Follow the Rotary District 5470 GSE team as they travel through Alsace and Franche-Comte, France in 2011.

Amy here: Ah….so much is happening, and we have little time to blog.  It would take me hours to write about everything we have done, so here’s a short post about the rivers that we have seen.  Yesterday, our wonderful chauffeur, Francis Geere, drove us to Ornans to meet Jacques Moril for the Vesoul portion of our trip.  Along the way, we stopped at the Source du Lison.  The river flows right out of the side of the mountain.  Francis said that when it rains a lot, little waterfalls spout from all over the face of the hillside.  That’s Covy with us.  She’s Francis’ petite amie, and she works in the UN Office of Migration in Geneva.

I had the wonderful privilege of fly fishing in La Loue on Wednesday evening.  My host, Patrick Macchioni, found out that I like to fish, so on the evening of my arrival, he took me to La Loue to fish.  I borrowed his equipment, but we had only a short time to fish, since he and his lovely wife, Nicole, were hosting dinner for the Team and our hosts.  From my understanding of fishing, you pay a lot of money to belong to a fishing club, and then you gain access to stretches of river, and there are certain seasons in which you can catch certain fish.  Patrick laughed when I told him that I pay $26 to fish all the rivers in Colorado.  He took me to a beautiful stretch of La Loue at Cléron.  Here I am in front of the Château de Cléron, a beautiful castle owned by a grouchy woman. and trying to pêche à la mouche for la truite.There are trout, and grayling, and perch.  I didn’t catch anything, but we got to see some grayling that were spawning.  We also have seen Le Doubs, which flows through Besançon.  Amanda and I strolled along it last Saturday. And then there is the Ils of Alsace.  Voila Samantha and the wonderful Martine Mayer, the president of the Strasbourg Oueste Rotary Club, at a brasserie along the Ils.  Martine was our exceptional tour guide during a day of walking in Strasbourg.  And finally, here we are yesterday at La Loue  in Ornans, birthplace of Gustave Courbet, a famous 19th century painter.  Jacques is with us.Vive les rivières de France!

Amy here: A full day in and around Maiche, an agricultural and industrial town in the countryside of eastern Franche-Comté.  Here there are beautiful evergreen forests and lovely pastures.  We departed Besancon this morning with our gracious host, Yves Kerleroux, who transferred us, and our autobus to our Maiche hosts.  That’s Yves in the middle, and on the right is François Maurand, Past District Governor of Alsace/Franche-Comté, and on the left is his wife, Françoise.  In the background is our trusty VW bus, which tends to stall in roundabouts, causing occasional cursing.From there, we went to a fruitière to learn how cheese is made.  We sampled comté, which was absolutely delicious.   There are strict regulations regarding its production, such as which type of cow the milk must come from, and how the cow is raised (with natural grass).  Here’s one of the employees spreading salt on the cheese. The reason that his biceps are so big is that he hefts dozens of these 90# rounds each day.  He’s using local salt, too, since this area also features salt manufacturing due to a proliferation of salt springs.  Amanda, Samantha, and I visited the Saline Royale (Royal Saltworks) yesterday, which was designed by Claude-Nicolas LeDoux.  I didn’t have my camera, so hopefully one of them will post more about it.  Here’s more information:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Saltworks_at_Arc-et-Senans

Comté can only be sold when it’s at least four months old, and the cheese making process is very complicated.  Here we are with the man with amazing biceps, and Fred, who shows up in the next picture, too.

From there, we went to VP Plast, which stands for Very Precise Plastics.  This company makes lots of little plastic pieces, which are used in cell phones, watches, cars, and lots of other places.  Fred (I think his last name is Lamendin) is the CEO, and he taught us all about making little pieces of plastic.

Then we had lunch at l’Hotel de la Couronne, where we also are spending the night.  Two words:  fried camembert.  Then we headed out to the Michel Herbelin watch factory, which makes very lovely watches, none of which we could afford.  The mechanics of the watch are assembled in Switzerland, and then the watches are assembled in France.  Just the inner parts of the watch cost $500 each and it takes one day to make one.

Here we are with the son of the company’s founder.  I could never perform the kind of precision work required of a watch factory employee.

That’s Marie-Elaine Bataillard in the cool shades.  She accompanied us today, and is married to Ferjeux, who is the youngest 80-yr old I’ve ever met.

From there, we went to une ferme.  We were met by one of the three brothers who runs it, and they raise pigs and dairy cows.  Unlike Alsace, where farmland is used to grow corn and hops, the fields of Franche-Comte are for dairy cows…and thankfully so, since the final product is so delicious.  Here Margeaux appears to be hypnotizing la vache.

And here we are with the farmer, whose name I regretfully did not catch.  He runs his farm with sustainable practices.  My French didn’t allow me to distinguish whether it’s organic, but I think it is.

Un bon cochon.

After that, we went to see some beautiful stained glass at l’Eglise des Bréseux, which I believe was the first church in France to have stained glass windows with non-figurative depictions.  Here’s one of them.

And finally, we headed back to our hotel, where we met the Maiche Rotary Club for its evening meeting at 8 pm.  The team gave a great presentation, and then we enjoyed a wonderful dinner, with wine, mushrooms over toast, wine, stuffed duck breast and haricots verts, wine, local cheese plate, wine, delicious raspberry dessert, wine, and espresso.  Marie-Christine Jeambrun presented us with lovely magnets “for the fridge” (she and her husband, George, are the only couple in the Club…and they also accompanied us on our tour.  Bernard Patois, le meilleur chauffeur and also a member of the Club gave beautiful necklaces to all of us.  As dinner concluded at 11 pm, David remarked that our time in France often has us eating for 6 hours a day (1 hour for breakfast, 2 hours for lunch, 3 hours for dinner), and Thierry Remond, our excellent traducteur and a member of the Maiche Rotary Club, told us that the French meal is now listed as a part of UNESCO’s world heritage, and sure enough, it is.  Here’s a link:  http://www.connexionfrance.com/Unesco-French-gastronomic-meal-world-heritage-12265-view-article.html

And here’s the team with Hubert Sailler, president of the Maiche Rotary Club:

Alain Bertin and David delighted us with their laughs.  We still are not sure what was so funny.  And we certainly were a perfect example of the “gastronomic meal.”

Bon nuit, mes amis.