It Had To Happen

Well, I suppose it didn't HAVE to happen, but it did, and there's not a whole hell of a lot we can do about it now.  Gwynneth sent us into the heart of Kaysersburg without a care in the world. In her world of digitized navigation the fact that the streets she directed us to went from two lanes to less than one in the space of a block was of no concern whatsoever.  And since the narrowing occurred as a sharp left turn was required was pfffthd to her.  For us however it meant leaving a good bit of our car's paint on the side of a house.  Oops!  How the hell did that house get in the way???
So we spent the better part of the day wandering aimlessly - that is from cafe to cafe for coffee, then wine, and lunch - through Kaysersburg, which we all agreed is just block after block of fucking cuteness (and that IS a quote).  We're ruined for cuteness now, in fact, so it's a good thing we're heading home soon.
Champagne had been planned for the day since it's Dad's birthday, but we all agreed three hours was too long a drive just to drink bubbly in a cave.  So after Kaysersburg and a quick mountain route over to Munster to see cheese making (erp), we returned to Kienzheim, between Kaysersburg and Riquewihr, for another wine tasting/degustation. I.e., another erp.  Another ridiculously cute village complete with ancient walls and cobbled streets and charming squares with umbrella'd tables and fountains and giant pots of breathtaking fleurs.  [And astonishingly, we have seen exactly two other Americans the entire time we've been in Alsace, and I'm actually not sure they were American.] A perfect afternoon, complete with late light, warm breeze, and delicious wine.
We came home for take out pizza - I know, but it just seemed like the right thing to do at the time - and a bottle of crémant (the local version of champagne) to celebrate Dad's 81st, and then dragged ourselves to the winstub across the street for molten chocolate cake and coffee ice cream.  And, um, more wine.  What can I say?  We were celebrating!  As you know, Dad, now better known as Lurch, enjoys celebrating his birthday almost as much as say, putting his hand down a disposal.  So you can imagine his response when our winstub owner followed us out the door to present him with a celebratory bottle of wine to take home with us.  He at least managed a thank you while in hearing distance, but we'd gotten no further than across the street when he started in with the "Jesus Christ. What the hell am I going to do with another bottle of wine?  I already have a bottle of scotch to fit in my suitcase, I can't drink another damn bottle of wine, how the hell..." You can just hear it, can't you?  Happy birthday, Dad - I know it's hard to take, but we love you, and every now and then we're going to do nice things for you.  And guess what? You're going to have to just smile and say thank you.
Oxoxo!

Pissing, Pissing Down Rain

It did stop eventually, so I'm definitely not whingeing.  But the waiter from breakfast yesterday was right: it was going to rain today, it did rain today, and if he continues to be right it will rain tomorrow too.  But we don't care: it stopped now and then, and when it started again we always managed to find a covered cafe with plenty of coffee, biere or wine for occupying us until it stopped again.

We spent the day in Colmar, a Boulder-sized town just south of here known for its architecture (charmant), and its Petit Venise - a lovely little quartier complete with gondolas in the canal and markets and churches and yes, cafés with everything you could ever ask for when sheltering from the pissing down rain.

On our way to Colmar we decided to go to a supermarket called Cora for a few more umbrellas (it really was raining that hard).  As usual Peter navigated and I drove, which meant that our in dash navigator, who we've named Gwynneth (for the English accent and the terrible French pronunciation), gave directions that I overrode and Peter corroborated.  We got there eventually.  And Cora turned out to be a small town in itself - the grocery section alone had an astounding array and range of selections of every single type of food you could ever desire - entire aisles devoted to yogurts, others to cheeses, others to bacon.  You heard me: it was heaven on earth.  Fortunately we'd made coffee, eggs, bacon and pain au chocolat for breakfast at home before we left, so we escaped Cora with just three new umbrellas, paper towels, a sponge and some toilet paper.  Set for life.

As we came back into Riquewihr this afternoon we decided it was time for a good old fashioned wine tasting, and chose  a degustation menu complete with the local Pinot blanc, Riesling, Pinot Gris, and Gewürztraminer.  The Riesling won by a mile.  Fortunately we'd also parked next to a local distillier, so after the tasting at the winery we tried the local amber biere next door.  By the time we lurched home to the gîte we were thoroughly primed for our dinner of bread, cheeses, apple, smoked salmon, ham, and yes, more wine. But then the sun had come out, and it was only 7:30.... So after dinner we found a cafe across the way, ordered wine, pastis, and a coffee for dad, split a molten chocolate cake, consulted our green guide for ideas for tomorrow, and watched the shadows grow across the cobbled street. Erp.

