Burgundy sunshine

I've mentioned Dijon mustard and Burgundy wines -- red and white. But what else is this region known for? Certainly cassis -- that wonderful black currant liqueur that, when mixed with wine or champagne (or Cava if you've got frugal leanings like me), gives us the perfect aperitif (kir). Too, beef bourguignon. And escargots de bourguignon -- those pungent garlicy snails. And French onion soup! And cheese and saucisson, but then, most regions of France boast a remarkable local cheese and many claim they make the best saucisson ever, so I wouldn't say these are unique to Burgundy.

But apart from food and and wine and assuming you don't want a history lesson on Burgundy (just half a sentence: the first Burgundians are believed to have come here from Germanic lands, possibly from what is now Denmark, establishing the Kingdom of Burgundy in the fifth century), what else is famous about this region?

Architecture. And for a best viewing of it, you really should walk around Dijon.

And so I do just that.

It is a brilliant, sunny day. Spring is very late in Wisconsin and it is very late here, in northern Europe and so everyone is breathing a palpable sigh of relief: maybe this season will not forget to make an appearance after all. (Never mind that, looking ahead, things are expected to deteriorate again. But let's not get too wrapped up in prediction. For now - it's a beautiful day to be in Gevrey, Burgundy!)

(Sunrise out my window)





First comes breakfast. So much to choose from! Omelette? Yes, that would be lovely. Paul and Jolanta attend to it all, with the assistance of a young woman, who happens to also hail from Poland.











And now it's time for me to catch the bus to Dijon. It's a pleasant 40 minute ride, through the northern wine villages of Burgundy. I hop off in the city center and begin my walking tour. You'll follow along, right? It's a beautiful city!





I'm curious about the architecture here: I'm looking for the Burgundian polychrome roofs, made of colorful glazed tiles set in geometric patters. Yes, this one!




And timbered houses. Dijon was occupied during the second World War, but not heavily damaged and so many of the old buildings -- some dating to as early as the twelfth century -- are still there for you to admire.





It's a walkers' city. The heart of it is free of cars.






I'm somewhat in a hurry to catch the big Saturday morning market. I've heard many many good things about it. My own view? Yes, it's extensive and bountiful, but in many ways it is geared toward buyers not lookers. Apart from the grandness of the hall, the stalls are functional. Presentation matters less than quality of product. So, just one photo, to give you an idea.






Outside again. And there are plenty who, like me, just want to enjoy a walk in the sunshine! Lots of families, shoppers, older people, younger people. A merry-go-round!






Kids with parents, kids on scooters, kids on bikes... (in front of the Palace of the Dukes of Burgundy -- primarily a 17th century building, though the old tower dates back to the 1450s..)





It's only 51F (11C), but we're all starved for the great outdoors! Time outside is precious! Who knows what tomorrow or the next day will bring!

I pause for a cup of tea. Sunglasses on, jacket unzipped.




And then I catch the bus home. You'll tell me I should have gone to the museums: there is great art, there are the mustards. And churches! Why did I not go inside?

Because. I just wanted to be out in that lovely and warm sunshine.


Later, I head for the vineyards.  I want a last look at how the clipping was accomplished (and then go home and clip our own vines). I want to check for buds. But mainly, I just want to take in that vast expanse of land, ribboned by vines, bordered by forests.

I do two walks actually. The first takes me up the hill just a bit, past the old wineries that line a narrow street here.





And from here, I plunge into the vineyards.






These are all likely to be grand cru -- the best of the best.  And the sun is warming them and soon there will be leaves and grapes and the skies are so very blue!






(Waiting to explode in new life...)







The second one is more ambitious. I start with vineyards to the south of Gevrey, walk up the hill and then I continue walking into the forest, switching from narrow path to a more solid road...






Then back to the path again...





I keep thinking that there will be a summit and that this will be my turning point, but the path and road run just short of the ridge line and after an hour of walking in this beautiful world of green quiet, punctuated only with the call of a bird, or the swish of a retreating animal (a skunk actually), I decide to return home.

On the way back, I zoom-call Ed and with my phone taking in the scene before me, we walk together all the way to the village, commenting on the forest, the vines, the village homes, as if indeed he was just a few feet behind me.






I veer off toward the lower village, taking it all in, even as the sun remains strong, and the skies -- blue jay blue!





And now I am back with the Two Goats (my guest house). I'm hungry! Jolanta quickly fixes me a late afternoon snack of cheeses and sausages, radishes and figs. With a glass of white burgundy, premier cru. I eat it in the company of women -- the guest living room is filled with paintings depicting them in various stages of repose. Sunglasses stay on for now. I thank them for a job well done today!






