Author: bissin0451

What a perfect day!  Clear and cool when we woke and warming when we left the villa for the market at Eygalieres–my second favorite market, right behind St. Remy. On the way here from St. Remy we had beautiful views of the Alpilles, with olive groves, green valleys and vineyards and occasional restored villas.  The town is perched on the summit of a small hill.  The market begins as the very base of the hill and and continues through the streets to the right and the left as well as up toward the summit of the hill.

Both the market and the town are colorful, quiet and lovely.  Buildings are typically made of stone with flowers softening the facade–wisteria is gorgeous here at this time of year.  I have only seen round zucchini (courgettes ronde) here in Provence.

We tasted several sausages and chose the one with fig to bring home.  Also purchased beautiful material and a tablecloth to fit our card tables.  After we had been through the market we had some time before our lunch reservation so we stopped at one of our favorite wineries.

Chateau Romanin is just outside of San Remy.  Its wine cellar is built into a mountain and its back wall is the mountain.  Architecturally the cellar resembles a cathedral.  In short the winery is quite special.  According to perfectlyprovence.com  this is a place where wine, religion and mysticism have intersected for centuries. It has a colorful history; the estate has been occupied at any one time by Greeks, Gauls, Romans, Moors and templars.  The 13th century ruined castle was last inhabited by templars.  The present owners built the current winery in the 1980s and continue many of the practices used in ancient times, in today’s terms biodynamics and agronomy.  They pick the grapes by hand  use the sun and the moon to guide their viniculture decisions, using only manure and plant/mineral-based preparations–no herbicides or other chemicals.  And they use agronomic techniques that allow the wine to express its terroir.  It is a modern winery that respects its history, the environment and the wine itself.

We bought some wine here and headed to our 1PM reservation at Oustau de Baumaniere.  Nestled below the rock formations of Les Baux, this Michelin 2 star restaurant is fabulous.

This final photo is of dessert.  The presentation of the thinly sliced and candied orange, lemon, and grapefruit slices paired with the dessert with similar flavors was typical of the entire meal. We sat outside on the patio and feasted on at least 7 courses from 1 to 5.  It was amazing and we counted it as both lunch and dinner.  Filled with people watching, bird watching, great conversation with great friends, it was a gastronomical delight!

 

The Aix market is large and Provencal–sells everything!  We walked down Cours de Mirabeau, the main street there, in the beautiful spring weather where the clothing part of the market stretched for blocks.  Clay bought a fine panama hat and he and Allan tasted and bought sardines.

After lunch we walked through the old town and about 30 minutes up Avenue Paul Cezanne to his atelier near the top of a steep hill.  He bought a 7000 square meter piece of property for 2000 franks with his inheritance from his mother and built this home and studio.  At the time it was built, the property was unused fields from farming.  Now it is a wood of native plants and trees filled with birdsong.  The interior of the atelier is quite large with a tremendous north facing window, no east and west windows and the ability to shutter the south windows for the perfect light.  The floor is a soft natural wood

instead of the bright terra cotta floors in the rest of the house and the walls are painted a color that he chose–a perfect background of mostly gray blue.  On shelves along the wall are displayed all of the bottles, vases, skulls and other items he used in his many still life paintings.  We could not see Montagne Sainte-Victoire, which he painted over sixty times.  He walked up the hill a bit further with his easel to have the view we see in his series of oil paintings. Seeing this beautiful property and atelier was well worth the hike.

We ubered to the car and returned to St. Remy for an “every person for him/her self” dinner at the villa and turned in early.

Almost every village in Provence has a market day. Some are provencal markets with prepared foods and produce as well as provencal goods like linens, clothing, and lavender. Others are only farmer’s produce markets.

This morning we enjoyed the Saint Remy market.  The entire market wraps around the square at the Hotel de Ville (city government), winds through the small streets and expands to the parking lot across the street.  First, we checked out the whole scene. Then, we revisited our favorite spots–Allan bought green olives in chopped garlic, visited with”the duck guy” and bought a can of duck confit for four that “the duck guy” had preserved.  I visited with Frank, “the watercolor painter” but will wait to purchase.  And, of course, we had a mission.  Clay has an excellent recipe for oyster stew and our mission was to secure all of the ingredients.  Clay visited “his oyster guy” who shucked him four dozen oysters; Connie found celery and onions; Allan and I found milk and parsley.  Clay brought pastis  in a small bottle from home and he and Connie went to the InterMarche (big grocery store) for flour.

