Salad, Chicken Salad and the Anti-Salad ... oh, and a visit to France too

So I went back to the Italianischer grocery and bought three more boxes of the good egg pasta. While looking around there I discovered that they have a great deli section too. I’m talking about Lardo, 24 month old Parma Ham, Mortadella as big as your head, and more salamis than any one person can keep track of. Again, I was like a kid in a candy shop. I got some of the Lardo, some of the Parma ham and two different salamis (I know one was fennel salami, I can’t remember what the other one was anymore. I didn’t get any of the Mortadella that day (but I will). I was planning on having a bunch of these cold cuts with a salad, but my lettuce had frozen in the refrigerator. I was planning on having a salad course, which would have been preceded by the anti-salad course.

Of course, because of the lettuce problem none of this worked out. However, since I had already cut up some onions, peppers and mushrooms for the salad, I tossed in an old chicken breast I had laying around, and made some chicken salad. I had some anti-salad while making it - and they were fantastic.

I moved the lettuce to a different shelf, and turned the fridge thermostat down. The next day I cut away a bunch of brown lettuce, but some of it was still good. So I made a real salad and ate it along with some chicken livers.

Saturday was raining, and I told myself that if it was raining, I wasn’t going. I debated about it for a couple of hours Saturday morning. Got on the internet and pulled up the weather forecasts. It didn’t look promising, but I was getting a little stir crazy. So I packed up some stuff and jumped into the Tacoma, and headed for Alsace. There has been some question in our family as to where we are from. One of the possible areas is/was Alsace. I think this is hogwash because some relatives came over to the US several years ago and told us that the family is from Northern Germany, near Holland. Well in an effort to set the record straight, I wanted to travel to Alsace and see whether anyone there looked like me. I was really just wanting to go somewhere, and seeing as how Alsace is only a drive of about 2 hours it got the nod.

The plan was to visit Strasbourg Saturday, spend the night in Saverne and explore it he next day. I was looking forward to trying to get into this restaurant in Saverne which is known for there foie gras dishes. If I couldn’t get into there I was hoping for a big plate of Choucroute with pork belly, sausages, pork and potatoes. But first, I wanted to visit Strasbourg…

Crossing the border into France was no problem. Corporal LeBeau didn’t hassle me at the crossing. I just showed him my passport and license, he asked me if I was a tourist, I said “Oui”, and that was that. I took this picture while waiting in line at the border. You can see my GPS unit in the photo, and the rain on the window.



The GPS directed me to Strasbourg, and once I parked the truck I made sure to save the location in the unit. The display unit is about as big as a calculator and has internal batteries, so I just put it in my backpack. After a day of walking around in a strange city it was nice to have this thing (and have it know where the truck was). I managed to find a free parking space about one km away from where I was going and it was right across the street from l’Hotel de Police. I was hoping that this was the Police Department and not some hotel where they tested their fraternization policies. I hung out for a while to see if I could catch a glimpse of Chief Inspector Dreyfus, but didn’t have any luck.

The rain had pretty much let up, so I packed a raincoat and a small umbrella in my backpack and was off to explore. I mainly visited an area called le Petite France, it’s more or less a tourist area, but … I’m one of those here. I walked past some pretty run down looking places on my way there (socialism). I didn’t take the most direct route – that whole not understanding the language thing is going to get me into trouble one of these days. All I could do today was think about how Barry Saran failed me!

Barry Saran was a teacher at St. Ursula’s School in Fountain Hill, PA. One of the classes he taught was French. This actually worked out well because the first year of High School French was basically a repeat of the previous three years of grade school and was easy. I must have paid more attention to my schoolwork in grade school, because I don’t remember a damn thing from the second year of High School French. You’d think that two years of French (25 years ago) would be enough to get around in this county. Well, it isn’t. I tried asking everyone “avez vous un ami dan la class de francais?” They all looked at me as if they’d never had any friends, forget about having a friend in the French class. This forced me to resort to Plan B.

Plan B consisted of acquiring an accent like Peter Sellers, and saying “le” in front of everything. Oh yeah, and I would call everyone Cato too. I went into a couple of bars and yelled “Cato, le beer sil vous plaite!” I don’t think they understood me, except for the one place I was somewhat forcibly “asked” to leave. On my way out the door I was heard to be telling them to “le kiss my ass!” I called them yellow swine. This is according to one of the police officers who were called to the scene. He spoke pretty good English. I managed to avoid most of the stuff they threw at me (the bar patrons, not the police). I surrendered quietly enough. One thing I did notice was how much tighter the French handcuffs were as compared to the German cuffs.

In all seriousness it was fun, and everyone was very nice. I took a ton of pictures, but since it was still cloudy and overcast, many of them didn’t come out real well. One of the churches I visited was the Cathedral of our Lady of Strasbourg, here are some pictures.





It rained a couple of times during the day, but nothing too heavy or lasting very long. One time it started to sprinkle and I ducked into what I thought was a storefront. All of a sudden I realize that I’m in some Museum. So I just started looking around like I was supposed to be there. I was not sure if there was an entrance fee, as I seemed to be going through the place sort of backwards. Everything was written in French, so I didn’t get the full experience but it was still pretty neat. It was a 3 or 4 story building with an open air courtyard in the middle of it. They had different displays of tools for blacksmithing, rope braiding, wine making, &c.



They had a display of several wine barrels of differing sizes. This is the frontispiece of a barrel. The barrels would be reused, and over time the frontispieces would be carved and some would end up very ornate.



Much of the town is made up of half timbered buildings, and I don’t think there is a square corner to be found.



So I’ll leave you for now, and will continue soon with more details. Mustn’t keep baby sister waiting…

There are a couple more pics on my Flickr page.