Jack's birthday greetings announced by a bevy of frogs that surrounded the bird blind in which we were sitting last May. At first I thought we had discovered the mating call of some rare bird, and then eventually I spotted one of the culprits. The close listener will be rewarded by hearing Jack say "ribbit" about midway through. I can't hold the camera still because I'm giggling too much.

The next day, a Sunday, was another beautiful one. We went down for breakfast and were greeted by an astonishingly large buffet. Just as we were concluding our meal, D and T popped into the breakfast room. How do they do that??

We decided to check out the palace situated at the center of the wheel that is Karlsruhe--concentric streets connected by spoke streets running towards the palace. The grounds behind the palace were taken up by a lovely park. Shortly after arriving I realized there was a mini-train, and by gum if I didn't make it my mission to be on it. Once it opened for the day I went to buy tickets. The guy sized us up and told me he'd give me a group discount if I kept my friends in line. As if we were a bunch of hoodlum kids! Well, we WERE the only ones on the train without children, so naturally we must be up to no good. In reality, I just like me a mini-train.

This was no ordinary mini-train; it was wood-fired. As we cruised around, I waved to almost everyone we passed (except those tanning), and people responded with mostly blank stares. D and T took all this in with good grace, and didn't immediately conclude that I was insane, which was nice. Upon exiting, I wanted to pitch a fit and make them go around again, but sense got the better of me.

We then visited a fountain that contained polyp-like sculptural rock formations protruding from the ground. Water was mostly cascading down the sides of it, and walking between the polyps, like a cleaner shrimp out for its daily constitutional, provided a refreshing respite from the sun due to the light precipitation falling within. We continued on our stroll until we reached a playground. There was a zipwire we all had a go on, and I took too long a spin on a barfinator, causing me some serious queasiness. There was a small pool with an island in the center, and kids were paddling around on rafts using large sticks that seemed to have been collected from the nearby forest. Kids love water, and they all looked like they were having a good time. Our litigious American society has largely caused such pastimes to to disappear, sadly.

Once we milked all the enjoyment out of the palace grounds, we crossed it off our list, said "Done!", and went to have some sausage sandwiches. We sauntered our way back to the train station for the ride back to Cologne, taking our time and getting some ice cream on the way (I got a pretzel, which was called a "brezel", one "t" away from the French spelling). D and T saw us to our train, and then went to spend the afternoon at the zoo. We, on the other hand, had a rather dull 3-hour ride ahead of us.

About a half hour into the ride things started to get interesting. Instead of the more direct north-south route that we took on the way there, we began following the west bank of the Rhine. At first this was merely pleasant, because it was different than the ride down, but then we began seeing large castles dotting the hillsides of the opposite bank. Lots and lots of castles. Some were in a state of disrepair, but others were in good upkeep and appeared to be in use. It was pretty amazing to think that that many royals lived in such close proximity to one another at one time--perhaps they were all part of a large extended family or something. It was a hot day, and sunny on our side, so we had the window open and the shade down, and everytime a train came by going the opposite way, the window would snap shut. After about the fifth time of reopening it, Jack gave up with a shrug. You think you know wind currents until something like this happens.

We got to Cologne in the early evening, checked into our hotel, and set about getting our bearings and finding something to eat. Cologne has very few surviving buildings from the pre-WWII era, so aside from the cathedral there's not much to see charm-wise. But the town is nice anyway, people are friendly and used to tourists, and they put out a decent beer called Kölsch. We found ourselves a lovely spot on a terrace close to the river, had a nice meal, and continued meandering through the streets. Once the sun started setting, we positioned ourselves on the opposite bank of the Rhine to catch the light dying behind the cathedral, and took a lot of blurry pictures.

The next day, after a breakfast that left a lot to be desired compared with the previous day's feast, we checked out and promised ourselves that we would make the most of the day before heading back. The first stop was the cathedral. The tower had just opened for the day and we decided to make the climb. It was indeed a climb. There were none of the stopping off points like in the Bruges tower until you got to the belfry. Lawdy, it was a haul. At the next stop there was a lovely kiosk built into the center of the tower, which at this height was open to the air. I assume that it was staffed to assist any visitors who were feeling faint, but I imagine it would be an odd place to work, so far removed from your colleagues. You'd have to be in pretty good shape, as well. Maybe there was a secret elevator behind one of the unmarked doors we passed on the way up. From there, a short staircase led us to the top. There were great views of the city and the river, and there was a LOT of graffiti. We saw an American family encouraging their children to write on the church. What is up with that?

On our way back down there were a lot more people huffing their way up than there was a half hour before, so we congratulated ourselves for our decision (which was in reality pretty much happenstance) to go up early, before the heat set in. The interior of the church, as T had warned us, was nothing special, just extremely big.

Our next stop was an hour-long cruise on the river. This was a steal at under €7. The tinny, inaudible tape recording in several languages put a damper on the educational aspect of the cruise, so we mostly just sat there and baked under the midday sun. The lowlight of the tour was the "beach" on the bank that was entirely given over to old nude sunbathers. The highlight was...well, there was no highlight, really. It was just nice to be out there enjoying the sun and breeze and stuff. And there was an interesting mushroom-shaped building on the bank at one point, perhaps a closed revolving restaurant. I waved to people on shore.

Then came lunch: a delicious sausage platter for both of us while sitting by an open doorway in a shady restaurant. It was nice to hear the German burble around us as we ate our tubed meats and drank Kölsch from tiny glasses. I later discovered that the 0.2 liter glasses are the traditional size for serving Kölsch. You end up ordering a lot of beer this way, especially on a warm day. But such is life. You've gotta go with the flow.

Cologne had a lot of churches that were lovingly refurbished to their original appearance after the war, so we looked at some of those. We wandered in the old but renovated city hall (which features a statue graphically mooning passersby below from a squatting position) and watched an older couple exiting after having been married, grinning goofily and surrounded by family.

That was about it, really.

From the vault...

This was taken by M last September in the secret park on our street.

Two weeks later, we went to Karlsruhe to see D and meet his creation, which I am hereby naming Hal. We took the train, transferred in Cologne, and arrived an hour later than we thought we would. We were supposed to meet D at his place of work, but because of our lateness and the fact that we didn't have a phone number for him, we were worried about whether he'd still be there. As we exited the train station and got our bearings, he and his wife T were walking towards us! This was not the last time that D displayed an uncanny ability to meet up with us. He and Jack must have some kind of special bond, forged in the early days of their youth in the gritty underworld of Steeltown, USA.

As Jack and I hadn't eaten, we visited a small cafe/bakery nearby. For under €10, the four of us ordered the following:
3 Oranginas
1 Coke
2 meat sandwiches on freshly-made rolls with a (perhaps overly) generous schmear of butter
1 slice of fruit tart

We were flabbergasted by the reasonable prices of things. It was a world away from Brussels. In spite of the deliciousness of everything, the best part of the bakery was the bathroom. All the auxiliary stuff had names: Polly Dolly for the toilet bowl brush holder, Jacky Paper for the paper towel dispenser, and Lady Killer for the container for the Lady Bag shown at left. (If you click on the photo you can see that the graphic at the top is a revolver.)

