Biking On The Mosel River

Sometimes when I write for my blog, it takes several hours, but today, writing about the Mosel River, it just flows.

You see, last weekend, I went for a lengthy biking excursion with friends.  Ok, they weren’t real friends, just fishermen who chased me when I grabbed their poles.  My legs got a workout.  Only kidding.  I really do have friends.  They really do bike.  I borrowed my wife’s bike, which is single speed, with big tall handlebars right out of Easy Rider, decorated with fine spots of artistic rust.  I wore jeans, tennis shoes and a baseball cap.  Yes, I flaunted the fashionistas who decked themselves out in two thousand dollar touring bikes, custom filled helmets, Spandex biking clothes by Yves Laurent, riding gloves and specialty riding shoes for which several sheep gave their lives.  But, did I mind the angry stares that screamed, “For God’s Sake man, can’t you at least wear designer jeans?”  Nope. I go for Wranglers that have been twice dyed indigo blue.  My ball cap is a custom creation of previously sweaty afternoons and the crush gained through years of careless use.  I strive for originality.  Some would call it grunge.  I pay no attention and make them buy their own wine.

But, enough about me and my keen sense of fashion. Let’s chat a moment about one of the most glorious rivers in the world and definitely the finest region for Riesling wine.  If the wine merchants on the Rhine River disagree, ignore them.

At The Beginning:  The Mosel’s source is about 2400 feet (715 meters) high in the Vosges Mountains of France.  Bet you thought the Mosel was strictly a German river.  Mais, non, mes amie!  Matter of fact, only 142 miles (208 Kilometers) of it’s 334 mile (544 Kilometer) length is in Germany. Another 24 miles (39 Kilometers) is a shared border between France and Germany.  It flows into the Rhine at Koblentz.  Luxembourg also gets a little share.

So, where does the Mosel River (Moselle in French) rank among the largest rivers in Germany?  So glad you asked. Goes like this: Danube, Rhine, Elbe, Oder, Mosel.  But most lists include the full length of the rivers, not just the German portions.

Ok, let’s chat for a moment about wines. Forget which German region produces the most, or most famous, or any other superfluous balderdash. Those just don’t matter and for my taste, the Mosel ranks numéro un, or Nummer Eins.  I love the soft flavors that are often attributed to the shale in the soil.  Ride your bike along the river and you’ll see stacks of slate, and if you look closer at the vines, it looks as if they are planted in gray gravel.

Most of the vines that run up and down the steep hills and over the flat lands produce Riesling grapes and overall, the valley is planted with 90% white grapes, of which 61% are Riesling.

Feel like tasting?  Seems like every five feet there’s another vintner offering Wein Probes, wine tasting.  Maybe every five feet is a bit of hyperbole, but I swear you’ll find ten or more vintners in even the small villages that line the route.  Some offer free tasting and others want a very small payment.  Yes, there are sparkling wines as well as a few reds.  Most wines price out at $4 to $7 per bottle, for some of the best white wines in the world.

And guess who first planted grapes in this region?  The Romans, of course.  As you drive or ride along the river, you’ll see signs that point to a Roman villa here or there, or ruins, or other artifacts.

But, most of all, taking a bike trip for a couple of hours through the lazy, beautiful curves of the Mosel is a treat that soothes your senses.  Admire the steep slopes, gaze across the green valley almost totally dedicated to wine.  Why deprive yourself? No need to make this painful.  After biking a mile or two, stop for luscious wine or a spot of lunch.  Oh, yeah, punish me. And at none of the places you’ll stop will you find a dress code.  Pick a Roman god to thank for that.

My Life in France by Julia Child, with Alex Prud’homme

France may be the most astonishingly different culture in all of Europe.  Not denigrating any other country and we all have our favorites.  Lived in Spain for years and love the country.  Lived in Germany and would never utter a complaint.  Great Britain?  Hell yes!

So, you see, I’m not claiming that France is the best or even that I like it the best.  I’m only saying that for my money France’s culture is the most astonishingly different.  Depending on your outlook, that can be either bad or good.  In my case, extreme enchantment. 

I’ve heard a lot of travelers remark that Parisians are rude and follow that up with:  It’s expensive and we hated it!  As though Paris is all there is to France. That opinion isn’t limited to Americans.  Heard it a lot from Germans. To aid you on your voyage of discovery, I offer this advice:  The French way is not like America’s or Germany’s way.  Accept that and you’ll relax and enjoy this strangely fascinating country and its people and way of life.

Unlike many of my fellow countrymen, I have always had a fabulous time in France, Paris included.

Recently I blogged about adventures in Provence and that laudatory book by Peter Mayle, A Year In Provence.

https://stroudallover.blogspot.de/2017/08/two-weeks-in-provence.html

https://stroudallover.blogspot.de/2017/08/chocolate-in-provence.html

https://stroudallover.blogspot.de/2017/09/a-year-in-provence-by-peter-mayle.html

Well, now I’ve got another book that will make you grab your bib and buy a First Class ticket on Air France:  My Life In France, by Julia Child, with Alex Prud’homme.

I’ll confess that I carried this book in my man-purse everywhere I went.  Couldn’t put it down and didn’t want to.  Those who know me will spew out slanderous accusations that Julia’s love of wine spurred me on, drove me to drink and drive.  You fools, that what a wife is for, so I can drink and ride and read!  I also took it to my favorite bakery cum coffee shop. Multi-tasking, reading in English, speaking to the irresistible women around me in German.  Yes, yes, men too.  But, always back to the book and my new friend, Julia.

