French Wine(ing)... and (Black Forest) ziplining!

We've been taking a trip about every month, so we couldn't get too far into April without finding someplace to go. We threw an imaginary dart at an imaginary dartboard, and ended up heading to Strasbourg, France for the wife's four day weekend Easter. If you hang on until the very end, there are a couple of "entertaining" videos for you.

The Alsace region of France is basically a strip of France around 100 miles long. It's bordered by the Vosges Mountains to the west and the Rhine River Valley to the east, bordering Germany on the northern and eastern sides, and Switzerland to the south. The region is known for their wine and a breed of dog you may have heard of: the Alsatian, otherwise known as the German Shepherd. There - now you know all I did at the start of our trip. Let's get on to the fun stuff, shall we?

On Friday morning, we left Frankfurt and drove to that area, but wouldn't be able to check in for a while, so we bypassed Strasbourg and continued down the the "interstate" to Colmar.

Colmar was a cool little town, but unfortunately, it's not a really busy season, so a lot of the shops were closed down; there was, however, an Easter market going on, so we found some trouble to get into.

"K" (read some of my earlier blog posts for an explanation of who that is) had asked us to keep our eyes open for decorated ostrich eggs while wandering through Easter markets. Confused? Yeah, me too. Evidently, that's something that people collect. Painted or carved eggs. Why did she want an ostrich egg from her time living in Germany? Who knows. But... we kept our eyes open... and found some.

So we're wandering through the indoor art-egg area, and I'm taking pictures of all of the eggs (after checking with the vendors, of course!), and K picks the specific egg that she wants... it's a chicken egg. All that about ostrich eggs, and she ends up with a regular sized painted chicken egg!

While I was chasing down painted ostrich chicken eggs, the wife was falling in love with the carved eggs. Evidently, it's not just a pottery thing - if there's something to collect, my wife will find it and start a collection.

So, she falls in love with a carved goose egg, which is now proudly on display in the bookcase in our living room: 

The vendor didn't speak English, and while I might have been able to complete the transaction in pidgin German, she didn't speak that either... we pantomimed our way through paying - well, trying to pay. She ran our credit card through, and it didn't look like it went through. She tried again, still didn't look like it was going through. One of the other vendors (or maybe her husband) came over, and was using Google Translate on his phone; he'd talk into it and have it translate, then show us the screen - he was very happy with himself for coming up with that, just a jovial sort of guy. It was a fun interaction. We ended up paying with cash, and heading out.

Once we got outside of the market, we stopped and the boss checked our credit card app, which showed 2 identical purchases for the same amount we'd just paid in cash. While we were talking about it, the guy came out with his phone - they'd figured out the same thing. So, we went back in, and she handed our cash back to us. We all were trying to figure out how to get credit back for the second purchase... when we decided it'd just be easier to pick out another egg. So, that's how we ended up with a carved emu egg as well.

And, since I've discovered that y'all like pictures, here's a shot of a display case with all of the different kinds of eggs that were there that day - I will leave the translations up to you:

I will tell you, though, that the emu egg is the dark colored one (grey/black), and the goose egg is the second from the left in the bottom row.

While exploring the Easter Market, we found a vendor one of our friends might enjoy... he needs a nickname, since I've made a point of specifically not naming names... let's call him "Mountain Man," and I'll just post the pic and see if he likes this store name:

After exploring the market area, we got back on our trusty steed, and headed north toward Strasbourg, but wanted to skip the "interstate" and meander through some of the small towns. We drove the (about) 50 miles in about an hour and a half, stopping occasionally to take pictures of the vineyards:

We checked into the hotel - for what might be the first time, no shopping mall across the street! 

Next morning, we hit the ground running and headed out to Schirmeck to visit the Alsace Moselle Memorial. It's a museum covering the history of the region, stretching into an overview of the European Union. 