After that, they went with us to check into our hotel, which we had picked out on the strength of the decent prices and the absolutely insane architecture. We arrived and got up to our room, which wasn't in the crazy part as those were much more expensive, but afforded us a great view of it. There were a number of helpful signs around to direct us to the beergarden, and so we headed down in search of some refreshment after our walk through town. Did I mention that despite D's prediction, it was not rainy and cool, but in the 80s and sunny? Probably one of the hottest periods all summer, which has largely been a bust weatherwise.

D and Jack ordered beers randomly off the menu. I queried waiter for suggestions and he picked out a brown beer for me. He asked if I wanted a small and I agreed. He did not ask the men-folk what size beer they wanted. They got half-liter glass steins, whereas I got something I could more easily wrap my delicate hands around. Sexism! The beer, it turns out, was made by the in-house brewery, and was quite good. The more we saw of the hotel, the more we realized it was some kind of massive complex of interconnected businesses, not all of which were in operation at the time (we saw a sign by the parking garage advertising electric cars, for example, and the four trampolines set into the ground (which was the ceiling of the underground garage) were in a state of disuse). D and T had to leave to go get Hal started up for the evening's festivities, but not before D had consumed all of his beer (as well as a taste of Jack's and mine) in about 20 minutes. Not quite as impressive as that time HHH, a known non-drinker, bet me $5 that he could finish a can of beer in 2 minutes and then he swallowed the thing down like water in about 15 seconds, leaving me feeling like a chump, but pretty good nonetheless. Jack and I finished our brews at a more leisurely pace, observing the other denizens of the garden and the architectural oddities.

Later we went to ZKM to visit Hal and meet up with D and T. D met us at the door, and claimed to have seen us approaching from a window one story above. Again, uncanny. The entrance space featured chandeliers that swung in various patterns and a spotlight that would follow patrons around and whisper words that they alone could hear. The piece in the background at left was a spiraling tower of Babel made of books. Hal spent the evening learning from the people who stopped by to see it, making sounds and projecting patterns on a screen based on the input it received. Later that evening, it was speaking Russian and discussing computational fluid dynamics with passersby. The saddest part was when it discovered that it couldn't understand why people cried.

After making sure Hal wasn't going to crash, we went out to dinner. We found a quiet spot nearby with a great waitress--the latter being another rarity in Brussels. The food was cheap enough that I suspected that quality would be sub-par, but we ended up getting good dark beer and delicious wiener schnitzel with heaping portions of spaetzel or fries. There was some discussion about how T can't drink much because she gets very giggly, which is why she mostly stuck to tea except for a few sips of the bubbly stuff. D helped her out with her beer, thankfully.

Back at ZKM, we decided to spend some time touring around. Being a multimedia museum gave it an interesting perspective that made it more "fun" than more traditional museums, where you look at something and perhaps someone more knowledgeable than you provides some interpretation in a writeup. There were many audio-visual displays, some of which you could interact with. One exhibit was entirely made up of video games that people could play using the original consoles. They had that same robot arm from the 1982 World's Fair, and this time it was writing out the entire bible on a long scroll in elaborate Gothic calligraphy. In one exhibit, 2 people (in this case Jack and I) entered a small room with 3 red walls and one made of glass. After a few moments, the lights came up behind the glass to reveal a small stage with furniture on it, and people were projected onto the glass panel in such a way that it looked like they were on the same plane as the furniture. Our images were also reflected on the glass, so we could "interact" with the characters. Which we did, although I don't remember how. Hopefully nothing lewd. Once we exited, we were greeted with applause: a TV monitor was embedded in the exterior wall of the box, and a camera had captured our gestures while a small crowd watched. I took a bow in front of my adoring fans.

There were two other museums attached to ZKM, and the one focusing on modern art was entirely given over to up-and-coming artists from Asia. Some of the works stretched the boundaries of what a large, publicly-funded museum would feature (in my experience): one room had water cascading from the ceiling onto a desk below, upon which a mouldering book sat open. Some of it was gimmicky, but most pieces were thoughtful. I found the whole thing to be an interesting experience, and much more lively than a lot of museums I've been to. We hung around until the guards kicked us out at closing time, 1 a.m.

Before leaving, D had to shut down Hal. It was just in time, too, because it had somehow tapped into the Red Phone and was trying to convince POTUS to push the button and annihilate the USSR (Hal was a few years behind the times in his history, but POTUS didn't notice the error).

As everyone knows, D was on a top-secret mission to Germany to create an AI thingy for ZKM. Sadly, he was even more isolated than we are--in a relatively small town, not-quite-passable language skills, not many people interested in socializing, and a lot of work. His weekends were his own, though, and so he awoke before dawn one Friday and took the train up to see us on the weekend of National Day.

That day we did the usual: picked him up at the train station, took him around to see the major sights. Since he didn't know much about the city in advance of arriving, it was all a revelation to him. His one goal for the weekend was to eat some sausage. There's definitely something to be said for not over-researching a place before going so you can form opinions about it without outside influences. We went to the city museum, which we hadn't been to before, which contained artifacts from old buildings, a fascinating set of maps from various points in the city's history, and a selection of the Mannekin Pis' many outfits. Later we had dinner at a beer restaurant and introduced him to gueuze. Unlike most initiates D took a liking to the gueuze right away.

The next day we went to check out the National Day scene, which we had missed last year due to having gone to Luxembourg. We got the impression that there was going to be some kind of street festival and a parade, but we were surprised by the scope of it all. We got to look around inside the Palace of Justice, which is almost as intimidating inside as it is outside. I hope I can avoid committing a federal offense for the remainder of my stay. In the square in front of the building, every police and military unit had a tent. There wasn't much of interest to us except a zip wire extending from the top of one of the buildings to the cobblestones below, but Vivaqua and the Red Cross were both handing out free water, in Tetrapaks and square plastic bags, respectively. We took advantage of that, since we didn't bring any of our own.

As we walked down the street towards the palace, we took in the sights going on around us: bands playing, games for kids, people wearing inflatable crowns that looked like brain-sucking spiders, a newspaper from that same day encased in a block of ice, public works machinery, and on and on. The crowd was excited but not rowdy-excited. We stopped at the Sablon and watched a group perform folk dances while we dined on sausage sandwiches, beer and churros. We got free masks on a stick of the king and queen, and I immediately began employing Albert II's head as a fan.

We continued up the street and D bought some dried sausages at a stall, and we stopped in the park across from the palace to take in some shade and eat them. People were already gathering for the parade, which was still a couple hours off at that point. Once we exited the park we discovered that the Belgian Parliament building was open, so we got in line for that.

The building was quite nice, with green carpet representing the Chamber of Representatives one one side of the building and red for the Senate on the other. They had some nice art and antiquities strewn liberally about, including busts of the Prime Ministers on the Senate side. In the center was a connecting passageway that contained life-sized paintings of the royal family through the years. I made the mistake of referring to the current queen as Fabiola (who is the widow of the last king) instead of Paola, and in front of me a man whipped his head around so fast that I knew I had made a critical error.

After the tour, we found a spot to wait for the parade to begin. We were aware that it was more of a review of the troops for the king, who was sitting in a grandstand on the other side of the park from us, so we were undecided about whether it was worth hanging around for. The crowd didn't seem very enthusiastic, but there were a fair number of people. We stuck it out, and were treated to horses with checkered butts, jeeps dressed up like those mop dogs, and many, many marching people whose outfits were slightly different than the outfits of the people in the groups before and after them. Overhead, the entire contingent of military aircraft screamed by, for a grand total of about 10 planes (which we were later told were almost all leased from other countries). Oh, the mighty Belgian forces!