Have both my loyal readers heard of Julia Child?  She’s the famous chef who almost singlehandedly brought French cuisine into America’s homes and kitchens, with her seminal work:  Mastering the Art of French Cooking, volumes I and II.

My Life In France, written by Julia and Alex Prud’homme, uses Julia’s multitudinous letters, reminiscences, and her husband’s letters and photographs to tell the often humorous and frequently intimate story of her love affair with the country and it’s cuisine. 

She started out as a normal American woman, with only a smattering of cooking knowledge. Her knowledge of France was a dark void.  As she wrote on Wednesday, November the third, 1948:  “As I gazed through the portal at the twinkling lights of le Harve I had no idea what I was looking at…In Pasadena, California, where I was raised, France did not have a good reputation.”

As she and her husband sat at a table in the Norman restaurant La Couronne, her husband translated what the waiter at the next table said to his patrons, explaining where the chicken they ordered was raised, how it will be cooked, which side dishes would go best with it and which wines would be suitable.

Her comment said it all about the difference between French and American culture.  “Wine?  With lunch?”

But, Julia was a woman of strong attitudes and stronger passions.  Once the tastes and flavors of the French kitchen enveloped her, her path opened and widened with the popping cork of each bottle, and the placement of each pot on the stove.

What I found so enticing about My Life In France is the intimacy of how it was written, as if a very famous chef offered a glass of wine, sat down at your kitchen table and told you her life’s story, amid lengthy struggles, staggering failures and heroic successes.  As some would say, My Life In France is a painting that includes warts and all.  Interesting? Fascinating?  Oh, hell YES!

Most of all, it’s a story of the development of a passion and following that passion like a lit fuse to a stick of dynamite, in spite of the nay-sayers and dream killers many of whom were family members.   The story is so unlikely and convoluted that it could only be replicated in the saccharine sweet pages of a romantic novel.

And speaking of romance, it’s also the tale of a lifetime love affair between Julia and her husband Paul, and the unlikely journey of togetherness, yet always keeping Julia’s passion in the forefront.

As she wrote so simply and eloquently:  “…the sole meuniere I ate at La Couronne on my first day in France, in November 1948…was an epiphany!”

Julia, wherever you are, I want you to know how much I enjoyed this little chat.  And, I dearly hope both my readers do, too. I hope they will all have their own epiphany and find the trail that leads them to follow even their most unlikely dreams.

And to that end, dear readers, I raise a glass….Á votre santé!

The Bakery: A Cultural Classroom

I strolled to the local bakery Saturday morning.  The usual malingerers camped in silence over coffee and a book, or stared idly out the windows, or admired the particularly curvaceous backsides of customers at the counter. But, when the idlers noticed me, they looked up from their white porcelain cups, greeted me with soft smiles and a polite “Morgen.” Sometimes they murmur, ‘mosha,’ or ‘moiya.’

 

Zwielkuchen, onion cakes in front, a typical fall treat.

The wonderful faces of the bakery clerks immediately brightened as I checked in for my usual double espresso and a fresh roll.  O---, a cute older clerk, with a blond ponytail that jumps like a twitching teenager when she walks, came from around the counter, stepped close, shook my hand and stared into my eyes.  For a sec I thought she’d used super glue on her fingers and we’d be stuck together ‘til dead do us part.  Can’t complain about early skin on skin. As for the staring, you have to remember that staring is a part of the German culture.  As children, I’m sure the school’s morning rule is:  first one to stop staring gets flogged.

You drive through a neighborhood and pedestrians stop and stare with the gaping intensity of well-aimed cannon.  I always smile and wave to complete strangers, just to give them pause to think they might know me after all.  And if it’s a wife who’s walking with her spouse and staring, I wink and wave and lick my lips.

When Germans toast, they raise their glasses and shout Prost!  They MUST also stare into each other’s eyes, or risk a year of bad sex.  Now, I know you’re thinking…hey, at this point in my life, and with my current hands-on life style, even bad sex...

Previously, I gave you a few ‘good morning’ options.  Language is constantly changing and being abbreviated, a lesson high school language teachers, in their slave like devotion to complete sentences, apparently never learned, mainly because few are native speakers of the language they’re teaching, or because the French they learned in 1960 does not take into account ripped jeans, green hair, tattoos, and the mandatory ‘like’ now populating every casual remark.  So now I’m going to like give you a few like for-instances.

For example, no German uses the word Fraulein to describe a young woman anymore. Everything is Frau these days, which can mean woman or wife.  I know American women would wince if a husband introduced them as “my woman.’  You might also hear’ junge Frau’ for a young woman, as opposed to ‘Jungfrau’, meaning virgin.  Another word seldom used.

But, before you get your knickers twisted and go braless (which I heartily recommend, by the way), I hasten to add it’s the same for men.  My Mann can mean both my man and my husband.

Even the word, yes (ja), is seldom used.  Instead, you’ll hear (as I did this morning from a tall, slender, very beautiful woman) the vulgar sounding yaw!   This is not to say that I’m entirely put off by vulgar women, but I do have my standards, though often cloaked in the dark corners of my libido.

You might be interested to know, even in the heat of summer, which is to say only as warm as April in Georgia, German women do not go braless.  This is unfortunate.

And speaking of sartorial arrangements, what of the other sex, the hairy legged destroyers of virtue?  German men frequently go for three quarter length to half-length jeans.  Only place I’ve seen that on Y chromosomes in the states is on toddlers being hand towed by impatient mothers.

So, I sat and joined the other malingerers, sipping my coffee, reading my book and reflecting on all I’d learned on this bright morning.  Wait a sec….O is headed my way again….and she’s staring…