This specific area changed nationalities four different times between 1871 and 1945, and was the only part of France to be annexed into the Third Reich, from 1940 to 1945. The museum gave a detailed overview of the history of the region, and helped us understand the independence of the people who come from the Alsatian region. The first part of the museum was very well documented, with legends for all of the displays in French, German, and English.

Once we got into the second half of the museum, the documentation wasn't translated, even into German... so we didn't follow it as well.

Strasbourg is the location for the seat of parliament for the European Union (with the parliament building right across the street from our hotel), and the museum talked about the history of the EU, and the different expansions that it's gone through.

We took back roads further south (back toward Colmar), to wind our way through more of the smaller towns. Driving through one of the towns, I slowed down for someone to cross the street, and happened to glance down one of the side roads, and saw what appeared to be an open-air market a block or so back. We stopped and walked over, and found a local farmer's market, right as they were winding down. There were only a few booths still open - after walking around the whole market, we went back to one of the vendors, who was selling olives.

He didn't speak any English or German, and we didn't speak French (other than hello, goodbye, and thank you), but he figured out pretty quickly that we wanted to buy some olives from him. He offered us several different types to try, we ended up with some grilled olives, garlic stuffed olives, and olive oil marinated garlic. So now, we have to find an "olive guy" in Frankfurt, because my wife looks down her nose at plebian store bought olives now.

The area is evidently known for a type of gingerbread too, so the boss added a stop at a gingerbread place to our itinerary, but we needed to eat something first. We found a restaurant right across the street from the gingerbread place, and had a good lunch there - bought a couple of bottles of wine there as well. Just for grins, I'll give you the name of the place, even though I don't think there's a good translation for it: Au Péché Vigneron - vins fins et Crémants d'Alsace ZEYSSOLFF. As near as I can tell, the name of the place translates to "At Winegrower Sin - Fine Wine and Crémants from Alsace." Your guess is as good as mine (or, in this case, Google Translate).

Went to the gingerbread place across the street, and spent way too much time and money there. Interesting cakes and candies, but I'm generally not a huge gingerbread fan.

We continued wandering up the road, at one point finding a big wine shop run by a consortium. We tried a few different types of wines, and bought a few bottles.

We decided to head back up to Strasbourg, so we hopped on the interstate and headed north. We stopped at a rest area, and found a couple of unexpected things:

That's right, in a rest area south of Strasbourg, France, there's a Steak & Shake. We thought about getting shakes, just to say that we did, but we ended up deciding not to (for some reason).

While in the parking lot, the wife saw an interesting nest...

We saw a few other posts throughout the parking lot for the storks to build nests on. Evidently, they encourage this behavior, and the storks are quite welcome.

We saw this nest, and the other poles in the parking lot for nesting locations, but didn't think any more of it. To get ahead of my narrative for a moment, all throughout the area, storks are one of the big "touristy" things. All of the tourist stores have stuffed storks (like stuffed animals, not taxidermied storks), you'll see stork hats, stork trivets... almost everything has a stork on it.

Turns out, storks are native to the Alsace area. They would migrate up to 15,000 miles - down to South Africa - each winter, then return to the Alsace area in the early spring. FYI, I found all of this out while researching this blog post - see what I go through for y'all? Also, their nests can weigh up to 1100 pounds, measuring up to 9 feet in diameter and 6 feet deep. The same nesting pair returns to the nest each year, with the male bird returning from vacation a couple of weeks earlier than the female to make repairs to the nest for when his mate returns. See? We're learning stuff together!

But, back to the narrative.

We headed back up to the hotel and took the tram into downtown Strasbourg. We wandered around, and finally found the cathedral:

We couldn't get a decent shot of the spire itself - but it turns out, it's pretty tall - 465 feet. Construction on the cathedral was started in 1015, and completed in 1439. From 1647 to 1874, the cathedral was the tallest building in the world - evidently, the steeple tower on the previous record holder (Saint Mary's Church in Stralsund, Germany) was struck by lightning and burned down. Honestly, I was hoping to uncover some sort of arsonist plot while researching this, but no such luck.