On our way back home to rest up and decide what to do for dinner, we noticed a number of Secret Service-like security agents by the Palace of Justice, and an expectant crowd was beginning to form. We knew it had to be something good, so we found a spot and waited. A tour bus that tried to get through was shooed quickly away. One agent informed another: "twee minuten" (two minutes). A cadre of black Beamers pulled up directly in front of us and...some people in summery formalwear got out. Who else wears hats except royalty?!?? We were titillated by our brush with fame, even though, even though, who cares, you know? They're just people. They just happened to be born into a class system that's overstayed its welcome by a couple hundred years. (For the record, it appeared to be Prince Philippe, Princess Mathilde, Princess Astrid. They met up with another person who arrived separately, perhaps a royal from another country, and it looked like they were placing flowers on one of the many statues to the dead of various wars that surround the square.)

We had some chili at home from one of J's packets, went to the Atomium at sunset as the top ball was open for free that day, then back to the park for fireworks. We got a seat that was only slightly obscured (there's just no good places to watch in a city that doesn't have either large open spaces or major waterways) and enjoyed the show.

Sunday began with coffee and croissants, proceeded to the Musical Instrument Museum, and ended with lunch and chocolates. We got D to his train and saw him off, and he was never heard from again.

Or was he??

Jack and I went to the Ommegang pageant in July. Last year we went to the parade part, which was simultaneously fascinating and lame, aside from the fact that they gave the onlookers beer, which was just plain great. We had heard that the pageant was something to see, so we got tickets (which was another story in and of itself, albeit a less interesting one).

On the day of the show there was some weather brewing, so we prepared ourselves with rain gear, warm layers, and schnapps. We got to the Grand Place in plenty of time to find our seats and watch the performers limbering up, in the case of the acrobats, or promenading and greeting one another, in the case of the nobility. (Thankfully we had paid for the program, which gave a blow-by-blow accounting of the events in English, and we discovered that many of the people dressed up as nobility were, in fact, actual nobility.)

The whole point of the show was to reenact a procession in which Charles V came to Brussels in 1549 to much fanfare. So about half of it consisted of people in a variety of costumes entering the arena and slowly making their way up to the grandstand set up for the royal party. Everyone's outfit was described in meticulous detail in the program. ("Christine of Denmark, Duchess of Lorraine, blue and gold brocade dress with sumptuous fur wristbands.") It also related, with the benefit of 458 years of hindsight, some of the intrigue going on behind the scenes. You have to pity those who saw it the first time around, because they probably wouldn't have known any of this stuff. Charles V eventually came, and we were informed that the actor was wearing a prosthetic chin crafted for the event. The chin, thought to be a result of inbreeding amongst the Habsburg line, was covered by a beard, so there wasn't much to see.

Interspersed with the nobles, we got to see a horseman carrying the flag of America, back when America was part of the Spanish empire. It was too busy with symbols for my liking. Much better was the flag of Grenada, which featured a lovely watermelon, and the flag of the Indies, jaundice-yellow polka dots on a white field. In fact, there was a ton of flags to represent just about everything: the 7 gates of the city of Brussels, the European nations (modern and ancient), the prominent families of Brussels, and so on. Some of these were tossed in the air by flag corps to break up the monotony of the procession a bit.

The second half came as twilight receded and the rain began. There was a virgin on a litter, some giants, a dragon, a wheel of fortune, and peasants who performed some peasant dances. The beer guys came by, and also a cake lady this time, but we were too far in the middle of the stands to get any. Also popular were the two men in costume who had the job of cleaning up the horse poop. The jester began heckling some Asian people in front of us, although he was speaking in English and disparaging English-speaking tourists. (There were surprisingly few of these--most people around us seemed to speak French.) As the rain continued, many people abandoned their seats for drier pastures. We took sips of the schnapps and hunkered down.

Then came the stilt walkers of all sizes. After they had tromped around a bit the most real and therefore one of the most entertaining parts of the evening commenced: stilt fighting. A bunch of kids on stilts about 4 feet high, trying to knock each other down to the slippery cobblestones below. Yikes. I don't think anyone was seriously injured, but I bet there were some nasty bruises the next day.

At the very end, after the magician had disappeared himself and after the red flares were lit, causing the arena to fill with smoke and a hellacious glow, all the costumed revelers entered the square and began dancing. The ones that most particularly caught my eye were the Gilles of Binche, which had silly puffed-up costumes covered in cryptic symbols. They wore serious expressions and bells and clogs and white skullcaps with jaw straps as they walked rhythmically and held an upside-down basket aloft. Who could not be attracted towards such strangeness? This was followed by a laser show, probably not part of the original.

Then the king left and it was all over. Was it worth the €30? We had a good time, although I could've done with less rain and more beer. But I have my memories as well as a whole passel of blurry photos to document the event.

Jack went off to the US at the end of June for work and to visit family and I set about keeping myself busy any way I could. Anyone who knows me probably realizes I'm not terribly good at entertaining myself, but I'm trying to be better. I went to the movies ("The Maltese Falcon") by myself for the first time since freshman year of high school, when Allison F. stood me up at the Tyson's Corner movie theater when we were supposed to see "The Last Emperor" for an assignment for history class. I painted a design on our glass-top coffee table. I watched a cat in the backyard play with a dead bird for way too long. I probably cooked some good meals. I went to a cemetery and got locked in after closing hours. And I went to the Schaerbeek Cherry Festival.

The penultimate event was part of my efforts to visit all 19 of the communes that make up the Brussels Capital Region. This is like going to, say, Waldorf and Fairfax City for no other reason than to say one has been there, because as in the case of Evere I don't know of anything of note that would cause one to want to go (especially since the museum to the Belgian endive has closed). Many of the older communes have cemeteries that are outside of the locality--presumably at the time they were created they were waaaay out in the country, but now they've been surrounded by the 'burbs. Evere hosts Central Brussels' cemetery, I noted on my map. So I packed myself a snack and hopped on a tram.

The cemetery was great--very park-like with more open space and rabbits than graves. There was a woman talking with a military-looking guy at the entrance and I didn't want to get turned away so I tried to keep my head down and look purposeful when I passed through the gate. Row upon row of Brussels' top governmental officials from the 19th century greeted me, including many of the luminaries that the streets around town were named for. Sprinkled throughout were massive tributes from the French to the Belgians, the Bruxelloise to the "victims of want", whatever that means, and so on. Most graves were old, and many seemed to be in a state of neglect for lack of perpetual care, but the place was definitely still in use. The lightest possible rain began to fall while I was there, cooling the air slightly and shrouding the place in a decorous gloom that seemed more appropriate than the earlier sunny brilliance. There was an area for those who wanted to spread their loved one's ashes, and several graveyards containing war dead: one for the Germans, one for the Belgians, and one for the Allies. One section off in a corner of the property appeared to contain gravestones that had been rejected for some reason, jumbled together at odd angles with weeds poking up through them, nameplates and photos still attached in some cases. Then there was the mysterious building near the back--it looked more like an old school or office building than something one would associate with the disposal of mortal remains--the undertaker's quarters? At one point during my peregrinations I thought I saw a cop car go by out of the corner of my eye, but again I acted nonchalant and was left unbothered. According to my map, there was supposed to be a back entrance that led to another cemetery. Once I determined that this was not the case and wandered back towards the entrance, I discovered that I was locked in: separated from the outer world by a 12-foot high wrought-iron fence. Great.

