"To Correctly Close the Door, Thanks to Slam It." This sign was posted on the front door of our hotel our first night in Provence. We did not need to slam any doors on this trip, and lots of friendly people opened doors for us. Despite a bit of rain from time to time and occasional inefficiencies with finding our way, our trip to Provence the last week of October was one of the nicest experiences of our time here in Wiener World and Beyond. If the distance between Vienna and Provence is best measured in graciousness, hospitality, scenery, and cuisine, the trip was infinitely long.
We first headed west for Salzburg and Innsbruck and then turned south, going through Tirol and the Brenner Pass into Italy, and then on to our first night's stop, Lake Garda, a glacial lake surrounded by steep mountains. We approached from the north and drove along its west coast, past lemon trees and olive groves, through tiny villages mostly shuttered, with tourist season having passed. At Gargnano we began the search for our hotel. Relying on the booking site's directions, for the next 40 minutes we wound through every street in the town, finally realizing that our lodgings must be high on a mountain that edged the lake. Twenty minutes and countless hairpin curves later we were at Ca Vecia, our hotel, rustic and clean, with an expansive view of the lake and mountains. Early in the evening, however, fog set in, a great, thick pale blanket on the water bed, putting our view to sleep. We consoled ourselves in the hotel restaurant with a liter of red wine, a large antepasto platter of cheeses, prosciutto, and salami, followed by tortellini in a delicate bolognese sauce, and, for dessert, cheese plates.
The next morning, Sunday, we were on the road early, heading south to Genoa, and then west along the Riviera. The highway was cut into the side of the coastal hills, perforated with tunnels short and long, and we rolled through them in heavy traffic, stopping at toll booths about every 50 yards. Cannes, Nice, and the Azure Coast cities--with hotels as numerous as the sand--spread white in the sunshine along the edge of the water. At Marseilles we turned north again, into the gently rolling countryside.
St Rémy de Provence
Late in the afternoon we arrived at the first of the three Provençal villages where we planned 2-day stays, St Rémy. Again the printed directions from the booking website proved to be of little use, and we drove up and down the village lanes, finally stopping at a chateau that had been converted into a hotel. As soon as I opened the door, two extraordinarily kind young ladies gave me directions in English, repeating and spelling out and drawing a little map, doing all they could to ensure that I felt comfortable and clear about where to head next. As autumn darkness came on the town, we finally arrived at our destination, Le Castelet des Alpilles, where we were politely requested to slam the door.
The next morning was punctuated by strong breezes and light showers, the sun obscured from time to time by small, fleet blue clouds over the countryside, rugged and scrubby--but in a genteel way. We walked just outside the village to Glanum, a Roman town, but the ruins were closed for the day, and got to see little more than the city gates, politely slammed before our arrival. From there we ambled across the road to the psychiatric hospital, St Paul, where Vincent Van Gogh committed himself for a year just before his suicide, and where he painted more than a hundred works of starry nights and sunflowers and quintessential Provence. The hospital is surrounded by lavender fields and olive groves; rugged, heavily eroded, gray Alpilles (little Alps) rise above the jumble of red-tiled roofs of the hospital and the houses of the town, the rocky outcroppings looking like so many deformed teeth from one of Van Gogh's nightmares. Van Gogh, we read, loved the area for the quality of the sunlight, a matter not just of the latitude but also the proximity to the Mediterranean and the winds that scour the landscape. Although the building with Van Gogh's room has become a museum, the mental hospital is still a functioning facility that operates in newer, nearby buildings. Art remains a form of therapy in that institution, and in the museum gift shop a number of paintings by patients were displayed for sale--most of which looked as if they had been done by Van Gogh when he was 6.
We spent our next day strolling the town, investigating the small shops and restaurants. In one narrow, cobblestone lane we came across a placard on a 16th-century dwelling identifying it as the birthplace of Nostradamus, originator of the vague prophecies that have so enriched the pseudo-historians of the History Channel.
St Rémy is known for its salads. The flavors were remarkable, as if the vegetables had been harvested not more than an hour before, the textures and tastes as clear and crisp as the colors of the countryside in the Provençal sunlight.
Lourmarin
Tuesday morning, to get to our next village, Lourmarin, we drove north to Cavaillon, taking a route alleged by the map to be more scenic than going directly east from St Rémy. Cavaillon was modern, ugly, and confusing--a town sprawled in dozens of randomly placed traffic circles, and streets with muddy shoulders, rundown bars, dirt-stained auto repair shops, and mud-puddle parking lots of nurseries and building supply houses. At last we found our way out of Cavaillon and, through breezy light showers, made our way into the gentle hills of the Luberon area, where lavender and grain fields spread alongside the slow, winding country road.
