Strasbourg | Colorado Rotary Goes to France!

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map and photos

Amy Here:

Here’s a map that I made of our travels.If you’re curious about distances, it’s approximately 200 miles from Wissembourg, at the top of our journey, to Saint-Claude at the southernmost tip of our travels. I’ve put dots on all the communities we visited, and the line goes only between communities where we spent the night. We started in Strasbourg, then slept in Saverne, Besançon, Maîche, Arbois, Vesoul, Luxeuil-les-Bains, Mulhouse, Colmar, Selestat, Wissembourg, Obernai, and finally in Strasbourg.

Also, I uploaded 1,306 photos from the trip. You can access them here:

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=103330952984074351888&target=ALBUM&id=5600653050460673553&authkey=Gv1sRgCOPQuvWRl-GVHA&feat=email

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=103330952984074351888&target=ALBUM&id=5600668066223448225&authkey=Gv1sRgCOyQ04Tr97e2tgE&feat=email

In looking through our posts, I noticed that David is not smiling in most of the photos, which is too bad since he has a lovely smile. So, I’m posting one that I took during our last day in Alsace. David and I wound up having wine, cheese, and tarte flambée at the same winstub along the Ils in Strasbourg that we visited at the beginning of our trip.

2011: 04/28
CATEGORY: Strasbourg
Uncategorized
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28 Mars

Amy here: The Team’s access to Internet/wi-fi (pronounced wee-fee here) is sketchy, so we are trying to post blog updates whenever we can. Please excuse our rather unorganized approach, but we hope it provides you with a taste of the wonder that we’re experiencing. Before I begin, it’s hard to describe how gracious, generous, enthusiastic, and accommodating our hosts are. This trip is the experience of a lifetime. Vraiment.

Backing up to Monday….we slept in and tried to shake off jet lag. We met for breakfast at the hotel buffet, where I fell in love with the automatic coffee machine. We practiced our PowerPoint presentation until Jacques and Philip picked us up at 11 in the GSE van (EGE in France, for Echange de Groupe d’Etude) and we headed south toward Mont Sainte-Odile, a former monastery turned tourist born blind but gained her eyesight upon her baptism. We enjoyed a delicious lunch in a cavernous, slightly monastic dining room. Here we are with Philip Sargent, the coordinator of our exchange, and a source of much laughter during our day.

On the way down, we visited the Pagan Wall, a 6-mile long wall encircling Mont Sainte- Odile. It has more than 300,000 stones, and there’s much debate about when and why it was built.

Then it was off to the Struthof concentration camp. As you may know, Alsace has fluctuated between France and Germany four times in the last century, and during World War II, it was annexed by Germany,which built Struthof in 1941, the only concentration camp on French soil. It operated until 1944, when the Germans sent the prisoners on a “death march” to Dachau. Later that year, the Americans liberated the camp…the first concentration camp to be discovered. The camp held many resistance prisoners, and “medical” experiments occurred there, along with many thousands of deaths from the gas chamber, hangings, shootings, malnutrition, typhoid, and maltreatment. I encourage you to read more at http://www.struthof.fr/en/the-kl-natzweiler/ The mortality rate was more than 40%. It was a very powerful afternoon for the Team. Here we are, with amazing Jacques Grimm (former District Governor of 1680) in front of the Deportation Memorial, dedicated in 1964.

We then returned to Strasbourg to meet our first host families, who welcomed our tired crew with great kindness and hospitality.

2011: 03/30
CATEGORY: Strasbourg
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French Chocolate Tasting

Samantha Here: There’s no doubt about it; I am a chocolate fiend. Infrequent are the days when I do not indulge in this sweet delight. Yesterday, our team had the opportunity to meet with Christoph Meyer, chocolatier extraordinaire at Christian in downtown Strasbourg.

Our lesson in chocolate included learning about the three components that determine the quality of chocolate: (1) the richness and contents of the soil from which the cocoa beans are grown, (2) the length and intensity of the fermentation period, and (3) the bean roasting. Christoph informed us that one batch of cocoa beans can be made into up to 30 different types of chocolate depending on how they go about achieving these three stages.

