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?
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?
posted by jcweber at 2:40 PM
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