As we neared Lourmarin, the rain became heavy. This time, however, we found our hotel, the Villa St Louis, right away. We parked and approached the door as the rains continued. An elderly lady--Mme Bernadette, our hostess-to-be--approached, wielding an umbrella against the dripping black sky and a cane against the wet black cobblestones. With gray hair pulled back in a bun and a face like a tawny grape weathered in the Provençal sun and wind, Mme Bernadette introduced herself and welcomed us as her Austrian guests; she spoke no English and less German. Through a conversational salad of French with English nouns sprinkled like croutons, Mme Bernadette ascertained that we were the guests she expected. And then she led us through the locked high brown doors into the 19th century.
The entry was a dark and dusty cave. The hallway was redolent of lavender, and, as our eyes became accustomed to the dimness, we noticed dried bunches of it on platters and in vases; we soon found that it was scattered throughout the rooms, on surfaces, in corners, and along the stairs. In some rooms the walls were covered with fabric, the same from which the drapes were made. As she led us up a winding stone staircase, we saw more bunches of lavender, on window sills and in bowls on furniture. As Mme Bernadette labored in front of us up the stairs, aged silver-backed mirrors with flecked, crumbling faces struggled to reflect the thin light. Along the walls were pen-and-ink drawings and prints--bar scenes, family dinner scenes, political meeting scenes, some in huge, ornate frames--from the 19th century. Along the floor were antique wooden toys--a train, a tractor, animals, a farmer and his family. She led us through a small kitchen and breakfast room and through another door to our room. It, too, was a cave in the Villa St Louis time warp--antique bed, chairs, dresser, and mirrors. Modern plumbing and a flat-screen tv, however, reminded us, thankfully, of the present.
Tuesday morning, to get to our next village, Lourmarin, we drove north to Cavaillon, taking a route alleged by the map to be more scenic than going directly east from St Rémy. Cavaillon was modern, ugly, and confusing--a town sprawled in dozens of randomly placed traffic circles, and streets with muddy shoulders, rundown bars, dirt-stained auto repair shops, and mud-puddle parking lots of nurseries and building supply houses. At last we found our way out of Cavaillon and, through breezy light showers, made our way into the gentle hills of the Luberon area, where lavender and grain fields spread alongside the slow, winding country road.
As we neared Lourmarin, the rain became heavy. This time, however, we found our hotel, the Villa St Louis, right away. We parked and approached the door as the rains continued. An elderly lady--Mme Bernadette, our hostess-to-be--approached, wielding an umbrella against the dripping black sky and a cane against the wet black cobblestones. With gray hair pulled back in a bun and a face like a tawny grape weathered in the Provençal sun and wind, Mme Bernadette introduced herself and welcomed us as her Austrian guests; she spoke no English and less German. Through a conversational salad of French with English nouns sprinkled like croutons, Mme Bernadette ascertained that we were the guests she expected. And then she led us through the locked high brown doors into the 19th century.
The entry was a dark and dusty cave. The hallway was redolent of lavender, and, as our eyes became accustomed to the dimness, we noticed dried bunches of it on platters and in vases; we soon found that it was scattered throughout the rooms, on surfaces, in corners, and along the stairs. In some rooms the walls were covered with fabric, the same from which the drapes were made. As she led us up a winding stone staircase, we saw more bunches of lavender, on window sills and in bowls on furniture. As Mme Bernadette labored in front of us up the stairs, aged silver-backed mirrors with flecked, crumbling faces struggled to reflect the thin light. Along the walls were pen-and-ink drawings and prints--bar scenes, family dinner scenes, political meeting scenes, some in huge, ornate frames--from the 19th century. Along the floor were antique wooden toys--a train, a tractor, animals, a farmer and his family. She led us through a small kitchen and breakfast room and through another door to our room. It, too, was a cave in the Villa St Louis time warp--antique bed, chairs, dresser, and mirrors. Modern plumbing and a flat-screen tv, however, reminded us, thankfully, of the present.
The rain lifted, and we spent the afternoon strolling Lourmarin--narrow cobblestone streets, bistros, small restaurants, artist boutiques, and a medieval chateau, heavily restored. Just outside town we found the cemetery and the grave of Albert Camus, who had died in an auto accident in 1960, two years after moving to Lourmarin, a location he favored because he loved the light, which, he said, reminded him of his childhood in Algeria.... I knelt by his grave and time-traveled back to my first acquaintance with him in my sophomore year in college. Our hostess Mme Bernadette was, we later learned, a friend of Albert Camus' daughter, who was still living in her father's house, just down a medieval lane from our residence. We noticed also a large number of Italian names in the cemetery; I was puzzled by that until I saw one marker with a map of Corsica etched on it and realized that that island had been their home or their ancestors'. There were more hints of Napoleon than the destruction and despoiling of the churches. We walked past lavender fields and olive groves to reenter the old city.
