Through the back door

Another long overdue update; this is becoming a trend that I will try to fix… but France keeps getting in the way so I can’t make any promises.

Every morning my alarm blares in my ear at 5:45 am. And every morning I am excited to start the day. I make my coffee, black, and toast a piece of fresh baguette from the night before. I touch up on some survival French sentences, make a quick sandwich for lunch, and head for the door. Walking out of my front door in the morning might be my favorite part of the day. At six thirty the sun is just breaking the horizon and I have a half-mile walk to the garage of the vineyard where I get my assignments for the day. It’s rarely rainy here so I can always see the last traces of stars in the dusty blue sky and watch as it blends with sherbet shades of pink and orange where the sun meets the rise of vineyards. The air is cool and crisp and the dew on the grass splashes my legs as I jog lightly across the lawn to the dirt road ahead. I cross over it in favor of the grassy lanes between rows of grapes and take the back way to work, winding through vines. It’s a glorious start to the day.

The view out of my bedroom window on a Sunday evening

Work at Chateau La Garde, located in the Pessac-Leognon region of Bordeaux, is halfway through the third week. I can now drive a tractor and mower successfully through rows of vineyard with merely inches to spare. I can hoe weeds underneath the vines until the clay and stone see the sun again. I am well on my way to speaking a full sentence in French with the other workers. And I can whip up a homemade apple pie with Roquefort cheese in my mini toaster oven in under an hour after finishing work.

I am living in a three-bedroom apartment off the southeastern end of the Chateau with a French intern. We have a small kitchen where I enjoy being creative with our minimal cooking appliances. Having a washer and dryer also makes up for learning to cook gourmet with a hot plate and a microwave. We have a living room with a television that doesn’t work, but with the huge window that opens up to a view of sunny vineyards, you don’t need the channels. Internet only works in the kitchen and because my life revolves around doing laundry, cooking, and washing dishes, it works out quite well. Currently, I am trying to make an egg and wine sauce on the hot plate and bake a duck with mushrooms in the mini toaster oven. If it works, you will be the first to know.

Chateau La Garde, with my apartment on the left hand side. The rest of the building is now used for tastings and the office

The chateau is located about a ten-minute walk and two-minute car ride away from the nearest town, Martillac. It’s a walk I make frequently, down the crumbling paved road that will soon be reclaimed by dirt, past vineyards, and through one last shady lane in front of an old castle before reaching the town center. Martillac is a sleepy village with about 200 inhabitants, a pizza place, a boulangerie, a post office and, of course, an old gothic church in the center. On Saturdays there is a bus to Bordeaux at 12:42 in the afternoon. It stops at the stone bench in front of the church but you have to stand up and wave if you want the bus driver to stop. The past two Saturdays, I’ve been the only person on the bus.

So many picturesque walks that I appreciate getting lost every now and then

In the heart of wine country

My weekends have also been busy with trips to Bordeaux city, visiting friends, exploring the coastline in the seaside town of Arcachon, and experiencing the summer “ferias” held in the southwestern towns like Dax. The people I keep meeting in France exceed all expectations of friendliness. They love hearing about American culture, exchanging opinions on music and politics, and arguing about the price of a decent red wine.

The insanity of the Dax feria

Nine to five class days and weekend trips hiking in the Pyrenees and wandering the streets of Barcelona don’t leave much time for blogging or updating, so I’m sorry the newest updates are so late! Also distracting me this week was news that my study tour of wineries for the next three weeks was changed from Spain and Portugal to Italy, Romania, and Greece… woah. So instead of posting pictures and detailed descriptions of breathtaking mountains, I’ve been googling Romanian wines.

In any case, two weekends ago now I was in the Pyrenees mountains. The Pyrenees are a range of mountains in the south of France, on the border with Spain. The Pyrenees are stunning. Stretching for somewhere around 300 miles, the range contains so many back door, hilly towns and interesting people; I could probably spend all seven months hiking there. The entire group from school went and we spent Sunday hiking to the Cirque de Gavarnie. This is a huge bowl in the side of the one of the mountains. Formed by glaciers, the cirque is at a high enough elevation to maintain snow all year and has amazing views of the surrounding valleys.

The cirque de gavernie, with another two hours of walking to go

The hike was easy and flat until right at the end when you had a steep ascent to the bottom of the falls; ten minutes of taking one step forward and three backward finally got us up the rocky slope. If I had a week in the Pyrenees it would definitely be a great place to backpack and get in some serious climbing.

Hardy, mountain bred horses are common in the Pyrenees

Justine and I at the cirque de gavernie, with a stretch of valley behind us

Sunday night we stayed at one of the Alpine Club’s (similar to the Adirondack 46ers Club) hostels in the mountains and enjoyed a three course, home cooked dinner. After, a few of us went for a short hike to the top of a nearby hill that overlooks the town of Gavernie. On the top of the hill you get a beautiful look at the town below and the peaks above. There is also a statue of Mary holding baby Jesus, keeping watch on the sleepy farms in the surrounding mountains. The sight from the top of that hill has been one of my favorites so far on this trip. So much so that I woke up at 5:30 the next morning and hiked back up to get pictures as the sun rose and cut colors across the valley.

The view from the hill outside Gavernie, looking north east through the Pyrenees

The statue in the mountains, keeping watch

Unfortunately, we did have to leave the Pyrenees and head back to reality. Before we got back to school, however, we stopped at a small dairy farm in the foothills. The farm is run by a man, Pierre (who speaks not a lick of English), and his wife who are regionally famous for the incredibly smooth and creamy yogurt made from their cows. Farms in France are much smaller than in the US and production is always done on a much smaller scale. Pierre has about 40 cows and 20 heifers; along with yogurt, he produces cheese and raw milk commercially. It was the first farm visit I’ve had in France so far and it was amazing to see how efficient and yet very natural the agriculture is here.

The milking, processing, and packaging of products is all done at the farm. From cow to food right before your eyes

After my weekend of back door experiences in the Pyrenees, we had a week of intensive classes and a few more farm visits, including a trip to the Roquefort cheese caves. Roquefort is a famous blue cheese in France that has been produced for a few hundred years. Also, last weekend, we went to Barcelona and had free time to spend in the city. It was a relaxing three days and I am in love with Barcelona’s carefree attitude. More on those trips soon!