It's been two weeks now when we have been travelling from roughly 7 in the morning until 11 or later in the evening. We've had no time to post and thus now are frantically trying to catch up on email, phone calls and posting on this blog. We've had a terrific time eating wonderful new foods including fresh truffles, caviar, salmon, fois gras, and other regional specialities like boar, venison, chapignons--read mushrooms, but cute little tiny ones and big ones. We've had lots of wines, whites and reds, and it seems often that we have begun our days with a bottle or two of champaign.
Our most unusual wine cellar was in the basement of a hospital in Strasbourg, with a bottle from the mid 1472--we had the opportunity to smell the cork. The last person to actually have a drink of it was Pope John Paul II---we also has the opportunity to tour a ultra modern wine maker, Cleebourg whose facilities are all stainless steel, shiny and clean. They indicated that the stainless steel production enables more consistency from year to year in the quality of the wine. We witnessed a truck load of grapes filling the first process of the production. They also had an automatic turning device for the champagne bottles to slowly turn the bottles and over a nine-month process until finally the bottle is upright, when they remove the cork and initial sediment, replace a bit of the liquid and then permanently cork it for its final fermentation.
We've seen a variety of castles, some from the 10 and 11 century, some more modern from the late 1500s and later. All are rather interesting. The other day, when we were in a little town called La Petite Pierre which translates to "little rock" we visited a castle that is now a museum for environmental issues, more or less a nature interpretive center....the two Rotarians who took us there explained that when they were children they used to play among the ruins---"army" and "knights of old"....kind of a neat back drop for imaginary play.
I've now taken over 2000 photos....and will not post until I return as the process is a bit difficult and I did not bring the correct cable to do it directly from my camera.
All of the little villages are quaint. We are now witnessing folks removing the flowers from the window boxes and the soil is being replenished with lots of rich organics....I'm guessing cow manure for the winter to just relax. The towns typically have lots of flowers, some in baskets on the bridges and lamp posts, all in the former horse troughs. All of the towns we visit have small rivers and canals running through them. The windows have working shutters, some the ones of old that are vertical on the outside of the window box, others are new that can be turned down electically or with a crank, they roll down from the top and completely darken the interior rooms, providing a layer of insulation from the outside weather and protection when needed during storms. From the outside they look similar to the hurricane shades you see in Florida.
The Rotaians have been great, their meetings jam packed, as are many of ours with little time for extras, which has barely given us time to do just small presentations....of course our power point has not worked.
Except of course at the District Conference, where we quickly talked about ourselves and then---yes we danced. We recruited four Youth Exchange students to assist, one from New Zealand, India, Canada, and Brazil each. They were terrifically cooperative and the dance went well. Amy, Dana, and Tarah have been troopers about wearing our little 'costumes" and the audience really enjoyed it as well. Jacques was beeming at our success, so the "dance" worked.
We also performed it the other night at his new club. We first had some difficulty recruiting some of the men to be our partners, but after the first dance the rest jumped up to participate and the club enthusiastically responded. There was much joviality, laughter and fun. So it's a hit.
please forgive the spelling errors
