Day 12: Haut Koenigsbourg and Riquewihr

It’s the tail-end of the vacation. Those lazy days in Germany are gone. The urge to maximize our experience is creeping in. Our days get packed, and my posts get longer. Bear with me.

Le Marechal serves a breakfast, but it’s a wildly expensive one, so in the morning we struck out to find a local pastry. This wasn’t difficult, we found one, though we have to admit that their baked goods weren’t phenomenal. Eh. They were more or less as good as the stuff we get here at Continental Bakery. The main difference was the price. There, a croissant costs $1; at Continental, it’s $3. Next day a tour guide would tell me that, before the move to the Euro, they could get croissants for 25 cents. The increase nearly brought down the government.

Anyway, we still had things to see in Colmar, so we struck out to the far side of town and their highly regarded art and archaeology museum, the Unterlinden. And on the way we nearly struck gold.

A flea market was unfolding by the main church! All throughout the trip, Dottie was talking about hitting antique shops to find “cast iron jewelry” – supposedly, during WWI, patriotic German women had donated their real jewelry to the war effort, but made cheaper cast-iron knock-offs to keep for themselves.  I highly doubt this really happened – or, if it did, the cast iron jewel was made for public show, while the original was stashed in Switzerland. Anyway, Dottie claims these fake jewels are now highly sought-after by collectors.

Sadly, the women of Alsace, being French at the time, are even more unlikely to have done this. No such jewelry was found at the market. I did find an old Quimper bowl that I nearly bought for $10, and regret not having done so. My wife points out that the bowl was chipped and in poor condition, but those of you who know will recognize this as a feature, not a drawback.

Anyway, off to finish the morning with some more High Art. We’d seen the moderns in Stuttgart, and we couldn’t leave Europe without seeing some medieval stuff. The Unterlinden has the justly famous Issenheim Altarpiece, along with other works of note (and perhaps not – they advertise a tapestry of Picasso’s Guernica. Seriously). I’m no medieval art expert but even I can tell this work was of exceptional quality, especially compared to the usual gilt background Madonna and Child stuff.

Even all that – flea market, museum – we weren’t  yet at lunchtime. That would have been a whole day in Germany. Anyway, having wandered the breadth of the Colmar old town, we hopped back in the Transit and made for the village of Riquewihr, about 20 minutes away.

Riquewihr is one of those UN heritage tourstop sites, it touts itself as having been voted “France’s prettiest village” not too long ago. And why not – it sits, behind a few remaining walls, on a gentle upslope surrounded by vineyards, has maybe…5,000 inhabitants? One wide main street, cobbled, with two parallel side streets to that. Maybe 8 cross streets. You can walk it in 90 minutes if you don’t stop to smell the roses.

Those roses, in this case, are more bright half timbered houses crowding over you. It makes a convincing effort at being authentically medieval, though that’s quickly spoiled by the shops that line main street. These are mostly small wine shops plus the occasional souvenir shop and restaurant. The thing to do, in theory, is wander from one wine shop to another and taste each product. That all sounds good but our kids would have a fit after stop 2. Fair enough. We wandered, viewed, then picked out a restaurant, La Grenuille, off on a side street (basic rule, don’t eat on the main tourist streets).

After 11 days of German food, my family was in full revolt, and demanded they be served a hamburger. Don’t give me that look – to keep it local, an appetizer of escargot was ordered, too, and supposedly this was an outstanding hamburger (I had a cordon bleu) though that could be the “throw a starving man a cracker” effect.

Riquewihr was lovely, though by now I’ve seen more than a few of these towns – one gets jaded. Rothenburg in Germany holds the standard here, because of its size, walls, and layout. The Tuscan version is San Gimignano. These towns are delightful to visit, but the wonder wears off after a while.

It was barely 2:00 by now, and not too far away is another major local attraction, Haut Koenigsbourg. This massive castle sits on a commanding hilltop high above the Rhine valley, at the eastern edge of the Vosges mountains. It was another 30 minutes away, though we could spot it in 5, the rest of the time was taken up with a windy drive to the peak.

You would think that a sturdy castle atop this steep grade would be nigh impregnable, but this castle proved quite pregnable.

It, or some version of it, was destroyed three times – if I recall, twice by force, once by neglect. By the late 1800’s, it was close to being a useless pile of rubble.

Well. The locals down below thought up a cracking idea – why not donate it to The Kaiser? Show our loyalty, and get this eyesore off our hands. In 1900, they “gifted” the thing to Wilhelm II. I mean, that’s like giving someone a broken iPhone. Here, you fix it, it’ll only cost you more than it’s worth.

Willy Two was in a bit of a bind – Alsace had been in German hands for only a generation, and I suspect he thought this may be a good propaganda opportunity for him. “Look at what we’ll do for you,” I guess. So, he plowed millions upon millions to restore the whole thing, including hiring a team of archaeologists to dig through the site and salvage authentic tools and materials, and try to replicate original building construction.

 I have no doubt that the final result is an accurate rebuild. It’s also a little sterile, as opposed to the Meersburg castle that looked like it may have been in use a week ago.

And it has a lot of steps. Groans and complains from family were heard as ever more staircases appeared.

But the views were breathtaking, although the best were not from the top of the castle, but the base.

I wondered how the French feel about this site. Wilhelm II had it finished by 1908, at great expense, only to have it fall into French hands by 1918. They, in turn, can’t hide the fact that the restoration was done by Willy, their arch nemesis. It’s not like they can celebrate the end product. They have to treat it with a certain ambivalence, and I think that showed in the tour.

How do the French feel about this place in general? The whole area? “Haut Koenigsbourg” – really, they can’t pretend it’s not Königsburg, or that Keysersberg isn’t Kaisersberg, can they? Do they ever think, “hey, we totally stole this place from the Germans”?

Then I think of towns with names like Tuscaloosa and San Antonio, and figure it’s best to drop this line of inquiry.

Now, back into Colmar. Le Marechal’s failing was a relaxing place to drink wine; we had no balconies like at Lamm, and their front patio was usually crammed with guests plus people walking in and out. We gamely tried a glass before heading off to dinner at Winstub de la Petite Venise. Alsacian fare, delicious.

That night, the European soccer championship tournament began, with the French pulling off a victory in stoppage time. The locals hollered and honked into the wee hours. The tournament would end with the French losing to Portugal in the finals, but that was weeks away. For the moment, everyone was happy.