35 F. Seems like England.

In the scheme of things, we have no right to complain about the weather. Seems that Eastern Europe is having one of their colder winters in memory. And, if the wind blows from the East, the cold air moves into Germany right up to the French border. The temperature 50 miles across the border has been consistently 10 to 20 degrees colder than here. Thank heaven for micro-climates.

Anyway, since times are boring, there are no major events to share. So today, we will put up a few pictures of the houses from the neighboring villages. Not new houses, but older houses.

If you get out of the larger cities (Strasbourg, Colmar, Mulhouse) and head for the foothills of the Vosges, you get into wine country. There are 20 or 30 little villages that sit out amidst the vineyards. For 300 years the major industry in these villages has been the production of wine in small, family operations. With the exception of a few villages that were destroyed in the Second World War, most of these villages have changed little. There is nothing to attract new industry. And the old industry of wine making, though it has become more scientific, still serves as the backbone of the village economy.

In many cases, too, there has been nothing to cause urban renewal. Houses that were built 200 years ago are still standing. They are like antiques that people live inside of.

Here are a couple of old houses that we photographed last week-end in a small village named Dambach de la Ville. The style of the houses is called "half timbering" and typical of Alsatian villages. The main structural elements are wooden posts and beams that are joined with the same carpentry that you would find in an old Indiana barn. The exterior walls are not wood siding, as a barn would be. Instead, the exterior walls are created by filling between the posts and beams with mud, manure, straw, bricks, concrete, and stone. The result is the typical appearance you see below.
It was not uncommon for the original builder of a house to mark the date above the main doorway or windows. If you look closely above the windows of the house to the left, you can see the date 1571.

The picture below shows a couple of houses in the village of Eguisheim. This picture was taken in warmer weather when there were still flowers in the window boxes. Theresa and I really like Eguishiem. The old center of the city is made up of houses dating from the 1700's, 1600's and 1500's. If you've ever been to Epcot center, it is kind of like that ... but with cheaper admission and better food.


I suppose that marking the date of construction above the doorway was one way to show the owner's pride. This pride was sometimes shown, also, by intricate carving of the wooden beams. If you look below, you can just make out carving around the windows and also on the ends of the joists that protrude between floors.Below is a close-up of the carving on the floor joists. I have a hard time believing that this carving is so well preserved after a few hundred years. I suspect that there must have been some restoration and maybe even a little embellishment. But then again, does it really matter?

Katie this one's for you

It has been a long time since I've had a margarita. And my friend Katie Gick knows this. The last time I had one was when we went to Pepe's in Lafayette, before I left to come here to Strasbourg. And Katie knows how much I like my margarita's.

Well she did what any good friend will do she came to my rescue and found Jose Cuervo mix in a plastic bottle and sent me some. Katie you are the bomb!!!!! I just wish you were here to share it with me. So when you do come here bring a bottle or two and we can enjoy them together. Just like old times at Don Pablo's. (umm, missing mexican food too!)

PS. I have introduced the group here to tequilla, the Don Julio. And thanks to a few people, Patrick and Gaby, for keeping me stocked. And thank you Irma for introducing me to Centenario. I plan on making a trip to Mexico when I get back to the states, just to see how many different kinds of tequilla I can find. I may need a chaperone, Katie?

PSS. The bars here don't have the drink selection that the bars in the US have. I found one that claimed to have a margarita, but it turned out to be like a weak, flat sprite with a little tequila in it. Mostly beer, wines, some soda drinks, coffees and some apéritifs. Basically they suck.

Everybody Loves a Parade

The two most important words to know in French are "greve" and "manifestation". My suggestion is to memorize these two words. Memorize them and respect them.

A "greve" is a strike. A "manifestation" is a protest.

Continental Europe is known for raising food and drink and leisure to the level of art. In truth, as a form of art, nothing surpasses the sophistication of civil disobediance. In the four months that we've been in Europe, we have experienced:

1. A baggage handler strike in the Paris Airport
2. A public transport strike that shut down trams and buses in Strasbourg
3. An inter-city train strike that caused everyone to commute by car and jam the roads.
4. A truck driver protest over road-taxes in which semis drove side-by-side down the highways at 10 mph.
5. A protest march by sugar producers
6. A protest march by dock workers.

I suspect there have been a couple more that we've missed out on by not speaking the language very well. C'est la vie.

The #5 and #6 entries in the list above are actually kind of a bonus. Since Strasbourg hosts the European Union's Parliament we get people coming to town from all over Europe to voice their displeasure. Both the sugar producers and the dock workers paid a visit because of a beef with the EU. It's a new form of tourism, I suppose.

