A very important cultural landmark

Well, we had a guest this weekend, and I have pictures and stories, and I haven't finished writing all about Provence, but I have to pause a moment before writing about those wonderful things to share this extremely important and oh so impressive cultural landmark.  The "Weckmilchstein" just outside the town of Moischt.  I don't think your life will be complete without a visit.

The Elisabethbrunne

How did we come to discover this treasure? Well, I went for a run, and after running past the Elisabethbrunne (which every time I see it makes me think of Indiana Jones) decided to go a bit further, and as I was heading home from Moischt, I noticed a sign.  And of course, I had to follow it.

Because following the arrows leads to exciting things.

 And I ran a few hundred meters into the woods on a forest road, around a hunting stand, and down a narrower path, and I saw this big, important sign, allowing me to understand the great significance of this cultural landmark.

 For those of you whose German is, ahem, "rusty", I will translate: "The Roll and Milk-bowl Stone
The people of Moischt say [the same thing but in a hard to understand regional dialect]
Because the bowl-like depressions so look like the bowls out of which our ancestors ate their rolls and milk, this remarkable stone is named after those [bowls].
An important known-for-a-long-time natural landmark on the south side of the prominence the "house mountain" of the Moischt residents. (yes, this sentence really has no verb on the sign)
It was already always a starting and meeting point for nature lovers, hikers, and friends of the forest.
For berry gatherers, it has been also always a sacrificial altar; a few berries laid upon it, and one waits in suspense for the birds to come carry these away.
The homeland and history club of Moischt has endeavored to maintain this natural landmark that is so important for us residents of Moischt."

And, without further ado, here is this "wichtige Naturdenkmal"

I'm sure its majesty has left you speechless.

 Marburg may have a castle and a tower, Schröck may have its fancy fountain, Paris may have its tower and cathedral and churches and....but do not overlook Moischt and its Weckmilchstein.

Sasha, contemplating the wonder.

Paris in springtime

So, perhaps you remember, but we were in Paris for about a day last fall and I worried that Paris didn't have the same magic it had when I was in college.  I am happy to report that that assessment was wrong.  About two weeks ago, Sasha had to be there during the week to meet with a collaborator, and I took Friday off to eat my way across Paris...I mean, join my husband.  Perhaps the difference partly came because last time we were in Paris before heading down to Provence for our bike tour,  and we were preoccupied with dealing with bike trip preparations and stuff.  If you are worried about packing your bike and about the train ride the next day, etc. then that makes it a bit harder to focus on touristing.  Instead, this time, I took the morning train to Paris, got in around lunchtime, and the only thing on the agenda was to enjoy myself.   I'm sure the season also helped.  This time, I took the metro right from the train station, and when I came up above ground, the rought-iron balconies were all covered with flowers, the trees were blooming, there was crazy public art in the squares, and great window-shopping to be had.

Art.

Flowers.

Last fall, I hadn't really had a chance to prepare in advance a list of "must eat" foods, but this time I did my research, and we had a bunch of really tasty things, even if most were things that are on every "foodie" tourist's lists (I don't consider myself a foodie; I don't like mushrooms or organ meat or the idea of molecular gastronomy, I just like good food).  We ate bread from a bakery called Poilane that is apparently famous and is also owned by a woman that my sister was friends/acquaintances with in college (who needless to say wasn't there and I don't know; this is a BIG business by bakery standards). Their main bread is this sour-dough bread with rye or whole wheat or something, which actually is very German. 

Poilane

Lunch next door.

IT was good, but truth be told, while it made for great sandwiches in the cafe next door, I prefer baguettes even if they are less "healthy" what with the white flour.  That crackly crumbly crunch as you break into your baguette, that enticing smell that is so much more than just white bread.  A good french baguette just can't be beat.  Needless to say, we ate a couple of those over the weekend. We also went to a famous ice cream place, Berthillon that I have to admit was really amazing.  It was expensive, but we each got 2 flavors and each one was SO yummy; the flavors were so intense.  I got raspberry and chocolate and Sasha got praline and fresh strawberry.  Yum!  