After the market, we relaxed, read, napped and enjoyed our lovely villa with the birds singing through the open windows.

Allan and I had a late lunch across the street at Le Bistro des Alpilles and returned to the villa for Allan to help Clay prepare the Oyster Stew which was delicious!  Our feast tonight also included artichokes and a lovely bottle of Clos de Calliou wine.

Chef Claude’s quote for the day: “the parsley on oyster stew is like the nutmeg on milk punch”

 

 

I woke to the mistral roaring again this morning and walked down from the third floor  (elevator is still broken) to see our pine trees dancing in the wind.  A still photo can’t capture the movement but the winds blow in long and short gusts and cause these big trees to sway and bend like tall, graceful ballerinas.

 

Our ultimate goal today was to visit Le Clos du Caillou Winery.  In case you are wondering a “clos” is a walled enclosure and this winery is surrounded by a 3 foot stone wall.  To keep from arriving while the proprietors were at lunch, we decided to detour to the small town of Châteauneuf-du-Pape–somewhere near the center of the wine region with the same name.  This region has some of the highest quality and most expensive wines in Provence, largely due to the favorable terroir.  For those of you unfamiliar with this term, terroir encompasses important natural conditions including: the soil, altitude, elevation, exposure to the sun, temperature range, access to water, trees, types of rock on top of the soil as well as in the soil and microclimate for each vineyard.  One of the rules of the AOC (see below) is that modification of the natural terroir is very tightly controlled since the quality and appeal of wine is based on the vineyard’s terroir.  Rocky soil as a terroir component yields some of the best grapes because the vines roots have to grow strong and deep to survive, the rocky soil provides needed drainage and the rocks on the surface hold the strong sunlight to warm the vines at night.

The Appellation d’Origine Controlee (AOC) system regulates food (including cheese), wine and other agricultural products (like olives), manages strict, specific appellation characteristics that help to guide the consumer, promotes minimum levels of quality and energizes growers into producing better wines. In accordance with the AOC, a vineyard in the Châteauneuf-du-Pape region can only grow 18 different grapes. Most Châteauneuf-du-Pape wines are red blends dominated by Grenache.

Sorry to carry on about terroir and AOC but these are two French concepts that are very important to the quality of their agricultural products.  Anyway, we were hungry and it was about lunchtime so we went to Le Verger des Papes, a restaurant Clay knew with a view of the Rhone valley–we could actually see the castle at Avignon.  As in all good French restaurants a three course meal is perfectly proportioned.  I had the special which was a pate of zucchini, sliced duck breast with potatoes and a dessert with strawberries covered in mascarpone whipped cream and topped with strawberry sorbet. And, of course we shared a bottle of wine.

The views from this restaurant were spectacular.  Counterclockwise from the left are Allan and the Alpilles Mountains, the Rhone River and Avignon, the Rhone River Valley and me in the restaurant courtyard below the remains of the castle at Châteauneuf-du-Pape. The castle was destroyed during the war by the Allies because the Germans were storing ammunition there.

After lunch, Clay drove us along small back roads, through rolling vineyards, and cherry orchards in bloom to his favorite winery in Provence, Le Clos du Calliou.  Franciose, who
speaks only French, was behind the counter and guided us through the tasting of wines from the region.  Clay chose two of our favorites and we bought some to enjoy for happy hour at the villa.

We loaded the wine into the car and because it was relatively early, took off for Vaison-La-Romaine.  The medieval city, high on a cliff on the banks of the river Ouvèz, has been inhabited since the Bronze Age in the fourth century BCE. At that time a Celtic tribe, the Vocontii or Voconces called the village home. The city, of course, has been pillaged and plundered by many over time and now is maintained for tourists interested in Roman civilizations.  After crossing a bridge from the 1st century AD, we didn’t get too far in our visit since the climb was so steep.  The clock tower sits on the old city wall and is a good landmark to identify Vaison. We returned across the bridge to our car and after adjusting the GPS system, Clay drove us home.  Dinner was “eat what is here” and we all had different light meals, visited for an hour or so and called it a night. BTW, the mistral blew itself out of St. Remy about 9:00 PM.