A Day in the Clouds

Rain all day, and the breakfast waiter pressed his finger to his lips this morning and said, yes, it will rain for another three days, but hush, say nothing.  And we didn't, just laughed and walked out of the village, found our car, and went on our merry way.  Up the road to a ville plus charmant with a church to die for (literally - the graveyard around it was gorgeous) and then up through all the villages of the Val D'Argent, including St. Marie de Mines, a lovely name for a mining region that began in the 10th century and reached a pinnacle of production in the 16th, and led to the revolte du Canut in the 19th.  (Nothing like a little social upheaval, complete with vast differences in wealth and growing inequality in access to capital to piss people off.). Fascinating tour of a textile museum there too, no really - fascinating - and then a climb to the Haut Koenigsbourg for a long tour of the castle.  Once out of Hunawihr, the village plus charmant, we spent the entire day driving winding mountain roads in impenetrable fog, and either intermittent or spitting rain.  So no long views of valleys below or mountain passes in the distance, and instead glimpses of the next hillside thrown into relief by the depth of the clouds parting among the forest.  It made the walk through the castle - the keep, the grand bastion, the salle d'armes and kitchens - even more of a tour of imagination that it might have been otherwise.  La forêt mysterieuse, the shadows of nooks and crannies, peering out of the cannon keyholes to the misty depths of greenery below, armor and lances, tapestries and stuffed heads on the wall.  Very effective for being transported to another time and place.
Oddly, we went from there to an Ikea-like grocery store in the largest village in the area, where we found everything we could possibly want for lunches and breakfasts over the next few days. Impossibly cheap and fabulous cheeses, croissants and pain au chocolat, fruit, smoked fish, yogurt, ham and yes, bottles of wine.  This left us drooling with hunger and thirst - alas! - and forced to find an appropriate dinner venue.  Complete with local Pinot noir, chilled, light, and just this side of rosé, and lamb ribs, Dijon chicken, and salads.  Fortunately Riquewihr was only a few short kilometers from dinner, and we managed to lurch out of our car park and up through the village walls to our gîte.  The groceries are now put away, we've watched the SNL/Alec Baldwin French lesson skit ("il est HUIT heures!"), the underwear load of laundry is in "lavage" mode, and the half ten bells just rang.  Since we all slept until just after ten this morning, we're thinking it might be wise to set an alarm for tomorrow morning.  Perhaps 9:00?  Nothing radical, but probably a good idea to get on with the day before noon for a change. Or not - we'll see!

By the Pitcher, S'il Vous Plais

Good wine here in Riquewihr.  We learned quickly not to bother with the bottled stuff, and go right for the local pitchers, 500 cl at a time.  Tartes are pizzas, not quiches, with light, thin crusts and simple toppings that are perfect with the dry Rieslings.  A quick walk around the high town walls and through a few of the cobbled streets and suddenly the church bells are ringing ten and breakfast in Crailsheim seems a long ways away and a long time ago.

Avoiding an international incident

Laura, you know that wonderful gift you and Pete gave us last summer after the harvest from your back yard?  The little gem in the plastic bag, beautifully rolled and ready to be inhaled?  And we lost it for a few months, and then found it again?  Well, we apparently lost it yet again, and it showed up here in my toilet bag protecting a small spray bottle of hair product.

It's a good reflection of how frantically I was packing that night before we left: I remember finding the bottle and thinking it was leaky, so it needed a bag.  Found the bag in the Baggie drawer, put the bottle in and packed it, all without noticing there was a very respectable sized joint in the bag as well. Then the bag went through security, into the hold of the plane, through customs and on to Crailsheim all without discovery.  So what the hell do I do with it now, apart from the obvious?