Sasha trusted me to hold his ice cream long enough for a picture...brave of him!

The most exciting dinner was at a place called Relais de l'entrecote, which was expensive but worth it.  It is a strange restaurant.  The waitresses are all in traditional waitress attire and every one eats the same thing: a small salad with a mustardy vinaigrette, baguette, steak in a delicious, mysterious sauce, and fries. When the waitress comes by the table the first time, you order drinks and then just tell her (or him) rare, medium or well done.  The meat was so tender and the fries were hot and crispy and thin, and then we ordered dessert; Sasha ordered this giant towering thing of meringue and ice creams, topped with whipped cream and chocolate sauce, and I got a giant serving of raspberry sorbet, and we had the house red wine, and it went pretty well with the steak. 

Waitresses plating someone else's dinner

Sasha's tower of dessert

On the non-food side, Friday I spent a few hours in the Musee d'Orsay, and there was a nice temporary Van Gogh exhibit, but I failed to find the paintings that were my favorite when I went to the museum in 2002.  I could have asked at the information desk I guess, but that would have taken out some of the suspense of trying to find them.  (or would have led to disappointment earlier; this way I can still think that I just didn't make it into the right room, rather than that the curators didn't find my favorite paintings worth showing). 

The highlight, though, was spending Saturday wandering around Versailles.  We've been to tons of castles in Germany and some in Spain, but while everyone says castles like Sanssouci near Berlin or Nymphenburg near Munich are modeled after Versailles, I don't feel like I really appreciated the scale of Versailles. It is HUGE!  We could have spent a day just in the gardens. Or the minor palaces and their (separate) gardens.  The hall of mirrors and the royal bedrooms in the main palace that have been restored are pretty fancy, but I have to say the gardens were my favorite part, particularly the gardens behind the Trianon (the minor palaces).  It was really amazing to me not just how many gardens there are, but how different they all were, from the neatly manicured gardens right around the main palace and the Trianon with gravel walks and swirls of bushes and flowers, to the "garden rooms" with small open areas and fountains surrounded by tall tree/forest hedges, and the vast fields and forests, and then the trimmed but less strict gardens around the trianon which (it was April afterall) were filled with flowering trees and flowers of all sizes and colors, and with cute gazebos and nooks of all kinds.  We had to wonder as we wandered through the palaces and gardens what the various Louis or Marie Antoinette would have thought of all these "peasants" wandering through their rooms and posing next to their royal beds, and buying postcards and cups of coffee and just generally living modern normal life in what was their very royal home.  I have to think the many 10s of thousands of workers employed during Versailles' construction would have to feel somewhat satisfied knowing that their descendents would have as much a right to visit the place as any king or duke or earl. 

Fountain in one of the "outdoor courtyards"

I bet these are much easier to maintain with gas-powered hedge trimmers!

Hall of mirrors

How would you like one of your sitting rooms to look like this?

The "sun king's" castle sure is impressive!

I can't help but wonder if he's really trying to say "get out of my palace"

Sunday, we went all the way up the Eiffel Tower and then went to the Sacre Cour church/cathedral.  At the Eiffel tower, we took the stairs to the 2nd landing and then the elevator from there to the top (you aren't allowed to walk the whole way up, which is probably just as well; I can imagine people getting half-way between the top and the second landing and having their legs give out and being REALLY stuck).

It's a LONG way down.

I bet you didn't know that the real purpose of the Eiffel tower is as an anti-UFO laser gun.

 The view is pretty amazing.  Paris as a whole is really something.  It is so dense with people, and yet (aside from the touristiest areas) it never feels that crowded, and I really love just wandering, window shopping, stopping at a shop for cheese or a green grocer for some tasty bit of produce, marveling at some of the ridiculous prices or outfits on display, stumbling across some amazing bakery and getting an amazing baguette or delicious cake (we grabbed cake to eat on the train ride home with our various leftover breads and cheese, and it was just from some little bakery by the train station, and the croissant was a reallly good one, and the cakes were so delicious). 

