Nancy

Greetings everybody, I hope this finds you enjoying a wonderful start to the new year!

Arriving in Nancy, I would stay with family friends Claude and Chantal in the nearby village of Chaligny. The plan was to meet Claude at the station. Although I could only recall meeting Claude very briefly several years ago, we managed to recognise each other quite easily. Claude gave me a brief tour of the old part of town and we then met Chantal at a nearby restaurant for lunch, where I faced my first culinary adventure. A traditional French dish is veal head, where parts of a young cow’s head are cooked and served in a pot with vegetables and sauce. I hadn’t travelled so far to miss out on unique opportunities like this, and I eagerly devoured cheek, tongue and ear (brain was not included in the dish).

During my time in Nancy and Chaligny, I enjoyed several other tradition French dishes that might upset those cursed with a fragile stomach (or militant vegetarianism). Foie gras (cooked duck liver) was absolutely delicious; boudin (a black sausage made from blood and onions) was very good; boudin blanc (a white sausage that contains no blood) was just as good, and contained tiny slices of meat rather than nondescript mince. I also tried many fine cheeses (gruyere and mont d’or were highlights) and a wide range of excellent French wines. As in Paris, my refined palate allowed me to distinguish between red and white, and between sweet and dry, and very little more. I was on more familiar ground trying French beers (Meteor, a beer local to the Alsace region was particularly good) and various fine spirits, including several excellent whiskies and a Guatemalan rum that was only slightly younger than myself.

Chaligny is a village in name and size, charming and quaint, perched on the side of a wide, shallow valley through which the Moselle river lazily bends. Claude and Chantal’s house is almost 400 years old (i.e., dating back almost two centuries before Europeans settled in Australia) and it is absolutely lovely. Original wooden beams stand exposed against several walls and the entrance and foyer are paved with the original stones. The cave-like cellar looks out across the valley at the Moselle river, and the house itself sits on a narrow stone street exclusively populated by buildings of similar vintage, including the tiny village church. The old streets make two-way traffic an interesting proposition, and the parked cars further reduce the space available for traffic.

The streets of Chaligny soon give way to dirt tracks that wind through the surrounding countryside and forest, with no indication of where they might lead. I spent one day following several of these tracks, occasionally emerging at the side of a major road, or at a clearing in the snow-capped forest. For a moment, I thought I spied a dog scampering along the track ahead of me. It was actually a wild boar, fortunately one that was too small to consider any option other than fleeing from my presence. Apparently the bigger ones can be rather dangerous, but at least there are no drop-bears in France.

Inspired by a rare break in the heavy cloud that hung over Chaligny for most of my stay, I enjoyed a pleasant stroll along the banks of the Moselle river. The good weather was reason enough for many other people to venture out, I greeted the many dog walkers with my best “bonjour” and made way for the odd cyclist. Several nearby villages abut the river, and I was amused to discover that one of these villages bears the dubious name “Sexey aux Forges”, which my English-speaking brain automatically translated as “sexy forges”. For the record, google’s translation service can shed no further light on this name.

In contrast to the small villages of Chaligny and Sexey aux Forges, Nancy is a large university city, home to several large universities and other institutes of higher eduction. It is also home to a distinctive art nouveau style, developed around the start of the 20th century and evident in the large number of beautiful houses that date from this period. The Musée de l’École de Nancy (“School of Nancy Museum”), located in one such house, is home to a wide range of furniture, glassware and other artworks from this school of art. The facade of the house and the surrounding gardens also capture the elegant style of this period, and it was well worth visiting.

Several beautiful stretches of parkland are also found in Nancy, and in combination with the old city centre, this makes Nancy feel smaller and more intimate than the large city it actually is. The older parts of the city date back to the Middle Ages, and probably the most famous attraction of Nancy is the bright and beautiful Place Stanislas (named after the duke of Lorraine, Stanisław Leszczyński), which extends to the elegant Place de la Carrière and Place d’Alliance, all three places being on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 1983.