First we thought we would share it with the mayor and First Lady of Worthington, but when push came to lighting up, they backed out.  We had dinner last night with the daughter of good friends of Mom and Dad, along with her 11 year old son, and while she was very convincing about his exposure to the seamier sides of life (he knocked back the Riesling like a seasoned pro), I decided that having corrupted my own daughter at a tender age by promoting her bar tending skills I would avoid adding to the apparently headlong descent of this charming child.  This leaves Peter's good friends Brad and Peggy, who we will visit in Särbrucken this weekend.  But though Peter and Brad went to Burning Man together a few years ago and cannabis was in abundance, Brad refused to partake.  And since my asthma precludes my inhaling anything, this leaves Peter and Peggy.  I will take pictures, I promise.

Meanwhile, we board the train for Stuttgart tomorrow morning, and the goodbyes have been long and difficult.  The generations who experienced the establishment and flourishing of this partnership are aging - and many have already passed of course - and the baton has largely been handed off to younger generations.  The partnership committee here is headed by a woman who was an exchange student in Worthington in the 80s.  The boys who pushed Grandma Tedo's wheelchairs during her later visits to Crailsheim to mark earlier anniversaries are now grown with families of their own.  One of these, Axel Huss, is an architect here now and held the formal opening of his new commercial building on the former McKee Barracks grounds yesterday morning.  He'd grown up around the GIs who lived and worked on those grounds until the barracks closed and the land was sold back to the city in 1994, and in his speech  before the  unveiling if the memorial and the ribbon cutting he spoke of his response the day they announced his highschool would hold the competition for choosing the exchange student that year.  His hand shot up immediately, and his teacher asked him whether he didn't want to ask his parents if it was alright for him to enter the competition. No, no, said Axel. There is no question.  I'm going.

He did, and came home inspired by the shopping malls in America.  He was going to be an architect. And he was going to buy the land at the McKee Barracks, and he was going to build a way to memorialize the Crailsheim Worthington partnership.  So yesterday he had Mom unveil the memorial with him, and cut the ribbon of his new building with him.  And when we got inside, we found an entire lobby wall covered with historic photos of the partnership, starting with Mom as a 12 year old girl with her young parents.   Tedo and Charlie reading stacks of thank you letters from Crailsheim with her.  Mom showing her friends post from her pen pal Kerttu.  Tedo arriving in Crailsheim for her first visit in 1957, her arms full of flowers and my grandfather coming along behind her.  I'd never seen many of them, and was completely overwhelmed by the sight of these dear people in their younger selves.  Old women patted my back and tch'd and agreed it must be very emotional for me, being here for the first time and seeing the work of my ouma.  Which of course restarted the waterworks, and the sputtering laughter, and the forceful feeling that history is made around and because of each of us, not just politicians and activists.

"SOMEone's Got to Protect Her Fucking Toes"

Dad, the white knight of recently removed big toenails, got exercised at breakfast this morning about the incessant social schedule Mom has accepted since we arrived, and with a swish of his sword declared, "This is MADness!" and they decided to forgo the day trip to Dinklesburg with the Worthington contingent and spend time in the spa soaking her feet.  Thus freed as well, Peter and I rented bikes and headed off into the countryside. We returned 6 hours later sunburned and tired and not nearly as hungover as we had been earlier in the day.  So of course, we started in again - took Mom and Dad down the hill to meet Max the bartender and try a few more of his creations.  We have a winner: the Basilico.  Without being nearly as specific as I'd hoped, he tells me it's very easy: gin, lots and lots of basil leaves, mango purée, lime juice, a little pineapple juice, and simple syrup as needed - throw it in a blender and voilá.  The best summer drink since the Bootleg, coming to a patio in the suburbs near you in August.

It Can't Be 1:50 am.

Ok. Negronis are the perfect late night cocktail. They're bitter, yet complex, and they make you look much more sophisticated than you actually are, particularly if that day you have been drinking alcohol in some form or another for 8 hours already, and you have promised everyone you've met some form of succor when they visit you in America. Negronis give a credibility that, as I write this, I realize might just be a, um... illusion. All I know is that my friend, Max, who owns the bar we just shut down and who is the chief mixologist there, seemed to know the minute I demurred on the Panamera, the cocktail du jour, that I wasn't going to get mindlessly shit faced in his bar tonight, I was going to get very intentionally, mindfully, and definitively drunk in his bar tonight, and that there is some dignity in following through on that with such precision. When we kissed our parents goodnight tonight from the bar at the Post Faber, our hotel, and after we'd spent two hours drinking with them and with Harry at Harry's Bar, on Harry, and then were kidnapped by Allen and Janice, the mayor and First Lady of Worthington, we kissed their cheeks and said, "we're going to regret this."  We all knew enough already to know that in the hands of Allen and Janice we were going to see the sweet hours of dawn through red, itchy eyes and heads woven with the webs of poisoned spiders.  We were right, but we haven't slept long enough yet to really know it. Pray for us. 