The mistral has arrived in St. Remy.  It is a cold northwesterly wind that accelerates as it passes through the Rhone Valley on its way to the Gulf of Lion in the Mediterranean.  We have had 20-30 mph winds all of today and expect the same tomorrow.  As I write this, the wind is blowing across the chimney I’m sitting in front of and it sounds like a hurricane.

Our first stop on the way from St. Remy to Les Baux was Moulin Castelas (Huile D’Olive De La Valle Des Baux de Provence). Today, Domaine Castelas produces olives on 110 acres of Appellation d’Origine Protégée groves in the Vallée des Baux de Provence. We have been to this olive grove and mill (actually their excellent gift shop) every time we’ve come to Provence.

We felt the cold wind whenever we were outside but it was very strong up on the mountain where we walked around Les Baux. It took us about 10 cold minutes with the wind swirling around us to get to the Carriere de Lumiere event.  Always one of the highlights of our trip, this will not be the last time (even this week) that we see this amazing show.  Be sure to check out information on their website (click on the link above)–it’ll give you an idea of the size of this venue and the amazing show.  This year the show is titled Van Gogh, Starry Night.  Vincent Van Gogh painted more than 2000 paintings in the last ten years of his life. He is one of my favorite painters and I hope to be inspired, as he was, by the warm and bright colors of Provence. The digital immersion experience of paintings, projected onto the 15 meter high walls, floors and the ceiling of the limestone cave

are sometimes set to life (crows flying, water rippling, flower petals from almond trees floating in the breeze) by these amazing digital artists and are accompanied by different genres of music including Janis Joplin singing “Kozmic Blues”, several operas and classical concertos, and Nina Simone singing “Don’t let me be misunderstood.”

I nearly cried as the painting of his entry to the Asylum near Saint Remy appeared with the song that begins,”I’m just a man whose intentions are good.  Oh, Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood.”  That song played while selected paintings that he completed during his time in St. Remy lit up the cave walls.  He was such a tortured soul and it certainly shows in his self portraits.  What a beautiful experience!

We left the limestone parking lot we found for the Van Gogh event and drove closer to the small medieval village of Les Baux–everything at Les Baux is either uphill or downhill but we have found lunch spots like Varieties (our spot for today) that we repeatedly enjoy.  And, a little shopping is always in order–Allan bought some soap for the shower, Connie found truffle powder, Clay purchased good balsamic vinegar, and I left with a very soft and tightly woven shawl (wore it all day)!`

Taking the long way home from St. Remy, we drove through nearby Mouries  (the leading olive oil producer in France) and twisted and turned on the loopy mountain roads of the national park between Les Baux and St. Remy. Our final stop for the day was at La Vallongue wine and olive estate.  This place, at the very foot of the Alpilles Mountains was quite manicured and well-kept with a full tasting room and gift shop.

We tasted a few of their featured wines and purchased a couple of bottles to share during cocktail hour.  Dinner was at home and we enjoyed the quiet company and lively conversation with the mistral roaring in the background.

Just another day in Paradise!

The countryside between Paris and Avignon that we had expected to see was blanketed, no, smothered in fog, only about 10-20 yards beyond the train tracks were visible for the first hour.   As soon as the sun was up and the day had begun, as it does in France, around 9…the fog cleared, the temperature seemed to immediately rise by 10 degrees and we could see–it was a beautiful train ride–green, very green fields, villages surrounding a church steeple reaching for the sky and small forests with early spring flowering trees.  Further along we observed a long row of huge still windmills waiting for the mistral winds and small herds of white cattle dotting the green fields.  In the villages the houses are made of light yellow ochre limestone and have terra-cotta roofs.  Against the green of the fields, it is a beautiful sight.

Connie rented a car in Avignon and Clay drove the four of us to our home for the next three weeks in Saint-Remy-de-Provence.   We are staying in a four bedroom, 5 bath villa with a two bedroom attached apartment, expansive grounds and a pool–but it is still too cool to swim. Allan and I are on the third floor and until Monday the elevator is broken so we get our exercise several times each day.

This first day and a half in Saint Remy we have rested in the perfect weather (42 at sunrise, rising to 75 by Noon, back down to 42 by sunset with 25% humidity), savored the daily baguette and morning Sacristains (almond pastry only available in St. Remy), and read with only the sound of birds singing and the smell of lavender just outside the door.

As  much as we are enjoying this peace and quiet, we expect to be over our jet lag and ready to roll tomorrow.  Bonsoir!!