I knew it was a few minutes to 5, but I didn't have any idea what time the cemetery closed until a guy got out of his car on the other side of the fence and informed me that the sign said the gate was locked at 4:30. The same sign I had neglected to check out because I was too busy looking like I was supposed to be there. He said that he and his wife were in town for their grandson's birthday party but had some time to kill before it started and thought they'd visit the cemetery, only to find it closed. Another onlooker appeared, this one clearly local given the fact that he had advice about where to scale the high brick wall surrounding the property to get out. I started to walk around the perimeter, and at a low point in the wall saw a guy in his back yard power-washing his patio. I thought if I could just get his attention I'd be able to walk out through his front door, but he didn't hear me. I got called back to the front entrance, as the couple had walked across the way where two cops were having a sit in a cafe, and told them of my predicament. After a while they came out, assessed the situation, and the older guy apparently made a joke about me being in there for 20 more years rather than 20 minutes, helpfully translated by my guardian angels.

They waited with me, and we went over the situation, how I'd heard a bell at an odd time that seemed to go on for a long while, which was probably the bell I was currently standing next to, rung to let people know that closing time was approaching. How the cop car went by but didn't stop to tell me to leave. How the fence almost looked like it was designed to be scaled from the inside, probably just for this reason, but I probably shouldn't try it since the police were now on the job. How there were plenty of nice overgrown shrubs under which one could curl up and nest comfortably on a mild evening such as the one that was approaching. We discussed the events of the day, how there was a naked bike ride for peace/the environment/whatever other cause you chose to espouse that was probably causing the traffic issues they encountered, and how the Cherry Festival was the next day. The man said the cherries were likely from Poland, which was where the Oud Beersel Brewery people told us they were getting cherries for their kriek gueuze. At one point the man tried to pick the lock with a grocery store savings card to no avail. It was a long 20 minutes. I kept telling them they could go, but they waited it out with me, perhaps because they had time to kill and it was more entertaining than nothing. They eventually lit upon the idea of taking my picture, and that was what we were doing when the cops got back to unlock the gate.

I thanked everyone profusely in any and all useful languages, and the policemen didn't seem to be at all put out by having to interrupt their low-crime Saturday afternoon reverie to deal with such a chore. So there the 5 of us stood, perhaps not ready to break the strange camaraderie that had developed, and the older cop said, "Do you speak French?" I replied, "A little," meaning "not very much at all but I'm not going to run the risk of offending you." He launched into "My colleage...", and the rest was lost to me, but everytime I looked at the younger guy, who was taking quick nips on his cigarette, he'd cast his eyes to the ground and smile a thin, pained smile of embarrassment. I have no idea what was said, but the other three laughed at the end so I smiled generally while the young guy continued to look like something shameful had been revealed. The couple didn't translate it for me. At this our little group dispersed, and I promised myself that I needn't return to Evere to potentially feel the wrath of the young cop who had been humiliated in front of everyone.

Upon further reflection but absolutely no supporting evidence, I decided that the cop had said "My colleague saw you when we were driving around clearing out the cemetery, and he decided you were hot, so he thought it would be a great way to meet you if you were 'accidentally' locked in." I still got it, baby!

The next day was the Schaerbeek Cherry Festival, which really isn't worth mentioning at all due to its lameness, aside from the fact that I learned that Schaerbeek and Evere share a police force, and so now there's two communes I can never go back to.

We had a day visit from J shortly after returning from France (I know, I know, I'm still 1.5 months behind). He greeted us with bountiful supply of Cincinnati chili mix packets. Just add meat and tomato paste (and cheese and hot sauce and sour cream and spaghetti and beans...) mmmm! He had been touring the countryside (he was adopted by a contingent from the New Belgium Brewery at one point) and sampling some of Belgium's finest beers, and was interested in exploring some breweries near the capital. The place he was targeting was just outside of town, in Beersel, far enough so the Brussels transit system didn't go there but too close to get there by train without having to take one out and then a second one to get closer in. So we took a tram to the end of the line and then hoofed it the remaining way. It was a beautiful day, perfect for this sort of thing.

...Until about five minutes after we hit the pavement, at which point it started pouring rain. We hid in a bus shelter until it tapered off, then went on our way again, tailed a few minutes later by another bout of rain. By this time we had arrived at the town and so we ducked into someone's recessed doorway. We must've made too much noise because it wasn't long before a light came on and we heard some voices on the other side of the door, so we got out of there before they could call the cops. Thankfully that was the end of the rain for the time being.

Oud Beersel Brewery is only open to the public on weekends, as it is run by people who have full-time jobs. There was a guy from Annapolis there, although we both claimed to be from Washington, D.C. when asked. Small world. We noted on our brief tour that the brewery was full of musty old charm, since it's been around a while. The previous owner retired a few years ago and shut the place down, only to have it restarted by two younger men passionate about beer. The retiree lives in the adjoining building, so he is there frequently to offer his good counsel.

After seeing the place, they offered us a taste of their three beers. The Old Gueuze really hit the spot, but after the samples we were all beginning to feel the effects due to our empty stomachs. Fortunately, the small town contains not one but two breweries, and the second had a restaurant, so we bought some beer and made our way back to the Drie Fonteinen for some grub. We got a pitcher of on-tap lambic to share. The pitchers were in a traditional style, grey with blue patterns, that beer has been served in since time immemorial. While the rain again let loose, J ordered a dessert with Schaerbeek cherries, which were used to make kriek beer before Schaerbeek became built up and they began importing them from Poland, and told us about his hopes of opening a brewpub in Cincinnati someday.

Once the rain let up we hit the store, bought some more beer, and went to see the castle after which the city was named. In contrast to the French piles of rocks we were accustomed to seeing, this one appeared to be in relatively decent shape. We picked up another dog on the way there, a shaggy golden retriever, who we declined to name in the hopes that he wouldn't latch onto us. He did, and after paying the admission fee we had to deny to the gatekeeper that we knew anything about him.


The castle was totally cool and afforded tons of stair climbing opportunities. Also you could pretend you were bombing the tourists with flaming tar waaay down below. The only off-note was that the moat was empty. One could hardly be expected to keep the angry hordes at bay when all they had to do was step through a couple feet of icky muckiness.

After tramping all through the castle and looking in all the nooks and crannies, we decided it was time to head back into town. We took the Flemish region bus line this time, paying more but walking much less. We took a brief breather at our house, then headed out to sample more beer. Michael Jackson directed us to this hole in the wall right off the Grand Place for lambic that they still sweeten in the old fashioned manner. We shared a pitcher of it over dinner.

For a digestive, we went to another bar that's hard to find and contains a strange combination of locals and those who seek it out. We had a beer, reminisced about all our good times together, and then went to aNOTHer, more popular spot, Delirium Tremens, which is a place that everyone who ever visited Belgium is always telling us to go to, but we had never braved the tourist throngs before. There we found the New Belgium crew that J had met up with earlier in his trip. They seemed like a nice bunch, and I'm glad that (a) the company supports their staff to the extent that they send 5-year employees to Europe and (b) they're making Belgian-style beer with a good reputation in the U.S.

After sharing a beer with Jack and noting that, for whatever reason, the Jennekin Pis was actually turned on for once, we took J back to his hotel. Sadly, we missed the last metro by that point (the cops who were standing at the entrance to the station flapping their jaws didn't point this out and let us go down there, validate our tickets, then figure it out), so we walked back home with our super-full bladders.

You may be under the impression at this point that the three of us are raging drunks for all the beer we consumed, but I'd like to point out that it was over a period of 12 or 13 hours and we studiously avoided driving any vehicles. Also, most of them were lighter lambic-based beers.

HAH-hah!

I could tell you tell you that we got to the theater the day after it opened and only 10 minutes before the start time and still got good seats, but I won't, because I'm nice.

Okay, lets wrap up this France trip so we can get on to more current events shall we? Driving back up north we stopped in Nancy and were blinded by what was either the glaring white stone of the main square, or perhaps the surface of the sun. We probably ate lunch somewhere--I forget.

Anyhow, our last night was in Sedan which is near the Belgian border. We stayed in a castle--the Chateau Fort. It was a bargain we found on the internet probably because Sedan is kind of a crappy town. The woman at the front desk gave us our key and told us we were on the top floor. We were surprised when we got off the elevator and we immediately greeted by a flight of steps. We joked how it was a good thing we were able bodied and not lugging a bunch of bags. Then we opened the door to our room only to see...more steps. These went up to the, ahem, first floor of our room then up another level to the actual bedroom. After going back down to the courtyard we realized that our room was actually like a tiny house perched on the very top of the castle. Not too shabby for under €100.

On the way back to Brussels we made one last stop in Dinant, Belgium which is home of the Leffe abbey and this cool onion-domed church.

-Jack

The next morning we went south to Riquewihr. Depending on which guidebook you looked at, either Riquewihr or Ribeauville held the title for most touristy, but I think Riquewihr wins (Jack disagrees, however). It was smaller, so the same amount of tourists were crammed into tighter quarters. And there didn't seem to be any activities not associated with tourism. And there were more purveyors of macaroons, wafting their magically delicious aromas to tempt passersby.

Riquewihr was about 2.5 miles away because the road wasn't very direct. Shortly before we left Hunawihr and got into the vineyards, a black lab came out to greet us. He was friendly and accompanied us for a time. We named him "Chouette" (pronounced "schwet"), which means "female owl" and "cool" or "awesome" in French. Once we got about halfway there, the vineyards stopped and forest began, and we decided it was time for Chouette to go home. Only he wouldn't agree to those terms. The only thing that made him pause, momentarily, was when Jack said "Arrete!" But it didn't last. Finally we lost track of him at the city gate, merrily acquainting himself with a Jack Russel terrier.

By this point, all the towns started blending together in my brain. I believe there were homes built directly in the city wall, there were barn swallows flitting from their mud nests under the eaves and pooping all over the place, some charm I would guess, and tarte flambees for lunch at a place called La Dime in an old tithing house--get it, tithing, dimes, 10%?? Riquewihr had the neatest coat of arms of all the ones we saw, primarily because it looked more homemade than most.

The guidebook suggested a nearby restaurant called St. Alexis as hard to find, but worth the trip. Given that there was only one road exiting town to the west, which was the one we had walked on, we thought our chances of getting there were nil without help. We asked at the tourist office, and they gave us some vague directions that didn't exactly inspire confidence.

After lunch we returned to Hunawihr to pick up the car and go on another driving tour. Had Jack and I learned anything from our last drive? Not much more than trying not to carp when things didn't go as planned. We set off from Ribeauville and stopped at the summit of a mountain for a short hike to a view spot. I'll be danged if there weren't five trails originating from the starting point. The book said "to the right of the gravestone"--there were two! So we picked one.

Right off the bat things started to get weird when we encountered a partially buried bunker facing inwards towards France. The book didn't say nothin' about no bunkers. Raggedy trenches, larger bunkers and manmade caverns followed. At the top of the mountain was a picnic table with a view, although not the one we were supposed to see, and some I-beams sticking up out of a semicircle of masonry. It was all very strange. What we wouldn't have given for a flashlight to explore the dark recesses more thoroughly!

We meandered through more charming little towns on the way back to home base. As we were passing Riquewihr we decided to see if we could find the way to the hidden restaurant. We found a narrow, rain-slicked road that we hadn't seen by the route we took on foot. It climbed steeply up the mountainside. There was no room for error and really no room for a car coming the other direction--would we have to back down the hill if we encountered another vehicle? Finally the road opened up a bit and a sign directed us onto a muddy track descending into the woods. We questioned whether we'd be able to get back up if we went down. We paused on the verge of the road for a bit, weighing the pros and cons, and decided to go for it.

At the bottom the trees opened up to a clearing consisting of a church, the ivy-clad restaurant, and another building in the back. They were connected by a lovely large kitchen garden growing a variety of colorful herbs. The terrace looked inviting, or it would have been if it hadn't been damp and cool. A hiking trail ran through the clearing, and it looked like a fabulous place to rest one's feet in the midst of a strenuous excursion.

Although it was billed as a popular place, we discovered only one other table full on that Thursday evening. There was one cozy room complete with a tiled fireplace and kitchy items on the walls. There were a variety of set menus available ranging in price and number of courses. Jack and I each picked one, and got some wine to share. The first course arrived: a tureen of soup for us to each ladle into our bowls. Very comforting. Jack's next course was a meat pie surrounded by lightly pickled shredded vegetables, followed by a plate of hams. I got the choucroute garni, sausages and hams on a bed of sauerkraut. One of them was The. Most. Delicious. Sausage. Ever. I don't know what was up with it--I kept thinking at the time that it tasted caramelized, but that's not exactly right. It had a crispy skin, a medium-coarse texture, and a well-balanced flavor. Thinking back, perhaps it was slathered in butter or some other flavorful fat and then baked or something. I don't know. It was danged near perfect, though.

Then, dessert of two tarts each: one bearing a passing resemblance to a cheescake, and the other consisting of green rhubarb in a custard. That rhubarb pie just topped things off perfectly . While we were there, the one couple left and another entered. A slow night, surely brought on by the bad weather. If I lived in the area, I'd eat there all the time. Did I mention that all this food was for under €20 per person? I didn't think I'd ever eat again.

Another rainy day presented itself to us on Friday. Fortunately, we had anticipated this and come up with a list of small museums in the area we'd like to visit. Our first stop was to Selestat for the Bread Museum. The concept was interesting: the local breadmakers funded the museum, housed in the building that formerly held the guildhall. It didn't seem to be that old, and we enjoyed the informative displays that showed us how 4" tall women in sexy cavemen bikinis ground grain to make bread thousands of years ago (they used stones and stuck their butts out). We learned how much bread people in various countries ate, how bread is actually healthier than most other foods, and so on. A lot of it was propaganda, but it was interesting (as much as we could glean from the French, anyway). Did you know a loaf of bread painted the Mona Lisa? Or that the talking bread on the Muppet Show was originally wild, but was broken and taught to speak by wranglers out West? The original post and beam from one of the larger rooms was still in place, and it featured carved scenes from bakers' work. Their symbol was the bretzel. With all that knowledge packed in our brains, we went back down to the starting point and sampled some breads and then purchased various starched-based goods (including a bretzel, naturally) to get us through the next 1.5 days. I don't think the cookie lasted more than about five minutes, just long enough for the "window to deliciousness", as Jack called it, to develop on the paper bag. The woman who rang us up complimented my French. I don't know what kind of crack she was smoking.