Christ - I just up snorted my toothpaste. It's bad when you laugh at your own jokes. 

OXOXO

So it begins.

Crailsheim was destroyed in the last week of the Second World War.  It had survived intact until that time, but on February 23rd, 1945, Allied bombers leveled the town and killed 200 of its inhabitants.  As a result it's not a town with typically old architecture or historic landmarks, rather most of the buildings date to the late 1940s or after - charming to me because it still feels so different from any American town I've seen from that era, and unexpectedly poignant to me because I've heard the story of its rebuilding my whole life. Perhaps it's seeing the reception given my mother by the townspeople we've met since this morning. And hearing stories over dinner of our host's roles in developing Crailsheim's reputation as a cultural center for the region, and the ways the sister city relationship with Worthington has gone from rebuilding from nothing to true reciprocity between the towns. Having had absolutely nothing to do with the process of raising Crailsheim from the ashes, or experiencing either hosting a German student or being an exchange student in Crailsheim, I feel a bit of an imposter even in the reflected glory of my mother.  But it's undeniably moving to witness the effects of the relationship she inspired, and her mother acted on, and the very genuine regard and appreciation she's showed here.  They saw a need, and they acted.  And it generated the sustained commitment of two towns to improve themselves and each other, and to learn all they can from each other, and ultimately to build bridges between them whose strength diminishes the possibility of facing each other across enemy lines again.

Ok, that, and there's a freaking amazing yarn store two doors down from our hotel on the platz that's having a half off sale.  I'm going to try to upload a picture of it just because in addition to being shockingly inexpensive, it's also freakishly perfect: all the yarn is laid out in neat, orderly shelves, and not a single ball is out of place or, god forbid, slightly unwound from being handled.  I want it.  I want it all.  I'm regretting the choice of such a small suitcase already.

Naps helped earlier this afternoon, and Peter and I took a long walk after dinner and watched the sun set, but neither is balancing the effects of excellent lagers and hefe, plates of caprese salads that instantly erased the guilt of steaming bowls of spaetzle, and in Peter's case, a haunch of what our server described in sticky English as "Bambi."  Very tasty apparently, but I can't get much else out of
him at this point besides snoring.

Hell Kittens and Teeth Suckers

Traveling economy on a domestic flight provides the most ideal circumstances for experiencing and truly appreciating the astonishing diversity of humanity in America today. I think that sums up pretty well our flight to Newark. 

We've now stabilized blood sugar, claimed our own rows on a nearly empty airbus, and are anxiously awaiting take off and, in particular, cocktail hour.  Prost!

So freaking demanding

That would be Peggy.  "You have to write a blog!"  "We need to be able to keep up with your trip!"  "Of course you'll have time to write every day!"  Well, we'll see about that. So far I haven't had time to pee.

We're not packed, we don't have anyone to take care of the fish yet, and the refrigerator cleaning may be parlayed into destruction of science projects upon return.  On the other hand, my toes now sport a lovely dark cerise shine: I have my priorities straight.  I may have nothing to wear in Germany or France, but by god my pedicure will be blindingly beautiful.

I have also learned that no, my father will not be taking those fucking hearing aids on the trip, and indeed, there is nothing I can say about it.  In addition, I've approved my mother's already stunning wardrobe choices, and banned the third nail file.  We've downloaded escapist literature, that category being somewhat of a contradiction of terms, and Google Translate, and I've given up after French Transitive Verbs, Lesson 3, in Duolingo.  Peter has long since started saying everything in German with an expectant look on his face, as if waiting for that time I will respond with a joyous "Aha!" and a string of fluent German, instead of the increasingly withering stares and curt "In English, please," growls.  I already sound like a red necked ugly American and we've barely gone through online check in for our flights.

But willya look at those toes??