 

After the free weekend, students gave their final presentations to the students, faculty and company representatives.  The presentations were in the style of poster competitions at conferences.  Each of the four stages in DMAIC that had previously been summarized in a slide were attached to a board.  For about two hours, anyone could ask each group about their project and the students spent about 10 minutes explaining from problem definition to solution control/verification.  We were all proud of their successes and the companies were pleased with the student work.

After the presentations, LuAnn, Joe and I decided to visit Rothenburg ob der Tauber, a picturesque medieval town south of Schweinfurt.

The wall still encloses the city and there is a path along the top with gorgeous views.  

We had a delicious dinner with the ideal old German ambiance at the Hotel Reichkuchenmeister and a good time wandering the cobblestone streets.

Tuesday I spent packing and resting.  I had my last German meal at the restaurant I’ve been eyeing since I arrived in Schweinfurt, Brauhas am Markt.  I sat outside in the cool (60 degrees) evening air and had a pilsner beer, a good dinner salad and schnitzel with fried potatoes.  Following my meal I walked to the cafe where I’ve had before the best apple strudel ever!  It was a fine ending to my visit.

I mostly took it easy on this final day of my free weekend, reading, writing and resting.  At Noon I was hungry so I headed to town for a quick bite of spaghetti with bolognese sauce and a salad.  From there I wandered through the parts of Schweinfurt that I hadn’t yet seen.  I came upon a sign that told how the park in front of me was once a cemetery associated with a Carmelite Monastery.  The cemetery was enclosed by the wall around the city that was re-constructed in the late 1500s.  Sometime after 1800 the cemetery became a park across the highway with views of the river.  

The Museum Georg Schäfer specializes in 19th-century paintings by artists from German-speaking countries.  I had not heard of the artists, but I did enjoy much of the art and the ambiance in the quiet and peaceful museum.  Schweinfurt was destroyed and rebuilt many times since its first known existence in the 800s.  Today it is known for its metal industry, especially ball bearing plants and bicycle manufacturing; some of the companies with manufacturing here include Kugelfischer AG, ZF Sachs AG, Bosch Rexroth and SKF. The pigment Schweinfurt Green (also known as Paris Green) is manufactured here. SRAM Corporation hosts the world’s largest development center of the bicycle industry in Schweinfurt.  Our program worked with Bosch and ZF among others.

I never made it down to the river, but it is, of course, an attraction in itself.  Our students spent sunsets with footballs and frisbees in park-like areas along the Main River.

I had an early dinner with Dr. Valenzuela and his wife Jackie at a Mexican restaurant, Chumpas.  It is the only Mexican restaurant I have ever been to where they asked if we had reservations!

I spent today in Bayreuth, larger than Bad Kissingen, Sommerhausen and Winterhausen. When I exited the train station, I took off toward the city center and walked along cobblestone streets with flowers in the median, past a moving stream to Maximillianstrasse.

I ended up in the middle of a street party or carnival or just a fun celebration, not meant for tourists.  There were food and beer booths, shopping booths, carnival rides for children, a dunking booth, water features for children, a foosball game for the adults (they are everywhere in Germany) and a stage with local performers.

It may have been a regular occurrence or it may have been especially focused on a charity of some sort.  Everything was in German.

After walking through the carnival, grabbing a bratwurst sandwich for lunch, and walking back, I headed for the Franz Liszt Museum.  He was a composer (among other things) that I remember from my days taking piano lessons.  I never made it to the museum because I saw an interesting building to my left and upon further exploration found it to be a rococo (exuberantly decorated) opera house that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  Margravine Wilhelmina had it built upon her daughter’s engagement to provide the appropriate ambiance for theater and music concerts as well as formal balls and banquets.  The design was meant to rival the most beautiful opera houses in Europe and it is the only remaining large Baroque opera house still standing.  I sat through what I’m sure was a good story about the house, but it was in German and I didn’t even understand one word.

Besides this lavish opera house in Bayreuth, Richard Wagner designed his own relatively simple one, the Festival Theater, made almost entirely of wood, on a plot of land called Green Hill that was donated by the town council.  He built his for the aesthetics of the music not the decor.  I followed my google map the 5 km past the train station through an old stately neighborhood to Green Hill.  It turns out that no one can visit inside the opera house in summer because of rehearsals there.  One must return in October.  But, I was back in my element again…a beautiful park-like setting with old growth trees, bushes and flowers clearly well-maintained.  I found one of many benches across from an old cherry tree and sat still.  I wish I had brought my big heavy lens.  I was in the perfect spot to learn the German birds–woodpeckers, jays, thrushes, warblers, a nuthatch and many others.  After several hours in the cool breezy park, I returned to the train station and eventually back to Schweinfurt.

Just a note from Wikipedia about Wagner…An amazing composer, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works.  He revolutionized opera through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk (“total work of art”), by which he sought to synthesize the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama. He was, unfortunately, a philanderer throughout his life and seemingly always in debt. There is much discussion of his purported racism and connection to the Nazi party.  He has written essays that do support anti-semitism and the removal of Jews from the music scene in Germany.

I started the weekend with a list of possible places to visit.  My friend, Susan Good, suggested Bad Kissingen, her grandmother’s home town. Our guide to Berlin suggested Sommerhausen, Bayreuth, Rotherburg ob der Tauber and the students suggested Nuremberg and Wurzburg.  I researched all of them and put them in order by my preference in case I didn’t have time to visit them all.  On Friday I bought my all day pass at the Schweinfurt train station and found the train to Winterhausen (no station in Somerhausen).  Sommerhausen and Winterhausen used to be one town, separated by the Main River, named Ahausen.  The settlers distinguished their respective villages by their patron saints–St. Bartholomew and St. Nicholas. Since St. Bartholomew’s patronal festival was in summer and St. Nicholas’ was in winter, the names became Sommerhausen and Winterhausen.

The train stopped in Winterhausen at what used to be the station and is now a residence.  I stepped out of the train onto a platform to find that I had no cell service…so picture this…I’m by myself in my lavender hat with a back pack; a camera, binoculars and my cell phone around my neck; no physical map; and I cannot communicate in German.  I began walking toward the church bells that ring every quarter hour until I saw a sign pointing across a highway bridge toward Sommerhausen.  I followed the highway across the river and the first street on the other side of the bridge led me to Sommerhausen.  Phew!

This area is very simply beautiful.  It has been wine country for centuries so the hills beyond the town are covered in vineyards and there are wine shops and wine bars scattered in the town.  The medieval wall surrounding Summerhausen has been very well preserved.  It is a romantic old village with (still) occupied towers and gates (parts of the wall). The blue tower (named for its blue tile roof) was once a jail and is now an artist’s residence.

I followed a walking tour from the tourist office around and through the village and also did some wandering on my own.  Behind every gate (and the gates are of all shapes and sizes) or fence, I found a garden and plenty of pollinators.  Most of the gardens grow vegetables and some flowers, but some are all flowers, some all roses, and some only vegetables.

Along one street was a small shelf with a half dozen plastic containers of cherries, an open box with “frie” above it and a box for euros.  I tried one cherry, found it quite sweet and good, and bought a container, putting my 2,5 euros in the box. Oh, for the simple joy of trusting your neighbor!

There are many artist galleries here and I stopped in some to visit–no room to bring home souvenirs.  The art is unique, not the kind that looks made for tourists.  In addition to visual artists, musicians and writers have also settled in the small picturesque town.  I could go on and on about the pleasantries in this village…

I walked a few meters along the river, but this side of the river is too close to the noisy highway so I crossed the highway bridge again and followed a bike path on the Winterhausen side of the Main River.  I heard many birds, but could only identify by sight Egyptian geese, magpies and a delicate coal tit (much like our chickadee).  As I walked along the path, I thought about birding by ear and realized it is just as difficult to understand the German birds as to understand the German people–takes practice!  For most of my walk out from Winterhausen I could not see the river except for where there was a well-worn path which I took down to the water’s edge.  As I walked I enjoyed the sound of the wind rustling the leaves in the old-growth trees along the river. I was at peace.  When the path reached the highway, I turned around and followed a different path to Winterhasen, between fields and an old apple orchard with a few young plum trees.  I saw a field of Swiss chard, a field of clearly non-GMO wheat (only a foot high), and another field of a different grain that I couldn’t identify.

I re-traced my steps to the train station where there was a poster of departure times to Wurzburg and I was minutes away from the next train.  I climbed on at the platform, gratefully sat in what felt like a luxurious seat, and ate my delicious cherries.