OK, just look at that fabric!?!?

Did my eyes deceive me or was there a marshmallow boutique?

Such hats! I wanted one of each but they were a bit pricy for an impulse purchase.

I bet you don't "just happen across" a cheese shop with a selection like this in your home town!  It was 360 degrees of cheese! (but I only took one picture because I didn't want to be too obnoxious)

I'm not sure Sasha will ever feel the same way about Paris.  Maybe it's because he didn't grow up reading Madeline and watching Molin Rouge and Casablanca and considering Julia Child and French Cuisine as the "ne plus ultra" of cooking and dining.  But I did. I never want to move to Paris, because sooner or later, I think the banal day-to-day things would kill its magic.  Phone bills and laundry are just not romantic. Instead, I'm happy knowing it is there for whenever I next make it back.  We'll always have Paris.

Provence part 3

OK, let's see where I left off.  Oh right, we were in Comps sur Artuby and heading into the Gorge du Verdon.

The guidebook said to start early, because traffic would get heavier around 10, so we got a relatively early start, and after a short pedal, we had a fun looping descent and then we saw it, the Gorge.  The book called it the "grand canyon of France" and while it might not be as impressive as the Grand Canyon in the US (not that I've seen it except from an airplane), it was still very pretty.  We wound around one side of it to a bridge, that is effectively The Bridge, which was pretty impressive, and then we wound up the other side of it climbing up to the high point of the day.  It wasn't as much climbing as the first day, but it wasn't flat either.  However, in addition to frequent gorgeous views of the canyon, we also were rewarded at the top with Madeleines from some impressed French tourists who were driving up in their RV, and while Clara was waiting for the rest of us, she made friends with an older Italian and with her Spanish, they could kind of understand each other.

The problem with beautiful, bright sunny days is they make for harsh lighting for photos

The Bridge

From the highpoint, the road leaves the gorge but the scenery was still rather nice, and there is a big, blue reservoir that is rather lovely and pleasant for swimming (although only I can attest to that).  We stopped in a small tourist town, Aiguines, for a lunch break, but mostly ate food we'd brought, supplemented slightly with food from a small, expensive and unimpressive shop.  The town had an unusual chateaux, though, which was near the park we stopped in.

Unusual chateaux

Swimming!

We then headed North-ish up past the reservoir and crossed it where the river flows into the canyon.  The river is a bit wider there, and there were people boating on the turquoise water into the canyon.  It would have been tempting had we not had all of our stuff and bicycles in a not easily-securable manner.

That night, we made it to the town of Moustiers Ste Marie, which was absolutely lovely.  It is definitely "discovered" and I think we were many decades younger than all the other visitors, but it was well worth the visit.  The town is cute and perched above it is a pilgrimage chapel, and rugged hills reminiscent of Utah, so we went for a short hike before dinner (those of us who didn't feel like napping).  The only drawback was that all the restaurants were quite expensive, and we inadvertently picked an expensive but fancy one where the food was delicious but portions were, shall we say, not meant for cycle-tourists.  Oh well.  At least we found another amazing artisan bakery just next to our hotel.  Yum!

The view from our hotel room balcony.  Not too shabby.

Looking back towards town from our hike

Appetizer at the fancy restaurant. Yum! 

The next morning, my birthday, just happened to be market day!  I love markets, and this one was particularly awesome, if a bit small.  We got olives and cheese and sausage and fruit and candied dried fruit and cookies and would have got so much more if we hadn't had to schlep it all with us.  Alas, the downside of bike touring.  But artisan pastries, french cafe au lait, and market.  I can think of few better ways to spend one's birthday morning.

I wanted ALL those cheeses!! But only if someone else would carry them...