We had dinner at a local restaurant, then trammed back to the hotel.

Next morning, we had breakfast at the hotel, then hit the road, headed to some random spot in the Black Forest. We eventually got to the right spot for..... ziplining.

The back road to the little town was well off of the highway, and the little road leading into the valley was even more remote. The directions we received literally said "Turn your GPS off once you get to the town." We followed the signs that they'd helpfully posted:

Once we got off of the "main road," only the little strip at the bottom was posted at each intersection. About 5 miles back into the forest, we finally arrived. We parked and walked up to the hut, and met the rest of our group - our guide would be Stefan, and there were 6 others going with us - 2 other couples, one of their friends, and that friend's dad. Stefan gave the briefing in German - and surprisingly, I was able to understand most of it, because he was speaking pretty slowly... but he went over the important parts with us in English. Then we got all geared up:

I mentioned that this was in a valley, right? Well, ziplining is basically sliding from a high location to a lower location on a wire. That means, we had to get to the high locations. Stefan was quite proficient at what we'll call "German understatement," and while the climb(s) that we had to make weren't a big deal for him, he does this same route 3 times a day, and has been doing it for 11 years.

Everyone was winded (except for Stefan, damn him!), so at the (first) top area, we took a break while he explained the whole process - hooking in with 2 carabiners and the "trolley," and the mechanics of the braking system. We could see the first two lines (of seven total) that we'd be doing.

At this point, the friend's dad chickened out. Stefan told him that he wouldn't be getting his money back, and the guy said "No problem!" He walked back down, and we met back up with him later.

Stefan chose the single guy (Kevin) to be his assistant, gave him a backpack and radio, and showed him a couple of additional things (a different place to clip in, etc.). Then, we all climbed a short ladder onto a platform, and Stefan demonstrated how to clip in and exit the platform - off he slid, to the next platform, about 60 feet away, sliding about 30 feet above the ground. He radioed back to Kevin, and one by one we slid to the next platform. This would become the routine. Stefan would go, we'd all go one by one, and Kevin would be the last one over.

The second one was another short one, just to get us comfortable. I'll post the lengths like this: 60x30. That's 60 feet long, 30 feet above the ground - the second one was the same as the first.

Remember how I said we were in a valley? The first two were in the treetops on one side of the valley. The third one took us across the valley. 850x200. Gah. What have we signed up for?!?!? Stefan told us that we'd hit speeds up to about 35-40 mph.

Next one was a little bit of a hike - passing the end of number 7 on the way. We were all kinda getting the hang of it now.

Number 4 was 720x220.

Little bit of a hike, not too bad. 

Number 5 was 1020x140.

Another little bit of a hike. Not terrible.

Number 6 was 750x250.

Whomever laid out the hike between the end of 6 and the beginning of 7 isn't getting a Christmas card from me. That hike was almost as bad as the hike to number 1. This one, though.... they added on two sets of what we called "Heidi Stairs." Stefan told us that we had to climb them like Heidi would. Basically, two logs laid end to end, with stairs cut into them. There was a wire run right next to the log, as a sort of handrail.

I don't know what kind of sadist came up with that idea.

Number 7 was 1900x275, and took us back to the spot we passed between 3 and 4. We hiked down from there, shimmying across a wire strung over the little stream.

We took off all of our gear and had a celebratory shot with the group, then hit the road, headed back to the hotel, sore and tired.

If anyone is interested in ziplining, I would highly recommend it... but I won't be going again. I loved it, but I decided many years ago that I didn't have much interest in hiking. Way too much hiking for me to go through it again. I'll take y'all there, and will have a picnic waiting for you when you're done, but I won't be making those hikes again!

We got up this morning and after a quick breakfast, drove back home.

So... that's our most recent trip. Keep an eye on this space for more stories about our trips!

Remember at the very beginning, I told you I'd share a couple of videos with you? Only one of me - all three of her videos were too cute not to share though!

Second try for these videos: