Weeks 4 & 5 – August 2003 – Franche Comté and the Haut-Rhin Regions

bike touring through the French countryside

When we were in Paris, we volunteered for Cyclo-Camping International (CCI), an association of and for cyclo-tourists. One sub-group of this organization is called “Cyclists Welcome Cyclists.” The purpose of this group is for its members to welcome other members into their homes when they are travelling through their part of the country or world. One of the goals is to meet other cyclists and to extend hospitality to those who are travelling by bike. We had never before taken advantage of this network, but had heard good accounts from those who had. So we decided to give it a try. We made a few phone calls, but found out that everyone was on vacation. One man, however, said he had a friend who had just returned from vacation the day before, and that we should give her a call. We did, and she said we could stay with her the next night.

When we arrived in Besançon, we found that Sylvie was more than hospitable. She made dinner for us (and the best chocolate-pear tarte!) and we had a cold shower and a real bed ready for us. Best of all, she had a piano. I was able to play a bit, so I was very happy.

Sylvie shared some of the stories from her travels with us, notably of the times when she was in Brazil and Colombia. The following day, she rode with us for the first part of the day, taking us through the backroads of the region. It was a charming ride through the woods and the countryside.  We passed petite villages, and I joked to Stéphane as we passed through Vaire-le-Grand that I’d like to see Vaire-le-Petit, because it was hard to imagine a town on a smaller scale. Stéphane said that we had already passed through Vaire-le-Petit, but I must have missed it when I blinked. I remember the small house in one village with the “Town Hall” sign notifying the world that this was indeed where the mayor conducted his business. Funny to think that there is a mayor in even the smallest of villages.

Stéphane and I absolutely loved the countryside we passed through. It was pretty, with farmhouses and tractors dotting the landscape and the mountains providing the backdrop.
As Sylvie prepared to leave us to turn back to Besançon and we said our good-byes, we saw two cyclo-tourists approaching us from the other direction. They were a German couple heading towards Lyon. They stopped to talk for a moment and asked if we knew of a campground in the area. Sylvie responded that there was indeed one, but that it wasn’t very nice, and if they were looking for a place to stay, why didn’t they come stay at her place for thenight? She wouldn’t have normally made the proposition, she said, but she had good memories from the time she was in Germany and was in need of a somewhere to stay, and a German had welcomed her into his home for the night. Besides, she added, she had never had anyone in her home before (before us, that is), but since it had worked out so wonderfully, she was thinking of joining the “Cyclist Welcomes Cyclist” list.

The Germans took her number and said that they would call her if they didn’t find a place to camp before dark. We pedalled off in the other direction, wondering if they ever did call.

The next two days we spent biking through the Doubs River Valley. Friday morning we road along the Rhône-Rhine Canal and watched the workings of the canal as boats passed through. After a rather strenuous day pedalling up steep hills, we met Stéphane’s cousin, Julien, and his girlfriend, Benôite, near Belfort, where we found a hidden patch of field to camp for the weekend. We had been looking forward to seeing them. They rode six hours from Paris to meet us. We cooked out and layed back to look at the stars, which were especially bright here where we were in complete darkness, far from the closest town.

On Saturday, we rode into Belfort, where we toured the old citadel and fortress and then stopped for dinner in a small Alsacienne restaurant. We tried a traditional dinner of the region, a “tarte flambée,” a pastry made with sour cream, eggs, gruyère cheese, bacon and onions, along with a choice of extras, such as potatoes or sausage. The menu included a selection of cheeses to finish off the meal, a culinary tradition which is typically French; however, the difference was that this menu had only a selection of meunster cheeses, which is a specialty of the Alsace Region.

Lunch break

We continued east towards the German border on Sunday after Julien and Benoîte headed back to Paris. Monday and Tuesday we spent at a small lake, swimming during the daytime and cooking over a campfire in the evening. Stéphane went on a search for wood for the fire.
He came back laden down with wood, which he had strapped to the bike. We cooked fish over the fire and as the fire burned, we watched the stars in the sky and their reflection in the lake below.

We made use of the “Cyclist Welcomes Cyclist” network once again, and met a couple in Mulhouse who welcomed us into their home. We were impressed by their hospitality and their efforts to be accomodating. Katherine came home from work at midday to have lunch with us and when she left an hour later, she had left us the key to the apartment and the permission to do our laundry and use their computer and the Internet. They offered to let us stay for several nights (we stayed two), and I was surprised that they were so willing to let us stay at their place even when they weren’t there (they already had plans to spend the second evening with their neighbors).

Katherine and Sébastien have done quite a bit of travelling. They’ve biked through several countries in central and northern Europe and in South America. It’s a shame that we didn’t have more time to hear about their experiences. Now, they are into diving and cross-country skiing. They’ve been skiing several times in Greenland and Iceland (they carry a sled behind them with their provisions), and their next plan is to spend six months cross-country skiing through different regions of the world.

As we’ve approached the German border, Stéphane and I noticed that a lot of people seemed to speak German. It seemed as if half the people we passed spoke German and the majority of the radio stations that we tuned into for the last few days were German as well. And yet, we were still in France, weren’t we? Katherine and Sébastien explained to us that it was not German that we were hearing, but Alsatian, a dialect with German roots that is spoken in the Alsace-Lorraine region of France. The lands have passed hands between the French and Germans several times, but the dialect has remained distinct. The Alsatians are able to understand German, but the Germans have difficult understanding Alsacienne. As for the radio stations that we were hearing, there were stations in Alsatian, German, and Swiss-German, from three different countries, all speaking different languages. Only for us, because we were unable to distinguish the difference, they were all the same.

So far, everything has been very familiar. I think that will change as soon as we cross the border and everyone speaks a different language. That will be the most noticeable difference at first. But even here in France, as we are nearing Alsace, we are discovering distinct traditions and cuisine. There is a strong Germanic heritage. The Alsace region was in fact German until around 1650, when it passed into French hands. It then passed back to the Germans after the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 and remained part of the German state until the end of the First World War, in 1918. It has been French ever since, but we find the Germanic tradition in such things as the language, the names of the villages, the architectural style, the Christmas bizarres and markets, and the cuisine and wine. The munster cheeses and Reisling wines are good examples of typical Alsatian food, as are the sausage and sauerkraut. We have been happy to discover new pastries in the region that we did not find in Paris.