Christoph purchases cocoa beans from around the world: Venezuela, Bolivia, Guatemala, Madagascar, Peru, Cameroon, and even Haiti, their newest edition. When deciding how best to prepare the chocolate, he takes into consideration how the chocolate, given its unique flavor depending on the plantation in the world it came from, will go best with other ingredients.

For instance, he chose to pair a Venezuelan chocolate with ginger, cardamom, and coriander. With a Guatemalan chocolate, he selected raspberry, rose, and lavender.

Like wine making, chocolate making is part science and chemistry. But it’s the creativity of the chocolatier that truly makes this an art form.

Christoph taught us how to sample chocolate much like we were sampling wine, allowing the chocolate to melt on our tongues while inhaling quickly, letting the air open up the complex flavors. (For a most enjoyed experience, he recommended we swish it around our palettes with a glass of Alsatian, dry white wine, of course.)

We sampled nearly a dozen various bon bons and chocolate bars today from Christoph’s pâtisserie. A few of the more uniquely flavored bon bons included:

Fresh orange, grapefruit, and lime,
Brown sugar,
Quetche (prune-like fruit only found in this region), and
Hazelnut praline with a crispy center and sugar coated exterior.

Aside from my personal affinity for chocolate, I’m strongly considering adding a chocolate and wine tasting tour to my repertoire of walking food tours at Colorado Springs Food Tours. If and when I do, I plan on using the information I received today on this fascinating culinary art form. Please enjoy the photos from our tour below!

Christian - Exterior Facade

Chocoate Bon Bons

Chocolate Display Case

Easter Bunnies - Partially complete

Christoph's Assistant Making Easter Bunnies

Close to being complete

Chocolate bars from Venezuela, Haiti, and Bolivia

Amazing array of chocolates we sampled (see above flavors)

Cocoa Beans

Christoph and Amy

Our group with Christoph!

2011: 03/30
CATEGORY: Strasbourg
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Cherry Blossoms in Strasbourg

Samantha Here: It’s finally here. The moment we’ve long awaited and for which we’ve diligently prepared. Today, our Group Study Exchange team from Colorado Rotary District 5470 arrived in Strasbourg, France after schlepping luggage, enduring hoards of Spring break travelers, resisting heavy eyelids, and chasing the sun halfway around the world.

Our team in Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris

With no delays, hiccups, or problems, we were cheerily greeted into this beautiful European capital of government and history by a company of Rotarians as accomplished as they are hospitable. France District Governor Anita Grimm and her husband and former District Governor, Jacques Grimm, along with former GSE team leader Christine and current GSE Coordinator, Philip Sargent, planned an informal orientation in our Hotel following our airport pickup. Laughter and toasts were shared, and we were overwhelmed with the generosity, kindness, and thoughtfulness of our French hosts. They have diligently assembled a schedule for us for the next 28 days that will include everything from a chocolate factory tour to a visit to the European parliament building to an afternoon at a Holocaust concentration camp. We can’t wait to get started (after catching up on some sleep!) and are very excited to meet Rotarians along the way!

First meeting with our Rotarian hosts

In an attempt to curb our jet lag, our team took a stroll through the picturesque neighborhood that would have me believing I was in Germany long before I’d guess France. The cherry blossoms are in full bloom – my personal favorite! The air was fresh and warm, and the setting sun bathed the streets in a lovely shade of jaune (yellow).

Fuschia Magnolias

Cherry Blossoms

Cherry Blossoms II

Strasbourg House I

Strasbourg House II

Strasbourg House III

We finished up the day with a buffet dinner at the hotel where the entrées included gazpacho drinking cups, salmon and pumpkin (the vegetable our server described as going “with Halloween”) cones, and an assortment of chacucherie (meat). Desserts included orange pana cotta cups, fruit-filled danishes, and oh-so-tasty French cheese.