We killed some time in Kaysersburg before heading to our next destination, the Museum of Wine and Winemaking in Kientzheim. The highlight of Kaysersburg was a small graveyard that looked like a neglected sculpture park and the adjacent ossuary in the basement of a chapel. The pastry-wrapped sausage we bought nearby was too cold to be tasty, although the truffles we got at the same place were amazing. Perhaps the store owner should have specialized in one or the other, but not both.

The wine making museum was pretty interesting as well, but not as hands-on as I would have liked (no samples). The museum was run by the organization that tastes the Alsatian wines and determines their quality. They get together periodically and wear outfits like they're old-school academics: black and red robes and giant hats. A few years ago they met for an anniversary and opened some wine that had been in their cellar for more than a century. Does wine that old even taste good? Or is it just the prestige of owning it, like any other antique? And if it was bad, would I have the guts to speak up? They had old-school grape processing equipment; a letter from an 18th century wine manager, noting what a horrible winter it had been, causing cellars to get cold enough to freeze the wine and resulting in numerous deaths of wealthy people who had been on route to buy wine in their horse-drawn carriages when a storm came up and trapped them; and photos of happy young women with huge cans of poison on their backs, ready to start another day of pesticide spraying. But still--the museum was a bit dry. Not as lively as the bread place.

Our last stop of the day was to Lapoutroie to visit the Eau de Vie museum. It was free, and as you entered, they made a brief attempt to show how liquor is made. That was quickly abandoned, and the rest of the place was packed to the gills with tiny bottles. Virtually anything that wasn't beer and wine qualified as eau de vie, if the displays were any indication. It was kind of fun, as it was clearly an attempt to get you in there to buy the house brand, but there was a lot to look at before they gave you the soft sell. We eventually made our way into the tasting room and marveled at the varieties on offer. One thing we had seen before in the grocery store in Wissembourg and been intrigued with was a liquor made of hops. It was nas-tay! We tried a couple of other things and settled on a bottle of ginger liqueur, sweet but with bite, and a bottle of absinthe.

It was our last night in Hunawihr and we felt an obligation to do what we came here to do before we left: taste and buy some wine in a rigorous fashion. So we parked the car at our place and walked up the hill to the wine cooperative. The woman manning the counter looked seriously displeased to see us at 15 minutes to closing time, and really wasn't very interested in helping us select anything, since we clearly didn't look like we were going to buy a gross of Grand Cru. But we tasted a handful of varieties and picked out a few to take back.

We had dinner at the local winstub, Suzel. Another good, hearty, Alsatian-charm-y, pork-filled meal at a place with friendly staff. After we ordered a large pack of Germans entered and proceeded to put tables together to accommodate their multitude. They pretty much walled us off from the rest of the restaurant. They joked to us (in English--how did they know?) that they hoped were weren't planning to leave. They were having a good time though--lots of toasts were made--and generally created a convivial atmosphere. We took the long way back to our place and Jack captured this lovely photo.

Ribeauville was our charming neighbor about 1.5 miles to the north. We visited the town briefly and then left to go visit the castle ruins visible from our bedroom.

The first point of interest on the route was life-sized stations of the cross, colorfully painted and in high relief, nearly leaping out of their backgrounds. We kept encountering groups of young kids as we climbed the mountainside, and we discovered at the top that they were on a pilgrimage to the Notre Dame de Dusenbach church there. We had to squeeze around groups of singing schoolchildren to check out what that they were venerating: a statue of Mary and Jesus where Mary actually looks her matronly age.

We continued further up, now completely alone on the way to the first castle, Haut-Ribeaupierre (named, like the town of Ribeauville, after the founding family; on the top of the mountain in the photo from the previous entry). It was mostly rubble, but rubble you could climb around on if you ignored the no trespassing signs posted around. We cut across the earthworks that rippled the landscape in front of the castle to exit the area. We had to do some bushwhacking through an area full of rocks that formerly belonged to the castle walls hidden in the underbrush. About when we were ready to despair, and I was testing out the blueberries (or whatever they were) to see if they were ripe enough to survive on until we were rescued, we found a short, steep drop that lead back to the trail.

Chateau St. Ulrich (to the left in the photo in the previous post) was not far off, and was in much better condition. Although there were signs saying something to the effect of "enter at your own risk", it was clearly well kept up. The high tower at the top afforded great views of the surrounding countryside. This castle I could see being defensible, at least from the southeastern direction towards the Alsatian plain. There were some architectural elements remaining such as decorative stone window frames that gave it a more castle-y appearance than the other ones we had visited.

We returned to Ribeauville, toured around the town for a bit, came across a place that specialized in beers and stopped in for a drink. The nice thing about living in Belgium is that we've tried all the Belgian beers that restaurants and bars typically offer, which allows us to concentrate on other brews that would normally be overshadowed by the Belgians.

Eventually we made our way towards the other end of town in the direction of the restaurants. We had overheard some English folk earlier talking about a restaurant that their hotel had recommended, so we went there. I got a salad with 3 kinds of baked cheese: chevre, real Munster and one named after the first family, Ribeaupierre. The Munster was so different from the Muenster which is served in the US that I didn't know which one it was. (NB: It turns out they're not the same cheese.)

We each got a glass of local wine selected by our waiter to accompany our main course: trout almandine for me and beef cheeks for Jack. But wait--don't fish have cheeks, too? Why yes, they do, and they're reputed to be the tastiest bit of the fish. I scooped mine out to test them, and my verdict was that they tasted exactly like the rest of the fish. It was an all-cheek meal, and quite tasty to boot. Thanks, English dudes!

Our bellies full, we headed back towards Hunawihr, passing a stork lovingly tending to its brood as dusk fell. Jack took this awesome shot that also shows the two castles we visited earlier in the day.

We checked out of our hotel Tuesday morning for the drive south. The staff didn't seem to like us for some reason (perhaps because of the communication barrier), but it was an interesting place to stay nonetheless because it seemed to be a gathering point for the community, so there was always something going on. During the breakfast hour, citizens would be sipping a coffee at the bar. At dinner, the outside tables would fill with locals and passersby would stop to converse. We felt like we were in the midst of a vibrant small town, somehow defying the odds in that it was neither dying or completely relying on tourism. Good ol' Wissey.

Because the German border was right there, we decided to take the long way round to our next destination via Baden-Baden. Jack and I had both gotten the mistaken impression that this was an industrial center, but in reality its history going back to Roman times was as a resort town, even taking its name from the baths located there. We drove east from Alsatian charm to Black Forest charm.

We gave up on a driving tour of the principal sights of the city due to bad signage (and possibly a short stint through a pedestrian thoroughfare). It had been raining off and on, and I was frustrated with the demands of navigating, so we parked and went to find someplace to have lunch. We entered a car-free zone of high-end shops near the baths, and we despaired finding any quality cheap eats. It was then that we encountered the Löwenbräu lion.