The next morning the sun was out again, and we headed for Aix-en-Provence. Getting there was easy enough, just following the signs to the Center and locating a parking garage. The newer part of downtown is geometrically laid out, streets with arcades of plane trees--looking much like American sycamores, but a hybrid of those and of Asian sycamores--bright yellow leaves, trunks and limbs white, tan, and gray, like a Jack Russell terrier, though [here insert pun on bark]. We'd had enough of this modern scenery after about 10 minutes, but soon we found ourselves in the old city--narrow, meandering streets, shops with North African and Turkish foods and clothing and other wares, and small cafes--and we were back where we wanted to be. We came across the family home of Paul Cézanne, another Impressionist who loved the light of Provence. After a simple lunch, we started back for Lourmarin. Unlike Aix, Lourmarin is so small that it does not appear on our Michelin map of southern France, and we could find few signs, with or without highway numbers, to help us navigate. So we headed back for the Autoroute, the equivalent of an Interstate highway, and made our way back to Lourmarin by, once again, following the signs for Cavaillon, driving about 40 miles out of the way and plunging back into the gnarled road pattern of that town, whose traffic circles seemed to have multiplied as randomly as mushrooms in the rain.
The next morning we were on the road again. The route home took us past Lyon and across Switzerland into Bavaria. The traffic was heavy, the highway tolls were heavier, and the scenery--mountains, meadows, cities--was intermittently worth it all. Almost 8 hours after leaving Grignan, we reached our final overnight destination, a village just west of Munich and south of Memmingen, where Hitler sat in jail writing Mein Kampf. Had his early efforts to be an artist been in the sweet light of Provence instead of Vienna....?
Back in the Potato, Pork, and Spätzel Belt
Our last stop, Der Schwarzer Adler (Black Eagle), was a guesthouse that appeared to be at least 200 years old, and plaques and memorabilia on the dining room walls indicate that it has been run by the same family for more than a hundred years. We arrived late in the afternoon in a light, chilly breeze and a spraying, sputtering rain. Since we were not sure we had found the right place, Linda waited in the car while I investigated. Feeling tired and creaky from the drive, I stepped gingerly out of the car and through the guesthouse door. Though I was not expecting lavender, I was not quite ready to be startled to alertness by the sweet stink of sauerkraut and three men sitting at a plank table drinking liter glasses of beer. One, who looked like an oversize garden gnome with a huge beer belly, rose and approached me. His red cheeks and bright blue eyes were circled by wild white hair, curly and standing out several inches from his scalp, completed by a white Santa beard and thick, tangled white moustache. He spoke no English, and I could barely understand just a few words of his German, which was, I suppose, heavily accented Bavarian dialect. He handed me a key, #2, and pointed to a doorway marked "W.C." Soo..I was to do #2 in the WC? I pushed open the door and, next to the toilet, I saw a staircase. "Erste Stock," (first floor) he said, and I was on my way. The room was quite simple, as if furnished in blond by IKEA, and clean, quiet, and pleasant. I brought Linda in from the car and directed her to the WC door, telling her that was the way to our room. Soon we had unloaded the car and gotten two bottles of very good beer to relax with before heading downstairs to dinner. The menu was four pages listing nothing but meat and spätzel (noodles), with side dishes of sauerkraut and cheese. So that's what we had. And more beer. Sunday morning we were up early, ready for the final leg of our trip. Our host genially set out a breakfast of coffee, bread, preserves, and yogurt. Soon we stepped out of the sauerkraut-scented Schwarzer Adler into Sunday morning: church bells and barnyard smells, heavy dew and light fog, a brisk chill and a pale, ragged yellow bar of sunlight on the horizon, pushing out the last of the rain clouds.
We were home again in Wiener World by early afternoon, relieved to be back and ready to unpack, glad to be out of the Autobahn traffic, and wishing the memories of lavender scent, good food, lovely wine, mountains, lakes, red tile roofs, and time-warp villages would survive in strength--if not infinitely, at least awhile longer. No need to slam the door on them.
