I'm Going Back to France

Yep, now that we're approaching the one year anniversary of our cruise, I'm trying hard to wrap up the rest of the trip. I left off the postings at Colmar, France. 

As we did in many other places, we had a tour guide, essential for the nitty-gritty of the local story.

 We learned, for example, that these houses have numbered beams so that they can be taken apart, moved, and put back together. I'm not so clear on how often that actually happened, but still! We also learned that these centuries old wooden beams were anciently preserved by painting them with a mixture of ox blood and vinegar. Makes you wonder how often the locals threw open the windows for fresh air. At one point, the locals tried plastering over the beams, but that was a dismal failure and made the beams look permanently discolored.

 Another interesting bit of local color: this lovely and desirable part of Southern France was annexed a couple of times by those sneaky Germans, the first time 1871-1918 and a second time from 1940-1945. In a masterful stroke of passive-aggressiveness, the French made these cute little signs. Our guide explained that the famous political cartoonist Hansi created several signs like this one: the monk, who clearly is French, is schooling the stupid (obviously German) pig, who is then served up as dinner. Of course, you could not tell your invading annexers to their face that they are pigs, but.....

Sadly, of the 42 signs created by this artist, only 2 are thought to remain. The rest were melted down to use as ammunition.

 Remember Fred? NO? Frederic Bartholdi? STILL no? He's the dude who created the Statue of Liberty. He also created this statue "The Great Support of the World", found in the courtyard of his home. The three figures holding up the earth represent justice, labor, and patriotism. I really rather like it.

 

Somewhere along the way, Judy and I got a little turned around after stopping for some of our drug of choice gelato, and headed off in the wrong direction. Bob managed to stop us before we rented an apartment over the gelato store. Umm...thanks, Bob?

Colmar was so picturesque. I could have wandered here forever.

It was around this point that we began to appreciate the European love of storks.

 See that nest-y looking thing on the edge of the roof?

 It actually IS a nest-y thing. They put up platforms to encourage storks to nest on the buildings.

Of course, there was a magnificent church to visit-

This is St. Martin's-unique because of the yellow stone that was used. It was build 1234-1365.

 

Same tile ceiling we saw virtually everywhere.

 We also stopped at St. Matthew's, a Franciscan church built around the late 12th century.

 Inside, the decor was considerably more restrained than many churches we viewed.

 Our next stop was the Musee D'Unterlinden, a Dominican convent build in the 13th century.

We had only enough time to quickly walk through the building, now being used as a museum.

This is a particularly famous piece, the Ishemheim Altarpiece by Grunewald, created around 1506

Note the depiction of Christ being laid in the tomb here at the bottom.

 Christ had pock-marked skin, representing his compassion and understanding for those who had the plague, many of whom were cared for at a local monastery.

There is a lot of paint-by-numbers going on, or as the locals call it "Masterpiece Restoration". Frankly, it looked like tedious work.

Some random Colmar pictures: wishing well,

Maison des Tetes, the Mayor's home.

There were 111 faces and masks on this home. Apparently the Mayor wanted you to know he was watching you.

 Even their sewer grates look artistic.

I must admit, I am getting a bit foggy about which pictures belong to which city. I hope I've only used Colmar photos, but.....