The vast, beautiful square of Place Stanislas is paved with very light-coloured stones and is lined by charming buildings on all sides, including the opera house, a grand hotel, the Fine Arts Museum and the city hall. In the centre of the square is a large statue of Stanislas himself, and the corners of the square are adorned with beautiful black-and-gold decorations, a striking colour theme that is reprised on the lanterns that light the square at night. The buildings on all sides of the square are also spectacularly lit in the evenings — as pretty as Place Stanislas is during the day, it is simply stunning at night.

Further afield, Claude and Chantal took me on a tour of the Vosges and Alsace. The Vosges are a mountain range that run along the west side of the Rhine valley. On the other side of the Vosges from Chaligny is the Alsace region, which extends adjacent to Germany and Switzerland. Both Alsace and Lorraine (the region in which Chaligny is located) were annexed by Germany in 1871, and reverted to French control at the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. The regions were again annexed de facto by Germany in 1940, before reverting to France in 1945. Despite being aware of the general territorial changes in Europe over the last century or so, actually travelling through land that has changed hands so many times in recent history was a curious experience. And the land itself was spectacular.

The Vosges sit above the low-lying cloud that routinely covered the sky in Chaligny, and due to heavy snowfall the densely-wooded peaks were sparkling like jewels in the bright sunlight. Small villages are scattered across the mountains, and in the charming village of Gerardmer I was introduced to both the house of Claude’s childhood and to “vin chaud” — literally “hot wine”, it is heated wine mixed with spices such as cinnamon. Inspired by the stunning blanket of snow draped over the forests, we would later return to the Vosges with snowshoes, working our way to a towering peak from which we could look out over the cloud-covered Alsace region towards Germany and the Alps. High peaks, sheer cliffs, frozen lakes and tiny villages, the Vosges is dazzling.

The neighbouring Alsace region is home to many medieval villages with a distinct architectural style unique to the area, and the houses are brilliant in their bright pastel colours. These villages are home to traditional Christmas markets, where the local townsfolk celebrate traditional activities such as making fresh apple juice and roasting wild boars, while dressed in old fashioned clothing. We stopped in one such village to experience this festival atmosphere first hand, and amidst the fire-twirling children, the free-standing smouldering logs and ridiculously long loaves of bread, it was an exciting and captivating experience.

These Christmas markets are immensely popular and the roads were jammed with traffic, luckily we were leaving the village as the majority of traffic was headed into the village. The gentle hills of this region are home to endless vineyards, the grapes from which are made into wine that form the livelihood for entire villages of wine-selling families. We stopped at a nearby village to admire a beautiful fortified church that looks out across the landscape from a small rise, and we also stopped in another small town to purchase several bags of apples from a friendly street-side vendor.

Apart from both seeing some lovely parts of the Lorraine and Alsace regions of France, and trying a wide range of French cuisine, I also had the pleasure of meeting some of Claude and Chantal’s extended family. On my first night in Chaligny I had dinner with Christian, Yolande, Flore, Damien and Paul, and some nights later I was invited to dinner with Christian and Yolande at their home in Toule. And by complete chance, when in town with Chantal we stumbled across her sister in a beautiful old cafe by the train station. In comparison to the ubiquitous fellow travellers that have formed the bulk of my acquaintances throughout my travels, it was very interesting to meet people whom (for want of a better label) I will refer to as locals.

It was an absolute pleasure to meet everybody, they were wonderful company and the partial language barrier proved to be a source of amusement on both sides. I cannot say that my French improved during these gatherings, despite the best efforts of all parties, and I point the finger of blame at the excellent French wines that were a feature of every meal. I was very kindly invited to spend Christmas with them in an old farmhouse in the Vosges, an offer that I could not refuse. But before spending Christmas in the mountains, I would head south to visit Lyon and Grenoble.

All the best!