Where to Take Your Parents in Alsace-Lorraine

Colmar, France

In typical PorterBall fashion, we packed a lot into my parent's last trip. After trying out Swiss life, we swung through the Alsace-Lorraine region of France on our way back to Berlin. I wanted to give the P's a taste of French life - even if it was German flavored.

The Alsace-Lorraine region (or Reichsland Elsaß-Lothringen if you're feeling especially Germ-y) has been tossed back and forth between Germany and France several times. Though it currently is in France (and has been since 1922), this mishmash of cultures has resulted in some of the best of both sides.

• Must Eat: Flàmmeküeche - basically a very thin crust pizza, typically with lardons (bacon), white onions and a cream-based sauce.
  
• Must drink: Wine, of course! But Germany's influence means you won't get sniffed at for ordering a beer. Sadly, I could have neither. Another apfelshorle s'il vous plaît.
• Must see: Serious cuteness. Hubsch. Mignon. No matter how you pronounce it, this region is filled with towns straight outta a Disney set.

Visiting Dead People in Berlin

Before I called Europe home, I had only visited cemeteries for funerals. Impersonal, manicured parks... they didn't necessarily inspire return visits, even if thoughts of its residents did. Once we arrived in Berlin, I saw the ancient and modern beauty of family plots, trails of ivy and the essential peacefulness a cemetery offers. Our apartment in Neukölln picturesquely overlooked a nice one.

Our visit to the Museums of Paris

During our trip to Paris in December, we got all cultured. We did this (primarily) through buying the Museum Pass and going museum crazy.

We are museum lovers and prefer to visit a museum over & over, slowly absorbing the incomprehensible displays of grace and beauty BUT a week long trip to Paris only affords a precious hour or two in each place. Even then we missed some must-sees. We're sorry. This action packed museum itinerary was exhaustively carried out over 2 days and was so incredibly worth it.

Foucault pendulum

A glimpse at some greatness.

First stop:

Panthéon

This was the major landmark by our airbnb apartment. Located in the Latin Quarter in Paris, it is a secular mausoleum containing the remains of distinguished French citizens such as Marie Curie, Victor Hugo, Voltaire, Rousseau, etc. Modeled on the Pantheon in Rome, the building is known for Foucault's pendulum a simple device conceived as an experiment to demonstrate the rotation of the Earth. While it had long been known that the Earth rotated, the introduction of the Foucault pendulum in 1851 was the first simple proof of the rotation in an easy-to-see experiment.

10 Things we Didn't Know about Paris

Rocking some 'stache for France

 1. People smiled! I can't even explain how this lightened our already luminous moods. While the stereotype of Germans being cold and humorless is far from totally true, they don't smile much, especially in the blustery NE corner. The first time we went to London was after a month in Berlin and there too we felt the friendly vibe we didn't realize was missing in our Berlin lives. Obviously this is just our experience, but we always laugh when people talk about how unfriendly the Londoners are or about the rudeness of the French. 

Our Plan of Attack on Paris

When we plan (aka fall into an internet sink hole) for travel to places like Bratislava, Reykjavik , Polignano a Mare, Italy, Sighişoara, and Ljubljana - any resource is a good resource.

Researching our xmas gift to each other - a trip to Paris - is different. Much written about, photographed, and waxed on about lyrically, everyone and their mother has advice on Paris. And we have our own thoughts as well. I had one day in Paris on my month long high-school-group-adventure back in the day, and Ian & I spent 2 nights there on our month-long traipse around Europe in 2008. We are crazy excited to go back.

Onto what we have used to prepare for the trip.

A Little bit of German, A Little bit of French - Colmar

Crime Scene in Bordeaux

After the Belgium beer run, we thought it was time to venture back into France. The country of wine, the huh huh huh laugh, and elite cuisine is one we have only briefly skimmed. Marseille, Perpignan, Bordeaux, Paris...most of our whirlwind through the country was spent chasing a friend.

Despite this inauspicious start - we loved France. We were prepared for the worst, but the people and place gave us their best. Some of my favorite pictures and most bizarre stories (there was either a murder or suicide in the hotel room across the hall) have happened here.

So we were excited to make it back to the country. However, it was just going to be a baby toe in as we had to start making our way back to Berlin. Los!

We chose Colmar. A mini-Strasbourg, it is a town to fawn over the adorable finishes and the combination of German & French.

Chasing Evers - Marseille, Perpignan & Escape to Bordeaux

As I type this, I am sitting in an internet cafe in Bordeaux, France, a place we never expected of visiting on our little whirl-wind tour of Europe. How did we end up in Bordeaux you ask? Well my little friend, let me explain.

After leaving the Cinque Terre, we were headed to Marseille to meet up with my high school/college buddy Sean Evers. He has family in Marseille, and we all thought it would be fun to get together and kick it in the south of France. It got off to a bad start as we arrived late to Marseille without a place to stay. Now I don't know if you've heard, but Marseille is one of the roughest towns in all of France, and isn't exactly the place you want to be rolling into town at night withough an idea of where to go... luckily Evers, being the stand up guy he is, picked us up from the station, and after a little French direction lesson from the GPS, we were dropped off at a hostel.

The next day's plan was to explore a bit of Marseille, and then hop back on the train down to south-western France and meet up with Evers and a few other peeps in the Catalonian town of Perpignan. Ebe and I explored Marseille, and saw what would be a recurring theme throughout our stay in France so far... a carousel. After having walked around Marseille for a few hours with my bag, I began to smell like a local if you know what I mean. I felt bad for the people near us on the train which we were about to bord.

Halfway to Perpignan my phone finally gets a text message from Evers telling us that unfortunately we wouldn't be able to stay with them in their family's beach house... shit. Now we were beginning to question our decision of following Monsieuer Evers almost to the border of Spain.


In the end we probably spent under an hour with him. It was pretty much the perfect storm. It really was no-one's fault, just a big misfortune of events. But hey, we got to see some really cool towns in the process, and that's why I'm here writing this blog in Bordeaux.

Bordeaux has been a surprisingly fun town. Lodging is quite cheap, and there is certainly all the wine you can drink... if we only had the money! The city is really beautiful, with wonderful gardens and amazing architecture around every corner. Ebe and I even splurged today and had a three-course lunch. Among the things we had were escargot (yes, snails), lots of duck, and creme brulee... yum. One more night here in Bordeaux and then it's off on the TVG (one of the fastest trains outside of Japan) to the City of Lights... gay (and I mean really gay) ol' Paris!

(end note on Bordeaux: we stayed in a lovely family run hotel that had an incident in the room next to us. As in, there was a suicide in the room next to us sometime in the last week. Ian wisely didn't tell me what the tag said until we were about to leave. Talk about a hang over!)

More highlights of our trip through Europe
and more of our favorite spots in France