Auxerre Wine Tasting

There is a group of people in Nevers who know each other only from CouchSurfing; that is to say that they were complete strangers until they slept on each others' couches.  Pretty fun system for budget travel :)  One night, this group met up at a bar, we got to introduce ourselves to everyone, and the very next day we were invited to tag along to a wine tasting in Auxerre with them.

The countryside on the way there was so beautiful, and we left early enough in the morning to watch the fog lift out of the valleys.  It made the whole pasture look enchanted :)

The first stop we made in Auxerre was this church, which from this angle looks one-dimensional--but I promise it's not!  The friend who drove us wanted to go to a special mass there that morning, but we ducked out and had a coffee instead.  Oops.

We did stay long enough, however, to see a parade of winemakers strutting with their musical instruments, period costume props, and homemade wine shrines and banners.  They were all so proud! 

Here the wine culture is really familial; it's not something that a rich man decides to do because he's got money and loves wine, it's something that a little boy or girl sees their parents doing and decides they want to go to school to learn how to do the same thing.  They even have high schools (lycées) that teach teenagers the sciences and techniques associated with winemaking! Makes me want to go back to high school...

Live music was playing everywhere at this festival; we'd turn corners and find new bands playing completely different styles of music, from jazz...

...to cow print, boa-bedecked, kilted a Capella music :)

Right at the center of town sat a gorgeous clock tower, and as the light changed (since we were there from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.) we could see how many different parts of it were gilded in gold.  It was really breathtaking.

And another thing that was breathtaking, but in a completely different way: the making of blood sausage. 
Yes, I did try the blood sausage.  Yes, it was just about as gross as I thought it would be :P 

The architecture in Auxerre reminds me of Germany, or of the little town where Belle lives in Beauty and the Beast!  It's so charming and homey, and the whole town makes you feel so warmly welcomed.

The whole town was full of tents that housed winemakers and cheesemakers (and bloodsausagemakers) who were giving out samples of their product.  The nice thing about this wine festival--officially called the St. Vincent du Grand Auxerrois--was that the vendors weren't actually allowed to sell their wines.  The festival was strictly for tasting, and if you found a wine that you wanted to buy, you could set that up directly with the vendor.  Still, it was a relief for three poor college kids to not have to pretend that we were going to buy a case of each wine just so we could sample it!

They had games set up for kids (and, of course, me and Jess) like this barrel roll.  It was actually a lot harder than it looked! I won :)  Thanks, Ian, for your photography skillz.

I think I love this picture because it looks so alien.  That big white bubble in the corner is actually a tiny hot air balloon with a camera attached to it that was taking aerial pictures of the whole festival.  It was remote controlled, too, so the man in charge could send it anywhere, take pictures of anything, and then just summon it back to him like an obedient dog!  I kinda want one....

For lunch we stopped at an adorable café and Jess and I shared a lunch formule that came with an entrée of gougères, or pastry puffs, filled with cream and escargots.  It's apparently a Bourgogne specialty, since Bourgogne is the capital of escargots in France, and we loved them :)

We also opted for a boeuf bourguignon, which is pretty tough to order in restaurants simply because it has to cook for SO long--we're talking 6 hours or more over low heat.  Still, this one was pretty impressive, especially coming from a café on festival day!

I don't remember what this man was doing or selling, but he just looks so French, I had to throw him in here :)  He almost looks like an organ grinder--where's yer monkey, monsieur?

One thing I always forget about is the spittoons where you can spit the wine you don't like or, if you're driving, spit out the mouthful after you've gotten a feel for the taste.  I never do it, of course; if I'm spending 5€ on a commemorative wine glass and an additional 1€ on a necklace carrier for that wine glass, I'm keeping all that wine in my blood, thank you very much!

Speaking of...

As we left, the sun was setting, and the two cathedrals and their ripply reflections showed up on the water.  Auxerre is a beautiful city, big and vibrant in ways that Nevers isn't, and we really enjoyed our day trip there :)

Summer in the Crescent City

It's been ages since I've written, but I think that's ok--I haven't been doing a whole lot of wanderlusting this year (well, the lusting yes, but not the wandering).

After graduation in the spring (woohoo! Congrats to the class of 2010) I moved back to Tennessee for a while, went to Bonnaroo for the 4th summer in a row (always a treat, though thinly disguised as a trippy, dirty nightmare in classic boondock fashion), and then moved to New Orleans for the summer.

NOLA was the perfect place to set myself up for a year in France; I had beignets and café au lait from Café du Monde, heard Cajun poetry (and a well-heeled 'yat accent while I was at it), and heard Americans (real ones! With real American accents!) correctly pronounce French street names. I also, for the first time in my life, was NOT the only one celebrating Bastille Day--one of my beau's professors threw a Fête de la Bastille and we arrived...
in costume. (Check out my modern translation of a French Revolution-era ladies' hat and powdered wig; it's a fedora with a red metal mailbox on it, complete with letters from Talleyrand, Ben Franklin, and Sophocles, all perched atop a mop. Viva la Revolution!)

Now that I'm back from the Big Easy, I'm contemplating packing my bags: I leave for France on September 28, flying into Paris, then take a train from Paris to Strasbourg where I'll meet a former French exchange student and her parents so they can accompany me to Nevers. I've been assigned to the Inspection Académique de la Nièvre, which is a fancy way of saying I'll be living in the rustic, rural, breathtaking countryside of the Bourgogne (Burgundy) region around Dijon.

Later this week my mom and I are going to Atlanta to visit the Consulate so I can validate my work visa; really, though, the Consulate is just a necessary formality that so happens to fall during a mid-week mother-daughter excursion full of limousine escorts, organic produce, and the Body exhibit. Sounds fun :) I'll certainly keep you posted.