Tooer day Frayntz

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I admit it, I am a fan of Bob Roll and his hilarious commentary on the VS. channel's coverage of the Tour de France cycling race every year. 😊 As I understand it, he butchers the pronunciation of the name of the race on purpose, well beyond the normal butchery of French that Americans normally perpetrate. But I digress.

I'm now officially writing these entries in whatever sequence I feel like. 😊

Today we set off on a Tour de France!! Our wonderful host family made reservations for dinner at everyone's favorite Flammkuchen restaurant in the Alsace/Elsaß region of France, but didn't stop there. In the morning, we loaded up the (adorable) SEAT Alhambra* minivan and headed for something called Fleckenstein, which doesn't sound very French, which is how things are throughout the Alsace. This area has changed hands between Germany and France many times in its history and retains elements of both cultures and languages; it's as if the residents were hedging their bets. One of my favorite details is that the rather large city of Strasbourg, in France, is identified by its German spelling, "Straßburg", on all the signs on the Autobahn (freeways in Germany). It's spelled the French way on French roads. Same city. I wonder how many non-French non-German visitors get mixed up by that?

We didn't know anything else about Fleckenstein, but who cares? It's France!

Fleckenstein, it turns out, is an amazing ruin of an amazing castle, much of which was literally carved into a craggy bit of rock overlooking the Alsace. It's everything I learned in school about a castle being: it has a panoramic view of its surroundings and a lot of really creative architecture to provide layers of protection for its residents, and it evolved over hundreds of years as military and construction technologies improved.

As an interesting side note, German has two different words for things we often in English call "castles". A Burg is a defensive, functional castle, while a Schloß is more like a decorative, residential one. In English we might use "palace" for Schloß, but we just as often use "castle". In German things are either one or the other, pretty much, I think.

Neuschwanstein in Bavaria is a Schloß: no defensive features at all other than being on a little mountain crag. Linderhof in Bavaria is a Schloß. Fleckenstein is definitely a no-frills, hard-core Burg. Caerffili in Wales is a Burg. Burgs are not sexy. They're likely to be in ruins, I think, and less likely to be overrun by busloads of guided tourists. I don't think there's near as much money to be made in refurbishing a Burg to (any of) its contemporary state(s) and/or selling trinkets of it. One guess which kind is my favorite. 😊

On the way down from, yes I did climb to the very top of the castle at the very top of the mountain, we had to take a flight of worn, rutted medieval stairs through the center of the castle in literally complete darkness, feeling our way with our toes. LG liked this even less than I did, but she held up bravely and we both survived our ordeal. She says "mid-evil" stairs really are evil.

In the Parkplatz (parking lot) after our visit, our hosts surprised us with yet another special treat: an afternoon snack of Amerikaners, which are cake-like cookies! This was only fair, as LG had been giving our "Hamburger" friends a bad time all week. We ate like cannibals and enjoyed ourselves immensely.

Both before and after Fleckenstein, we hopped back and forth over the border collecting photos of many border signs in a variety of languages.

We had a bit of time to kill before dinner, so stopped in yet another incredibly charming little town, this time Wissembourg, still in the Alsace. It's all flowery and, well, incredibly charming.

Dinner was amazingly tasty, and I already got to tell the story of Laura being grateful in three languages. I also ordered my beverage in French and got what I ordered, so either I did it correctly or someone translated for the waiter while I wasn't looking. It continues to amaze me how much more readily I remember French than any other language I've ever studied (which is not to say any of them particularly well). My friend's mother asked me how I knew French, and I answered her in a weird pidgin of what French I could remember along with what German I could remember and a little English to hold it all together. I think she got it.

This was a fun day, and for me it was a wonderful expansion upon the quick Flammkuchen trip we took here three years ago. Vive l'Elsaß!! <-- that's a little French/German mashup humor there, get it?

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* Correction: I originally mis-identified the mystery vehicle as a Czech Škoda, but further logo investigation showed it to be a SEAT.

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Photos

Allemagne
Wait, WHAT country are we in now?!

Cannibalism!!
LG and I nom on Amerikaners.

Wissembourg
Oh, the charm. So much charm.