furballsinparis: The Bas Rhine valley

We are in the lower Rhine valley...south of Strasbourg by about 12 miles!...The valley is very fertile, and is rimmed by two mountain ranges. One mountain range is in Germany, just past the Rhine river, and the mountains on the other side of the valley lead to the Alps. The land, and what grows here reminds me of the Pennsylvania Dutch country near Lebanon, Pa. The Amish farmers call it "the bread basket of Pennsylvania". Here, most of the fields are covered with corn and hay. I have also seen apple orchards. The golden hay fields look like fields with golden raised polka dots, when the rolls of hay are harvested and await shipping to market. The steep slope to the roofs of the houses led me to believe that they get snow here. So, I looked it up....they get about 30 days of snow here, each year!

It feels much more German than French. Our town is Schaffersheim. Most the village names seem to end in "heim". I think Obernai and Strasbourg, Mulhouse and Colmar, are some of the few towns nearby that don't! But MANY of the towns nearby end in "heim"...for Example, other towns nearby are Entzheim, Ratzenheim, Buffsheim, Huttenheim, Bourgheim, Molsheim, etc. Curious!

Many of the houses are deceptively large...huge even! They seem to be compounds! The original houses are surrounded by a barn, and often have additions that are apartments. The buildings are arranged around a large courtyard that is, of course, a garden! All have outside terraces, on which there is a table and chairs. Our house is a compound like this! I believe they have about 3 apartments, the original house (from 1830) and an old tobacco barn.

There are flowers at every home...in window boxes, and in their gardens. Each house has a flower garden, and most have a vegetable garden too! There are flower baskets on most of the light posts, and many of the towns have flower boxes in the middle of the dividers in the street. The half-timber houses are EVERY color!,,,yellow, sky blue, geranium, green, periwinkle, pink...EVERY color! Shutters, are every color too! But many of the shutters have carved hearts in them. From the inside, the light and shadows that the hearts throw are lovely! ...and there are lace curtains in every window!...some are up higher, and some are lower, but they are all lace, of different kinds. I believe the curtains in our bedroom window are hand made, crocheted lace.

The people here look more Germanic, and are heavier, in general, than the people in the south of France. We noticed MANY more blonds here, than in the south. We hear French spoken, from time to time, but we hear a tremendous amount of German....and even the French we hear, seems to be infused with German...perhaps that is the Alsatian language? If I had to bet!

The food here is not as Mediterranean as the food in the South....many more sausages, sauerkraut, and potatoes. The favorite seems to the "tarts" or, as we call them, thin crust Pizza! The Alsatian pizza has a creamy white cheese sauce, very thinly spread, and onions with Canadian bacon chunks called lardons. It is delicious. I will do a blog about our friend Louis dinner! We had the tarts there!

Here is a view of some of the houses nearby, and in some of the small towns close by.