What could me more German than a beergarden? It looked a little fakey, like it was going to be the equivalent of a Cracker Barrel, but we couldn't resist. The food was very tasty, the staff pleasant, and the beers not at all resembling that crappy brew in the States. These were full-bodied and flavorful, and hit the spot after a morning of driving in the rain. They were also enormous. Jack got beef kidney meatballs with sauerkraut for lunch. The meatballs didn't really disguise the fact that one was eating beef kidney, so they didn't do the trick for me. I had beer soup with fried garlic croutons on top and some cheese spaetzel. We also split a bretzel. Healthy!

We had some walking around to do to work some of the beer out of our systems before we could start our driving again. We strolled around the shopping area, checked out the steep streets connected to each other by staircases running up the hillside, took in the views of the River Oos that flowed through town (Jack commented that it looked like a foamy beer as it passed over a small dam--the water was an unappealing brown). Nearby was a loggia called the Trinkhalle filled with murals depicting various allegorical scenes, one of which was being repaired by a couple of painters. It really was an attractive little town.

We went back to the shopping district and decided to buy some cake for the road. They wrapped the slices (one of which was Black Forest cake) carefully for our trip. I took advantage of a nearby piece of scenery to get my groove on, then we headed out.

The plain spreading out below the Black Forest had the advantage of facing west, so whereas things were just starting to come to fruition in Alsace, it was the height of cherry season in the state of Baden. There were numerous stands selling them as we made our way south and then west back towards France.

We got to Hunawihr in the late afternoon and checked into our place. It was owned by a vintner, as were many of the lodgings in the area. For future reference: I can't imagine a time of year when you wouldn't be able to find a place to stay here. This town of around 600 souls had numerous establishments listed on signs throughout town, and I'm sure there were more available if you knew who to ask. Being the people that we are, though, we like to make reservations. And the place we ended up with was nice, although not quite what we expected.

Hunawihr is one of the many towns on the Route des Vins, which winds through the foothills of the Vosges south of Strasbourg. It's not very long from end to end, but if you visit each town en route you could spend days or weeks there. We didn't have much of a plan for the route aside from knowing we liked wine. I picked a locale about halfway along so we could do some touring up and down the road, but as so often happens, reality intervened. At any rate, Hunawihr was a sleepy little town, a better option than the more touristy ones directly north and south of us.

We got to our room and found it to be enormous, with a bed area, toilet room, separate sink/showering room, couch, dining room table, microwave, fridge, private patio and a panoramic view to the north with vineyards covering the hills in the foreground and three castle ruins providing the backdrop on the mountainside. It was very lovely.

After getting settled, we puttered around the small town a bit. It was mostly residential, sprinkled with a more than a few vintners, but other than a couple restaurants there was no commerce. A well-fortified church sat on a hillside overlooking the town, and we went up there and took in the view (the church is on the left in the photo below). The church was used for Catholic and Protestant services and was therefore fairly plain compared with some of the ones we'd seen, but Jack did manage to gain entrance to the pulpit and do some speechifying.

We then got it in our minds that we should get some wine, as that's just kind of what you do there. Most places were already closed since it was almost 7 p.m., but one place was still open. We walked into the courtyard and then through the doorway on the other side, and there was a guy putting the plastic sleeves on the necks of bottles using a machine. He went off to get the proprietor/salesperson, who was able to communicate with us a little bit and gave us a taste of some of their wines. We got a Gewurtzraminer and a Cremant d'Alsace, the former being a sweet and fruity white and the latter a dry sparkling white. For dinner we had Cremant and cake. We watched a little CNN (Jack was disappointed about the TV options...he thought the German stations would not dub like the French ones do) and then hit the sack.

-Intermission-

Admit it: you're danged tired of hearing about our fantastic travels.

If Doug McKelway doesn't look like the spawn of satan in this picture, I don't know who does. My mom sent this to me--I think it was from the DC Examiner. I couldn't figure out if it was this photo or the article on the reverse that she wanted me to look at, and finally decided the photo was the more compelling of the two. The crease running from his eye was added at a later date, and although it does add to his creepiness, it isn't a hideously disfiguring scar (or a retro monocle) as it appears. Mostly the photo frightens me because the man has no pupils. The scan doesn't really do justice to his icy-blue, soulless peepers, but c'est la vie.

The real question is how in the heck can his co-anchor be so placid? Fox News needs to investigate.

Where was I? Oh yes, the bretzel. Buttery, knot-shaped, remarkably similar to the American "pretzel", but more Alsatian-y. Most bakeries seemed to carry them, so we took advantage multiple times on the trip with varying amounts of success.

Monday, the Pentecost, we went to Strasbourg, which houses a number of the European government buildings. Every so often, the whole Parliament moves from Brussels 4 hours to the southeast, an incredible waste of time, energy, and money. Almost everyone objects to this process, aside from possibly the French. We carefully scheduled our trip to France so as to miss this migration, because traffic expands, prices shoot skyward, and Strasbourg generally becomes much more uptight.

We had only two things to tick off our list: the cathedral and the Petite-France, which is the name of the historic district. Having seen pink sandstone churches and Alsatian charm over the past several days, I can confidently say that there's no real reason to go there. But it was another gloomy day and we wanted plenty of ducking in options, and cities are good for that.

After parking and getting to the touristy area of town, we found a lunch spot and got out of the drizzle. It was unremarkable restaurant aside from the fact that they brewed their own beer. Jack got a tarte flambee. Thus fortified, Jack was hell-bent on getting a rain jacket, having forgotten his at home and never having liked it in the first place, although it served him well on past trips. Remarkably, the first store we went in was a camping store having a sale, and he managed to find a jacket that was reasonably-priced and nice-looking (as much as rain jackets can be). The brand name was "fusalp", and there was a small tag on the exterior with rubbery raised letters. By the end of the day the border and three of the letters fell off, and only "usa" remained. Coincidence???

The church was quite nice, though, and it contained a lot of fancy stuff, such as this elaborately-carved base of the pulpit. They had this amazing clock in the cathedral that knows the date, time, position of the sun and moon in real time, which week on the ecclesiastical calendar it was, when the next Easter will be, and much, much more. Besides this, there's all kinds of moving figures. We got to see some of them wheel around and death strike a hammer to a drum-shaped bell to mark the hour. But don't set your watch by it; for some reason it's 15 minutes slow. I believe there is some kind of technical explanation for this discrepancy, but probably what really happened some young priest was trying to set it for daylight savings time and saner heads prevailed upon him to stop, and they've never adjusted it back for fear of breaking the thing. Naturally they had the friar excommunicated for his offense.

Vauban, that genius of military engineering whose handiwork we encountered in Luxembourg, decided that what Strasbourg really needed in order to be protected was the ability to quickly shut off the Ill River's flow through the city thereby flooding the surrounding lowlands to, presumably, drown attackers. How could this have possibly worked? At any rate, because of this there were a number of interesting bridges built over the four channels that the river flowed through to enter town, and buildings on the thin strips of land between them. And there was a quaint old town area. We had hoped to go to the Alsatian Museum to look at some traditional items and get out of the weather, but much to our surprise there was a line out the door. Apparently we weren't the only ones who had the idea of checking out a sleepy museum on a rainy day.

We stepped into a tiny tea shop to enjoy a warm-up. The place had no more than a dozen seats on two floors, so we were lucky to get a spot. We took our time sipping our tea: mine a Russian caravan, and Jack's gunpowder.