That day's riding was less notable than many (not bad, mind you, just no stunning gorge), and we ended in a larger town (Manosque) and stayed in an "extended stay" type hotel with kitchenettes in our room.  We wandered around town a bit, but largely spent our time there riding around the outskirts looking for the (very nice) bike shop to aquire  a few items we needed and get some minor service done...(just an aside, cyclists, if you ever want a fun Charades phrase, try chamois cream; we got funny looks and weren't successful at a sporting goods type store in Nice, but managed to both communicate our need AND get said product in Manosque).  We also managed to find a nice bakery and got some gorgeous and delicious pastries for birthday dessert.

The next day we were effectively switching between two recommended routes from our guidebook, and had a short day of riding.  One benefit of being off the recommended route was riding through a cute village totally off the tourist path.  There was a chapel at the top that we had all to ourselves and there was not a post card in sight anywhere in the village.  After we rejoined the book route, though, it's not like we were fighting the crowds either, though.  We stopped at a ruined monastery called the Prieure de Carluc and pretty much had the place to ourselves there, too.

Part of the Prieure.  It was really a fascinating place.  It is strange sometimes wandering around a place that has been ruined for centuries, imagining when those holes in the rock were filled with the roof beams, and the place was filled with monks.

We rode to the town of Apt and got there in time for lunch AND right as the market was closing.  We thus had to limit our market acquisitions, but riding up Mt. Ventoux was only a few days in our future, so we were starting to get careful about loading up our saddle bags, even with food, so we just got some bread and a melon and such. We ate lunch in a restaurant about a block off the main square and it was one of the best meals of the trip.  I had a lasagna that was not tomato-y at all, but creamy and meaty and delicious.  Since we were going to cut off a few days of the guidebook recommended route through the Luberon, Clara and I took an afternoon ride to visit two more villages, Roussillon and Bonnieux.  Rossilon is famous for its Ochre cliffs, but it was a zoo of tourists and tour buses, so we looked at the cliffs and then went on as fast as we could.  Bonnieux on the other hand was quite lovely.  We shared an organic crepe and went up the hill to a fancy church and, although we would have loved to wander the streets for longer, we had to cut our visit short to meet back up with our husbands for dinner, a dinner of cheese and bread and tomatoes and melon and such that, though simple, was so yummy.

OK, so we took tons of pictures, and all of those km of riding that I'm not describing were generally winding in oak forest or through fields (some lavender) and we could see mountains in many directions, and the sun was shining and we had tasty snacks and...so basically, yes, you should be jealous.  Until you book your own trip, that is. 

Our cute "off the beaten track" chapel

Bonnieux

The ochre of Roussillon

Nocturnal Biodiversity

Spring is here!  And it really feels like it here in Marburg.  On Wednesday, we observed one of the signs of spring - the frogs came to our local vernal pools to lay their eggs (vernal pools are are temporary pools of water that provide habitat for distinctive plants and animals, according to Wikipedia.  They look like puddles.  Okay, some are bigger than puddles.  But it depends on how much rain there's been.).

So, this blog post will be relatively short, and highlight some of the biodiversity one can see in and near the vernal pools of Marburg in spring:

First: the star of the night: Feuersalamander!  Or Fire Salamanders, for those of you that speak English (some words are just better in German, although the Latin Salamandra salamandra is pretty awesome too!)

The photos don't do them justice.  They look even cooler in real life!

The coin is a 1 Euro, which is 2.3 cm in diameter (for those of you wondering what that is in inches, switch to the metric system, it's better!)

Most likely a Fire Salamander larva.  Breeding takes place on land, and then the females carry the eggs and young larvae around for months before letting them loose into the wide world of hungry predators

Likely the Common Frog (Rana temporaria)

Frog eggs!

Even more eggs!

 Vernal pools also have invertebrate life.  Below is a diving beetle, and below that are some pictures of two spiders (you can see them at night by their bright green eyeshine!) and also a cool yellow slug.

Larger than life size

Larger than life size.  Otherwise there would be fewer mice.

Even in the water, you are not safe from spiders.

There are cool slugs in Germany.  This one was yellow.  I don't know if it will turn into the giant orange slugs we see later in the year.