The sun is dipping now. The colors are intense.






It's time for dinner. I walk to the "other" town restaurant -- the Bistrot Lucien. The moon is high over the fields of grapes...






I leave all this outdoor beauty and step inside. Lucien is a lively place!

And there's a lesson in my dining here: in preparing for this trip, I listened to the opinion pieces. But honestly, though the reviewing populace favors Guy, I think maybe they're not right. Lucien is packed with locals. The food is not very different from last night's food, but it has greater aspirations in humbler settings. (Guy is more prim and so you expect the food to measure up to some prim standard.)





I write this not because I think any of you will ever come here and want advice on where to eat. There's a larger lesson to be learned, I think. In serving food, don't try too hard. Relax your surroundings. Your table wobbles? Great! Stuff a piece of newspaper underneath and give a hearty thump. Forgot to put the wine into the kir coctail? Oh well! None of this matters. You pay attention to your food, you do the very best you can and then you relax. That last bit, the relaxing -- it's as important as making sure the sauce doesn't curdle and the creme brulee is silky smooth.






I walk home humming to myself. And what then? Ah, if only I can tuck myself in early and go to sleep soon! If only...

Burgundy at last

Ten years ago, no one would have predicted where we all would be right now. Call it the mystery of life which, like the stock market, delivers outcomes that are unforeseeable and barely imaginable.

This is certainly true at the personal level (chickens? Ed? sons-in-law and grandkids?) and at the macro level too. The three countries I'll have passed through this month (the U.S., France, Poland) have leaders that may have little in common, but they also share something profound: they are products of historically significant twists and turns -- all unknown and unimaginable just a handful of years ago.

The French labor unrest yesterday is important, in that it is the beginning of a spring of labor protest in this country. It's easy to see it as just another French strike. There are so many, that a number of my visits here have coincided with the shut down of one thing or another. (Indeed, as I write this, I am aware of the fact that Air France is striking today over wage issues.) But the walkout on the 22nd was different: the squabble was more than just the usual one between the unions and management or government. When a country's leader positions himself as a disruptor (I'm thinking of the three in power in my three countries), the events that follow (strikes? protest? support rallies?) will determine what the new reality will be for each country. But don't ask me to make any predictions. I'm sure of only one thing -- that we all will be surprised by the outcomes. 


This morning, the city seems more like its usual self. Kids back in school, trains moving again.

I don't have much time, but I do make a point of eating a solid breakfast here:





Yep, Les Editeurs, as always.The cafe-restaurant a couple of blocks down the street. Great pain au chocolat and croissants, with added eggs today. I need energy for the walk to the train station.

I could have taken the metro, but I decided, suitcase and backpack notwithstanding, that I can handle the walk. Without the burden of pulling and toting and occasionally photo shooting, it would be (according to google maps) a 45 minute hike to the Gare de Lyon. With the encumbrances, it takes me 42! I am prone to galloping.

(Vignettes from my walk...)































The train is the usual great ride. (Slightly over 300 km, 90 minutes central door to central door.)

 



It's packed, taking the overflow from yesterday, but with mandatory reserved seats, it hardly matters. We zip at the usual fast pace and by 1 p.m. I am in Dijon. Because I have so few hours here, I bypass complicated bus schedules and take a cab (a hefty 28 Euros!) to a Burgundian village just 13 kilometers south of the city.

It's odd that in all my travels to France, I've not really spent much time in the region of Burgundy. For those who haven't committed the geography of France to memory, Burgundy is a district to the south and east of Paris. The capital is Dijon, of mustard fame, though I'm told that there is only one remaining family still engaged in the production of Dijon mustard. The rest have shifted their operations to Eastern Europe. Perhaps Dijon mustard is now made in Poland. Forget the mustard though. For me, Burgundy is synonymous with great wine. A bottle of white burgundy is, in my view, the best of the best. It's made from the chardonnay grape, but oh, what a chardonnay grape it is!

My love for these special wines lead me to Chablis (located in northern Burgundy) some fifteen years ago. I visited wine cellars, wrote a short piece about the people who devoted all their efforts to making this great wine and then I went home and somehow never returned. One good reason may be that you can buy good Burgundy wines anywhere, including in Madison, Wisconsin. So there needs to be another draw. Or does there have to be a reason? Maybe if you're like me, you'll head for Burgundy just because. I want to wander through these unfamiliar villages, through the hills and river valleys. I want to explore.

I'm staying in Gevrey-Chamertin, a village of about 3000. It would be a curious choice if I were to be focusing on wine, because most enthusiasts associate it with Grand Cru Pinot Noir wines -- the best of great reds -- and I rarely drink red wine. But again, wine (or at least drinking wine) is not the main theme of this journey. I'm open to all sorts of exploartions!