A couple of weeks ago, Theresa got the following pictures of the sugar producers marching down the street in front of our apartment. Seriously, she stood at the entrance to our building and took these shots. This was an orderly and well-behaved protest.



Last night, Theresa saw signs on the trams that said to expect disruptions today because of protests. Today, the dock workers came to town...something like 6,000 of them from all over Europe. I had to work, but Theresa was out and about in the city. She didn't think too much of it when she saw more police than usual in the town center carrying much larger weapons than usual. The plumes of smoke that developed a little later seemed a little odd, though.

It started becoming inconvenient when the trams stopped running. By stopped running, I mean they just parked where ever they happened to be at the time. It was a bit inconvenient too when, on the walk home, she had to detour around a street because someone had broken about 10,000 wine bottles.

The tear gas was kind of annoying too. On a still day the stuff just kind of hangs in the air. Not dense enough to make your cry, but enough to irritate the eyes and nose. At first, she thought it was her allergies until she saw everyone else walking with handkerchiefs over their noses.

It was kind of incovenient, too, to get past the police buses that were blocking the road near Place de Bordeaux. She figures that these must have been the buses that brought the 100 or so riot police that were lining the street. The riot police with the big Kevlar shields and billy clubs and helmets. She talked to a couple of the policemen, who were nice and reassuring and said that they were just watching the protesters as they wrapped up their busy day. They said everything was over. This seemed confirmed by the fact that the fire trucks were putting up their water cannons for the day. No one left to hose down.

Most of the protesters were headed to their buses for the long ride home. A group of six or so stopped by the corner bar for a couple of beers for the road. The bread store on the corner had done a brisk business. Snacks for the road after a long day of democratic process.

Do not get worried about this and start to believe that things are unsafe here. Seriously. There are places in Indianapolis that pose much more danger on any day of the week. It's like a dance. It's all part of the art form associated with the "greve"and the "manifestation".

Note: The French newspaper Le Monde had a series of pictures of the more serious action going on in front of the European parliament. Try to follow this link to see them.

Epiphany

Well, the Christmas holidays are over. Work started again on January 2. Amanda left for home on January 4. All good things must end. At least the days are getting longer.

The official end of the Christmas season comes with January 6, the Feast of the Three Kings....otherwise known as Epiphany. In France, Epiphany is a bigger deal than I remember in the US. But not so big as in Spain. In Spain, it seems, Epiphany is the BIG day. Children get their gifts from the Magi on January 6 and not on Christmas as they do here. The Spanish TV channel was non-stop video of the parades and the celebrations. In Strasbourg, the only parade that we had was a labor protest. (more on that in later post.)

In France, the Epiphany tradition is centered on food. (What else??) Specifically, it centers around a pastry called a "galette des rois". Galette seems to be the word for anything round and flat. It could be a pancake, or a cake of hash browns, or a pie, or a hockey puck. Honestly, a galette could be almost anything. But for our purposes, we'll translate "galette des rois" to mean the "pie of the kings". The groceries and the boulangeries (bread stores) are full of the things. They are fairly close to what we would call a pie. The flavors we've seen are apple, cheese, raspberry, and chocolate-pear flavor. Here is a picture.



As you can see, the galette comes in a little kit with a paper crown. The tradition goes like this: hidden inside the pastry somewhere is a little toy. (One of ours was a ceramic kangaroo. The other was a ceramic mouse.) On the Feast of the Three Kings, the parents are supposed to give each of their children a slice of the pie. Whichever child finds the toy gets to wear the crown and is king for the day.

Just in case you were wondering, I found the little ceramic kangaroo. For what it's worth, I need to see a dentist now, too.

A Birthday Card to Jake

It was snowing a bit this morning. Just like it was snowing on this same day 19 years ago when I was driving to the hospital in Lafayette. Happy Birthday Jake. 19 years may seem like it's quite old, but it's just a drop in the bucket. No matter how good things are, or no matter how tough, remember that you've got your whole life ahead of you. May you have 190 more years after this one.

We love you and we miss you. We will see you soon. Take care.

Snow

Once again, it will be a brief posting. The week between Christmas and New Year's was one of snow. Not a lot of snow, but just enough to discourage driving outside of the city. In the end, this turned out to be OK. Amanda is still catching up on sleep and seems to be content with short outings in the afternoon. Evenings are spent mainly at home eating whatever the cat dragged in.

Here are some random pictures from the past week.....

Strasbourg, under the Christmas Tree in Place Kleber.

Strasbourg, view of the covered bridges.

Monte Saint Odile, New Year's Day.

Strasbourg, Petite France quarter with a little snow.

Best wishes and Happy New Year to all.