Filler
-- Northern Italy, which is generally quite orderly and unlike the thieves' culture of the south, provided near Brescia its own instance of that nation's cultural unity: when we stopped for gas, a man wearing a vest with the Agip oil company logo--and showing unusual eagerness--ran over to clean the windshield. I saw him use thumb and forefinger to pop off part of a wiper blade; he then removed the wiper arm and held it up to me, demonstrating how the metal piece was going to scrape and ruin the windshield. Fortunately, he said, he thought he had another blade in stock that he could sell me. I said to him in Italian to please reattach the blade, and he did, and then, not the least embarrassed, hurried over to another car to run the same little scam.
-- Car break-ins are a big problem in much of Europe, including Provençe, and several places that we stopped had posted warning signs that echoed counsel in our guidebook: leave no possessions visible in the car. One of us stayed with the car whenever we stopped at service stations, and each time that we changed locations we took all our luggage and purchases out of the car to keep in our hotel room.
-- Sign on a shop announcing that it had been necessary to close for the day: "Thank you for your comprehension."
Grignan
At the end of our week in Provence, we headed north for Grignan, which sits on a rocky outcrop in the Luberon region. Low mountains made a green backdrop for our stay, and here we had the best meals of the trip. Our place of lodging this time, the Hotel Sévigné, was modern and comfortable--lacking the texture and history of the Villa St Louis...but so is every other hotel in the world. The clerk was the first English-speaker we met in the course of our Provence accommodations. English being the preferred language in Europe for any who do not speak a local tongue, the clerk assumed I had made the reservations in that language because I was an Austrian and did not expect her to know German. As she was taking us to our room, she complimented me, "Your English is quite good." The room was lovely: modern and tasteful, with elegant furnishings. The doorway to the bathroom, however, had been designed for Corsicans like Napoleon; this time I used the expedient of setting a chair or a wastebasket in front of the door to remind myself to duck before entering.
Our dinner that last night in Provence was a 3-hour affair, a "fixed menu." We ordered an excellent bottle of a Luberon red, and soon we were served pastries with pate. Those were followed by small clear glasses with oyster soup. Next came the appetizers we had selected: lettuce leaves and a small cup of thick, rich tomato soup; and strips of sweet peppers topped with concupiscent curds of whipped goat cheese. Linda had trout, and I had lamb in a brown sauce flecked with rosemary, accompanied by risotto with bits of yellow and orange peppers. Dessert for Linda was chocolate mousse and raspberries, and for me the "Autumn Plate": chestnut ice cream topped by a huge, paper-thin chocolate wafer, with a serving of fresh raspberries and a 2-inch toadstool formed from chestnut meringue.
Like Lourmarin, Grignan was surrounded by lavender fields and farms. Again, we spent our time wandering its narrow lanes and doing a bit of shopping, with a side trip to the chateau and the 15th-century church adjacent to it. So many of the fine old structures--churches as well as chateaux--that we visited had been stripped of furnishings and ornament 200 years ago. The chateau in Grignan, though restored, had also been nearly completely dismantled, the stone plundered for housing in the village. There is a barrenness about all these structures--sometimes accented by the modernity of the restored elements--that is a reminder of the cultural devastation wreaked first by the Revolution and later throughout Europe by Napoleon and his mercenaries.
At the end of our week in Provence, we headed north for Grignan, which sits on a rocky outcrop in the Luberon region. Low mountains made a green backdrop for our stay, and here we had the best meals of the trip. Our place of lodging this time, the Hotel Sévigné, was modern and comfortable--lacking the texture and history of the Villa St Louis...but so is every other hotel in the world. The clerk was the first English-speaker we met in the course of our Provence accommodations. English being the preferred language in Europe for any who do not speak a local tongue, the clerk assumed I had made the reservations in that language because I was an Austrian and did not expect her to know German. As she was taking us to our room, she complimented me, "Your English is quite good." The room was lovely: modern and tasteful, with elegant furnishings. The doorway to the bathroom, however, had been designed for Corsicans like Napoleon; this time I used the expedient of setting a chair or a wastebasket in front of the door to remind myself to duck before entering.
Our dinner that last night in Provence was a 3-hour affair, a "fixed menu." We ordered an excellent bottle of a Luberon red, and soon we were served pastries with pate. Those were followed by small clear glasses with oyster soup. Next came the appetizers we had selected: lettuce leaves and a small cup of thick, rich tomato soup; and strips of sweet peppers topped with concupiscent curds of whipped goat cheese. Linda had trout, and I had lamb in a brown sauce flecked with rosemary, accompanied by risotto with bits of yellow and orange peppers. Dessert for Linda was chocolate mousse and raspberries, and for me the "Autumn Plate": chestnut ice cream topped by a huge, paper-thin chocolate wafer, with a serving of fresh raspberries and a 2-inch toadstool formed from chestnut meringue.