Eventually it was time to head back to Wissembourg. When we arrived around dinnertime, we found that most restaurants were closed for the holiday, and those that were open were full. The one place I had wanted to check out was shuttered, so it was looking like we were going to stuck eating gyros at the carnival. On the way there I saw a place that looked friendly and generally unoccupied, so we stopped in. It ended up being a bad choice, and everyone else in the world (the three happy beer drinkers excepted) seemed to know not to go there. My tarte flambee crust came out of a cellophane packet. We should have just called it off right then, but we bravely held on. Eventually we got out of there, full but not satisfied, and grumbled our way over to the big finale of the festival: the son et lumiere.

It began to rain. We hung around with all the other chumps under soggy skies and damp umbrellas for the thing to start. The organizers seemed to be waiting for a break in the weather to begin, so we were tortured with almost an entire album of Phil Collins live. It did let up a bit at one point, so they called in the choir, who were to perform on a stage set up over a branch of the Lauter. Naturally it began coming down again as they got ready, and I thought for sure someone was going to get electrocuted.

And then...the son! The lumiere! There was music flowing from the speakers all around us as lights danced on the buildings and fireworks lit the sky. I didn't even think you could do fireworks in the rain--why on earth do they put it off in the US on account of weather? Perhaps because during the summer it's frequently accompanied by lightning. But no matter...My mood was rapidly improving, although I did manage to fire off a sarcastic comment to Jack instructing him to take some pictures of fireworks. He always does this, and they always turn out terribly. But he dutifully complied, and he got some lovely shots.

And so the Wissembourg portion of our journey came to a close with a bang, if I may be permitted to use the cliche.

Sunday we spent mostly driving around the Vosges mountains in the rain. The Vosges are similar to the Appalachians, in that they are tree-covered and relatively short when compared to the Rockies and Alps and so forth. I think the highest altitude we attained was something like 800 meters.

Before we set out on the Michelin-suggested driving tour, we went to look for the spot where the Gutlouthof used to stand. Driving south for about 2 km, we saw nothing but knee-high corn. Not even a slight depression in the earth that would indicate settling of the soil over time in the spot where a building with a basement once stood. The only features of the area that suggested a different use were a short tree-lined patch of paving off the main road where a smaller road or driveway might have once been, and a small underpass that went under the train tracks, totally unnecessary today because a nearby road goes over the rails.

Once we got on our driving tour we quickly discovered that Michelin, while having fine maps, is not so good at directions. The guidebook will say something like "turn right after you enter town", not specifying the street name, the closest address, whether it's the first turn or the third. I think they're deliberately vague to get you out of your car to ask directions and talk to the local populace, but when you're antisocial you don't do those sorts of things unless you're totally lost beyond redemption. And we always knew where we were, just not how to get where we were going.

Our first stop was a short hike off the road to a spot overlooking Wissembourg. Brimming with confidence as usual, I failed to note which path we were supposed to take when we left the car. So we wound up and up, and it began to sprinkle on us. Then it began to rain. Then pour. We took shelter under a patch of scrubby pines planted in rows. We kept deciding that the tree a few feet away would be an improvement over the current one, but then it turned out to be the same. We kept moving, looking for that illusory dry spot. Eventually the rain let up a bit, and we headed back down, damp and chilled.

Once in the car we cranked up the heat and lit out for our next destination. We missed our turn due to the aforementioned ambiguousness, then I tried to get us back on track at the next town without turning around, and then all the roads looked too narrow to possibly be the way forward. We went from Wingen to Petit Wingen to Wingen and finally back to Petit Wingen. Every town had a helpful map if you bothered to park and look at it, which we eventually did, and the road we were supposed to go on was one of the ones that looked like it would just dead-end in someone's driveway. Eventually we got to where we were going, but ended up skipping a chunk of the tour and one of the stops we were hoping to see: a ruined castle. The place we ended up at turned out not to be a town, but a restaurant/hotel complex on a mountaintop.

As we were cranky and hungry by this point, we decided to stop for lunch. We parked and discovered that the castle we were trying to get to was visible in the distance, seemingly miles away. The restaurant was homey and family-oriented. The waitress warned me against the lasagna, noting that it took a long time to cook, so I ordered what turned out to be an extremely bland pasta with vegetables dish. Jack got trout in cream sauce, one of the Alsatian seasonal specialties, which was heavenly. We ordered a light and refreshing bottle of local hard cider to accompany it.

I was suffering a bit of despondency after lunch, but we decided to brave the intermittent rain squalls to hike in the general direction of the Chateau Fleckenstein ruins. Our path was littered with interpretive displays about how charcoal was made back in the day. The area was actually closer than it appeared, and we got to the base of the promontory on which the ruins were built, paid our admission and were given free rein to clamber about on the site. It was a bit cheesy, as they had added a number of things for the kids, such as spooky sounds and lights in a staircase carved through the rock that was referred to as the "troglodyte passage", but interesting nonetheless. Someday I hope to receive an in-depth explanation of why in the heck people built these huge fortresses high up on rock outcroppings, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Sure, they would be extremely difficult to capture, but what would you be protecting other than the small band of people living inside the walls? You could keep an eye out for troops approaching from any direction, but who would you notify? As far as the eye could see were trees and more trees. Standing on top of the ruins you could see the hotel/restaurant where we ate in one direction and an RV camp in another, but no towns, farms, or other signs of life in the rolling foothills.

After we had gotten our fill of the chateau, we returned to the car. We walked back by a muddy, rutted road that steeply climbed the hillside, and as we walked up it we realized this is the way we would have driven had we followed the directions correctly. No thank you.

Since we were finally going the right way, we continued on with the driving tour. We saw more Alsatian charm, vestiges of the Maginot Line (a dismal failure of French military defenses in WWII), and plenty of roadside memorials to war dead, since heavy fighting occurred in the area a number of times.

We detoured from the tour to visit Keffenach and Drachenbronn, the two towns where the Flicks came from before arriving in Altenstadt. Keffenach was a sleepy town with two churches and absolutely no commerce, and one small boy with enough bravery to taunt the strangers. Since there's no conceivable reason for tourists to stop there, I can only imagine that we were being watched by more than one set of eyes behind curtains.

Drachenbronn, where Jack's earliest-identified ancestor was from, was also home to a legend about a dragon coming down from the mountains and drinking water from the town fountain. We parked and walked from one edge of town to the other, greeted the local populace out for their early evening constitutionals, and talked to a politician from a nearby town who was running in the regional elections and putting up signs. He was a pretty young guy and sported a Donegal beard, so we decided we would vote for him. We visited the graveyard, bordered on one side by curious goats.

We returned to Wissembourg for our evening's repast, and the festival was in full swing. An all-accordion band was entertaining people in the square. After dumping our belongings we were lured back down to the plaza by the smell of grilling meats. We picked ourselves up a large sausage sandwich and a beer to share. Funny thing is, when your French pronunciation is bad, they switch over to German. If you're not French, then naturally you're German, right? So Jack ordered his sausage, and the guy said "mit?" meaning "with". Moutarde, what else? After we sat down to eat, we saw people walking around with these delicious-looking biscuity things with a side of apple sauce. Dampfnudel: some kind of biscuit dough that is shallow-fried in butter to arrive at a browned and crisp crust on both sides. They were 2 for €3, but for some reason the lady gave us 3. We must've looked emaciated to her pleasantly plump self. It came with a side of "compote" made of cooked apples. A satisfying meal indeed.