My home for three nights is at Les Deux Chevres (the Two Goats). It's housed in an ancient winery, recently restored and turned into a guest house by Paul and Jolanta (he, a retired attorney from England, she, his wife from Poland). The place is beautiful!






I had requested a room with a good view and I got it. Out the bedroom windows I have both the village and the vineyard.






(Same thing out the bathroom window. I never take baths, but I may take one here. How lovely to bathe and look out on vines!






I asked the innkeepers to help me fill the rest of the day. It's cloudy, with a threat of drizzle. It's pretty cold. If I were to hike around, tomorrow would be a wiser day for it. Paul tells me he set up some wine tastings for another set of guests. One backed out, the other is still on board. Would I like to fill in the empty spot and join the others for a second tasting?

Did I say that this trip was not really about wine?

I'm completely open to the idea. Thomas, the assistant here who, at his main job, works in the wine industry (just about everyone who lives in these villages works in one way or another in the wine industry, he tells me) will drive me around.

It's a wonderful way to get to know all the villages and vineyards between Dijon and Beaune (if Dijon is the administrative capital of Burgundy, Beaune is the wine capital of the region). Thomas knows everything.

Top of the hills -- those are usually the grand crus (the finest of the fine: they need the stress of a soil that has washed away some of its organic compounds and sent them flying down the hill; you get smaller yields but the quality is over and beyond.). The middle of the hills -- those will often be premier crus (next in the line of greatness). At the bottom -- the village wines. And on the other (left) side of the road -- the most basic coteaux (I guess in the US we'd simply call them table wines).

I look out at the vineyards -- still bare, vines still being clipped and trained (this has to take place before the first buds turn green -- sometime by early to mid April).





I notice a few smoking barrels where clippings are burned.
Are they still being used? I thought they were phased out. One of those EU things. (Wood smoke pollutes.)
They have two years to stop burning. It's a problem -- figuring out what to do with the clippings.

Despite the gray skies and the bareness of the vines, it is a beautiful landscape!






Some twenty minutes later, we approach the hamlet of Pernand-Vergelesses (what a mouthful for a place that boasts only 269 residents!).


 



Paul has set up a tasting at the Domaine Pavelot, a third generation wine maker, run now by Lise and her brother Luc.

Everything that I know about wine I have learned from my visits to the small wine producers of France. Nearly all have given an enormous amount of time and energy to the visit, answering my endless questions with stories rather than a quick restatement of a fact.






The wines at Pavelot are wonderful. I mean, pour me a taste of a Grand Cru or Premier Cru white Burgundy and I'll be entranced. But do it from a good winery, by one of the owners, who stands before me as if I were the only visitor she's seen in ages (even as in reality she does this at least once a week) and I am in complete awe.

Before I leave, I ask her if there are kids in line to take over the winery in their time. She pauses as if to think about it. My brother's son -- right now he says he is interested in biology. So I don't know. My son, he alternates between wanting to be a winemaker and a fireman, but he's only six! You know, in the past, there was a strong push for the next generation to take over. We are less like that now.

I smile. Deep down I hope her boy chooses wine making over fire fighting.






Our second visit is to a somewhat bigger place. In the village of Nuits-St-Georges...


 


... we stop at the Marchands Tawse winery. Here, the partnership is more complicated and perhaps I feel more of a distance from the passion, energy and toil of the producers. But the larger point is that I should have stopped at one domaine visit. I am still taking in what I learned at Pavelot. It doesn't help that at Marchands Tawse, the great wines are the red wines. I taste them, I'm impressed by them, but I don't have a sense of the connection between winemaker and her or his product.

I take a pause at the inn, trying to imagine how life would proceed if you were in the wine business here. The meaning of the words "late April frost" is a bother to me back at the farmette. It's ruinous in Bourgogne. In 2016, the region lost nearly 70% of its grapes because that late frost took down the grape blooms. And if you want to go organic (Pavelot is certified that), well now, that calls forth so many issues and worries that you may just want to back away and grow strawberries instead (though I wouldn't rush toward strawberries... we still haven't figured out how to keep the animals from eating our entire lovely crop).

Dinner time. I am so hungry for it! That large breakfast is but a very distant memory. There are two village eateries -- Chez Guy and Bistrot Lucien. Chez Guy seems to win over more people and so I go there. It's a lovely walk -- a mere half a kilometer from the guest house -- and it serves tasty, well prepared food. With a million bottles and some half bottles of Burgundy wines to choose from for your dining and eating pleasure. (Luckily, there were only five half bottles of white Burgundies to choose from. I was much relieved: it took me long enough to decide between them.)

