Blogs from Alsace, France, Europe - page 25

We arrived in Niedermorschwihr by car from Frankenthal. I realised on the way that we were actually one day earlier than planned - how did I do that? It dawned on me as I was looking at the calendar in my PDA/GPS and said to Lorenza, "you know it is Wednesday today". Sometimes travelling can stop your brain working properly? It was great to be back in the land of cigognes, choucroute and Riesling. We were so happy to be driving from Strasbourg along the main highway in the direction of Colmar. The Vosges mountains to our right, with vineyards and villages in the foreground and the Alsace plain to our left full of maize, cabbage and other produce. Then we saw Mount Sainte Odile in the distance and Haut-Kœnigsbourg was clearly visible in the summer ... read more

Bonjour, merci, jus d'orange (Good day, thankyou, orange juice - these are the only French words I know) from France, where we have had a short side trip from the UK to visit the lovely Susie (Jen's cousin) and her partner Marc, in their hometown of Village Neuf in the region of Alsace. From London we actually flew to Zurich, Switzerland. Here we had our first incident of lost luggage at the airport carousel. We figured this wasn't such a bad thing, with the Swiss renowned for their efficiency and timeliness in addressing such matters. Imagine if this had happened in India, we chuckled to ourselves. And yes, the whole process was typically Swiss - we walked straight to the help desk, where there was no queue, wrote down our address for the night and were ... read more

It seems as though some of the best things in life present themselves when you are not looking for it. In my case, is rings true. I have never really been a beer guru, hand me a cold Coors and I am good to go! However, when we went to the brewry in France, it seems as though that changed with the blink of an eye. My favorite beer was there, just waiting for me to find it. :) We began the day with a visit to the Fois Gras place. I am not the kind that has a stomach of steel when it comes to unusual food, so the thought of it kinda gave me a funny feeling to being with. I had tried Fois Gras once before at work, and with the goose fat ... read more

Today our first stop was at the foie gras factory which was very interesting because they explained to us how they process and package geese and duck livers. I was amazed how they did everything by hand and had no machines that packages and labeled everything. The gentleman that gave us the tour was very different from some of the other people that gave us tours such as Christian. This man worked in retail and realized that retail wasn't his passion and he loved foie gras and there just happened to be a opportunity that opened up for him to take over a company that made it and he did. He did it because it was his passion much like Christian but this man didn't grow up making it he just started because he loved it. ... read more

Today we visited a foie gras factory! The goose and duck foie gras was an experience. I enjoyed the goose much more than the duck. The wine that accompained it went perfect with it. In New York foie gras can not be served because the geese are force fed to make their livers bigger. The owner of the Foie Gras du Ried mentioned that the farmers he gets his geese from have a very good relationship with them. They feed the geese, then wait 30mins to an hour and feed them again and this continues throughout the day. While some of the group toured a brewery, the rest of us stayed in Strasbourg to do some shopping. First we sat at a little cafe and had coffee because it was too early to have lunch. After, ... read more