Walking Frannie - First Spring Hike

What with the weather and vacation, it had been a few weeks since we had Frannie on a hike. So we decide to take a Easter hike today and I got a couple of videos of Frannie enjoying herself. Hope you like as well. Just click on the images to see the videos.

From 2010-04-04

From 2010-04-04

Spring Vacation 2010 - Chasseneuil sur Bonnieure

The town in France that we visited was Chasseneuil sur Bonnieure in the region of France known as Charente. To get there, we had to leave the autoroute and drive 90 km across country, through small towns, farmland and pastures filled with sheep and small brown cattle. we learned later that the cattle were the Limousin cows that the area is famous for.

We arrived in Chasseneuil to find a town of about 3000 people who are living in one and two story homes with wooded shutters. The buildings are of a uniform brown color matching the local stone and have just the right level of exterior dilapidation to give the town the label "charming". This must be like Provence was 30 years ago, before Peter Mayle wrote his books. Like the towns in Provence at that time, this is a small, charming,  working agricultural town, built from the local materials and still relatively untouched by tourism. As someone that has shared the Mayle dream, I fell in love with this little hamlet in the French countryside almost immediately.

Chasseneuil and Charente are in the southwest of France, north and west of Provence. It is therefore a bit colder. Wines are made in Charente, but it is not important product. Most of the grapes grown in Charente are used for another product, Cognac. However, Bordeaux is only 100 km south, so good wines are quite available and are still cheaper than water.

Several restaurants in town offer excellent 3 course meals using local ingredients (including those Limousin cattle) for around 12 €. A half liter of wine at a restaurant cost 5€. We found four bakeries in the town, two butchers, three grocery stores, and two gas stations. There is a small Romanesque Church on the main square and an art deco city hall.

The main square in town has a small market on Wednesday and Saturday that includes fresh fish (it is only 100 km from the Atlantic), produce, and cheese.

A few English have discovered Chasseneuil and are living there. It is only 5 hours by ferry and car from the southern coast of England. There is an English tea room there that will serve an English tea or a full English Breakfast, in case you get tried of the daily availability of fresh baguettes and croissants. 

All in all, this is the kind of place that someone can escape to and truly experience what it means to be French. It would not surprise me when the world is ready for the next escape book like in "A Year in Provence" or "Under the Tuscan Sun", that the book would be about life in Charente

The one tourist attraction in town is the memorial to the French Resistance. Chasseneuil was a center for the French Resistance during WWII. They were actually able to keep the Nazis from fully controlling this part of France through their sabotage efforts.

An interesting note in looking at the graveyard surrounding the memorial, the head stones mark the religion of the person. There you can see former Jewish and Muslim members of the resistance lying side by side. It was a different time then.

Spring Vacation 2010 - French Autoroute

Koblenz to Chasseneuil sur Bonnieure is 977 km. The plan was to head to Chasseneuil as quickly as possible, spend a few days there and then work our way back visiting Loire valley and the cathedral in Chartres.

So on Sunday we spent some 9 hours driving, mostly on the French equivlent to the Autobahn, know as the Autoroute.  About 450 km of this was toll road. The toll road was great. They were smooth as can be, I don't remember rough spots. And there were almost no trucks. The non-toll portions were also good road, although certainly not as improved as the toll portions. There was some congestion as we passed through the southern part of Paris, but there was no toll there.

Certainly traveling on Sunday was one reason for the lack of congestion on our trip. But another reason for these wonderful, uncrowded road was the toll. The cost of those 450 km was 40€ (between $55 and $60). Pretty stiff tolls by anyone's standards. However, we checked on what it would mean to avoid the toll roads on the same trip, it would mean a 16 hour trip. Is 40€ worth a time savings that makes a two day drive into a single day?

Still we wondered about the logic of such high tolls. Well it does seem to keep the Autoroute free of trucks which helps the traffic flow and reduces maintenance cost, it forces those trucks onto smaller highways that often runs through small towns. 

Spring Vacation 2010 - Why France

German schools take a 2 week spring vacation that includes the the week before Easter and the week after. So Magda had some free time. My school was closed on Good Friday and Easter Monday. So by skipping out on 4 days of classes, we could take a week vacation. So on Palm Sunday we packed up the car, took Frannie to a dog sitter, and headed off to France.

Why France?

Well largely because one of Magda's uncle was a German POW in a region of France called the Charente and loved it.

OK, the story is a bit more involved that than.

Magda has known one her close friends Jacqueline since the early sixties while Magda was in Gymnasium (the German equivalent of out High School). They started their relationships as pen pals when Jacqueline was given Magda's address by one of Jacqueline's friends, also named Jacqueline.

Magda and this second Jacqueline had met when she and her mother had traveled to Magda's home town to meet with Magda uncle. Magda's uncle and the mother had meet originally in France when he was a German POW there. Magda and the second Jacqueline had agreed to be pen pals, but this Jacqueline wasn't really so interested in writing so she passed Magda's name along to her friend, and now Magda's close friend.

Jacqueline has been living in Germany for a number of years. They see each other and talk often. This visit was actually to see Jacqueline's 95 year old parents who live in Chasseneuil sur Bonnieure in the Charente. Magda had visited them in France in 1971. Although Magda had seen them a few times in Germany, that was her last visit to see Jacqueline's parents in France. Jacqueline's parents had for years extended an invitation to Magda to visit them again. But for the last 20 years trips to the USA prevented her from going. But this Easter, since I am in Germany now, Jacqueline was planning to visit her parents and Magda had vacation time, it seemed an ideal time to accept the invitation an go.

So that's the story of how we were going to France because Magda's uncle was captured during WWII and sent to France as a POW.