So I'm here, eating a lovely dinner of ham, then fish, then cheese.





Tomorrow I will explore. Tonight ? Oh please -- the sooner I hit that bed the better.

close enough

Put it this way: I'm not where I'm supposed to be but it could have been so much worse!

I had been monstrously busy all day yesterday and so it wasn't until minutes before leaving the farmhouse that I found out about the planned strike in France for this day. At the head of the striking forces -- rail workers and air traffic controllers. Meaning, if you fancy yourself flying in and taking a train anywhere in France today, you're in trouble.

My transatlantic flight was cancelled five times. And it was reinstated five times. As the agent put it -- in the end, the ball landed in the right court! We not only took off on time, but arrived a few minutes early. No surprise there -- Charles de Gaulle airport seemed pretty empty. It was the first time in my life that I stepped up to a completely deserted passport control. For whatever reason, the Detroit flight was granted a pass.

And now what? I'm supposed to take a train into Paris, then take a rapid train away from Paris. How do you do that when rail workers are picketing? My ticket is worthless. The ticket office is closed. Ah! Another piece of luck: you can take a commuter train just to the outskirts of Paris. I'm inching closer and closer to my final destination!

As we rumble along toward Paris, I call my reliable little hotel and ask them to hold a room for me. There just is no way that I can get out of the city today. The rapid trains are cancelled, the slow pokers are, well, too slow. Moreover, I don't want to get stuck if suddenly the walkout expands to even more trains, planes and automobiles. I've been in that pickle barrel drinking pickle juice before.

Okay, room at hotel made available. It helps to be a loyal guest.

Now, to find the second train that will get me closer to my Paris neighborhood. Metro? Nope, not functioning. Ah! The screens say there is a train going my way on platform 42. People rush to platform 42. The sign there says "Airport bound." Who to believe?

Everyone is confused.

I take the plunge and board the train. A lurch and a heave and we're off.  And soon after, I alight at Luxembourg -- my beloved station, my neighborhood, my final destination for this day.



At the hotel, the affable desk clerk checks to see if they are extending the strike for another day.

So far the answer is no, they're not. I quickly purchase a ticket for tomorrow. I am in business!

And this is how I open the window of my hotel room and see the Odeon Theater of Paris's Left Bank, instead of the deep countryside I expected for this day.






It is early afternoon. I am tired, but we'll forget about that. I am also hungry and raring to move, to walk, to shop for my grandkids -- anything to shake off the stiffness of a long flight.

I must eat something. No big production Parisian restaurant meal. Just small insignificant something.

Just down the block, there is this fairly new eatery. It's small and every time I pass it, I feel guilty for not stopping in. Because if not me, staying just down the block, then who?

I go in today. The emphasis here is on bio. That's fine. I'm a friend of bio (Euro slang for organic). The chalkboard menu has four items  to choose from. Oops, no, make that three. The chef has just polished off the fourth on his own lunch break.






I pick the vegetarian combo plate of soup, lentils and a microscopic sliver of quiche. It's actually just right. I feel revived.

Revived to do what? In my seven nights in Europe, I had already put aside two at the tail end for Paris. This day is an unexpected bonus, of sorts. What to do, what to do...

I don't want to think. That was the point of my days away from it all. I wanted no plan, no decision, no hefty schedule. I just wanted to walk.

And so I walk.

(Through Luxembourg Gardens, where, despite the cold, things are looking mighty green and pink, as compared to back home...)


 














(Looking from flower shop to the diners at Cafe Varenne...)






(... and from a kids' clothes store to Rue du Bac...)






It's a funny remedy for tiredness, isn't it? I walk from 3 until 7 in the evening and then I can walk no more and so I catch a bus back to my neck of the woods. You surely perked up on that one! I never take a bus in Paris! Paris is for walking and if the distance is too great  -- hop on a metro. But, one cannot have confidence today in anything that runs on tracks and so I take the bus home.






Just a few steps now...






Finally. Home. Yes, this place has that feel of comfy home. All that's missing is... well you know  -- my people.

In the evening I go to Breizh Cafe for dinner. That's the creperie down the street. I'd booked a spot at the bar and I'm sure glad I did that. The place is insanely crowded, always.

A crepe with scallops and spinach...


 


....followed by a crepe with honey and lemon.

I turn back to my hotel. Past shuttered stores and bars, and couples who seem oblivious to anything and everything...







And now I'm just too tired to do anything but eye the heaping pillows on the big bed in my wee hotel room. But I have no complaints: I'm not where I should be, but Paris is a good distraction from where I should be. And tomorrow -- well, I may actually get to where I'm going -- even as it will be time to leave soon after.