Like Lourmarin, Grignan was surrounded by lavender fields and farms. Again, we spent our time wandering its narrow lanes and doing a bit of shopping, with a side trip to the chateau and the 15th-century church adjacent to it. So many of the fine old structures--churches as well as chateaux--that we visited had been stripped of furnishings and ornament 200 years ago. The chateau in Grignan, though restored, had also been nearly completely dismantled, the stone plundered for housing in the village. There is a barrenness about all these structures--sometimes accented by the modernity of the restored elements--that is a reminder of the cultural devastation wreaked first by the Revolution and later throughout Europe by Napoleon and his mercenaries.
The next morning we were on the road again. The route home took us past Lyon and across Switzerland into Bavaria. The traffic was heavy, the highway tolls were heavier, and the scenery--mountains, meadows, cities--was intermittently worth it all. Almost 8 hours after leaving Grignan, we reached our final overnight destination, a village just west of Munich and south of Memmingen, where Hitler sat in jail writing Mein Kampf. Had his early efforts to be an artist been in the sweet light of Provence instead of Vienna....?
Back in the Potato, Pork, and Spätzel Belt
Our last stop, Der Schwarzer Adler (Black Eagle), was a guesthouse that appeared to be at least 200 years old, and plaques and memorabilia on the dining room walls indicate that it has been run by the same family for more than a hundred years. We arrived late in the afternoon in a light, chilly breeze and a spraying, sputtering rain. Since we were not sure we had found the right place, Linda waited in the car while I investigated. Feeling tired and creaky from the drive, I stepped gingerly out of the car and through the guesthouse door. Though I was not expecting lavender, I was not quite ready to be startled to alertness by the sweet stink of sauerkraut and three men sitting at a plank table drinking liter glasses of beer. One, who looked like an oversize garden gnome with a huge beer belly, rose and approached me. His red cheeks and bright blue eyes were circled by wild white hair, curly and standing out several inches from his scalp, completed by a white Santa beard and thick, tangled white moustache. He spoke no English, and I could barely understand just a few words of his German, which was, I suppose, heavily accented Bavarian dialect. He handed me a key, #2, and pointed to a doorway marked "W.C." Soo..I was to do #2 in the WC? I pushed open the door and, next to the toilet, I saw a staircase. "Erste Stock," (first floor) he said, and I was on my way. The room was quite simple, as if furnished in blond by IKEA, and clean, quiet, and pleasant. I brought Linda in from the car and directed her to the WC door, telling her that was the way to our room. Soon we had unloaded the car and gotten two bottles of very good beer to relax with before heading downstairs to dinner. The menu was four pages listing nothing but meat and spätzel (noodles), with side dishes of sauerkraut and cheese. So that's what we had. And more beer. Sunday morning we were up early, ready for the final leg of our trip. Our host genially set out a breakfast of coffee, bread, preserves, and yogurt. Soon we stepped out of the sauerkraut-scented Schwarzer Adler into Sunday morning: church bells and barnyard smells, heavy dew and light fog, a brisk chill and a pale, ragged yellow bar of sunlight on the horizon, pushing out the last of the rain clouds.
We were home again in Wiener World by early afternoon, relieved to be back and ready to unpack, glad to be out of the Autobahn traffic, and wishing the memories of lavender scent, good food, lovely wine, mountains, lakes, red tile roofs, and time-warp villages would survive in strength--if not infinitely, at least awhile longer. No need to slam the door on them.
Filler
-- Northern Italy, which is generally quite orderly and unlike the thieves' culture of the south, provided near Brescia its own instance of that nation's cultural unity: when we stopped for gas, a man wearing a vest with the Agip oil company logo--and showing unusual eagerness--ran over to clean the windshield. I saw him use thumb and forefinger to pop off part of a wiper blade; he then removed the wiper arm and held it up to me, demonstrating how the metal piece was going to scrape and ruin the windshield. Fortunately, he said, he thought he had another blade in stock that he could sell me. I said to him in Italian to please reattach the blade, and he did, and then, not the least embarrassed, hurried over to another car to run the same little scam.
-- Car break-ins are a big problem in much of Europe, including Provençe, and several places that we stopped had posted warning signs that echoed counsel in our guidebook: leave no possessions visible in the car. One of us stayed with the car whenever we stopped at service stations, and each time that we changed locations we took all our luggage and purchases out of the car to keep in our hotel room.
-- Sign on a shop announcing that it had been necessary to close for the day: "Thank you for your comprehension."
