Mariage Jurassien

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This weekend we were in France for Emilie's sister Cecile's wedding. And as is customary for French weddings, it took place in the region where the bride is from (in this case, the Jura). Don't feel bad for the groom, though, as the "civil" wedding took place in his hometown of St. Nazaire (northwestern France) back in September.

As this was my first French wedding, I didn't know what to expect going into the weekend. Things definitely started off on a good note, though, when we arrived at the "château" in Syam where the wedding party would be staying for the evening. It was built in 1818 by a wealthy industrialist and its design was inspired by a Renaissance Villa in Northern Italy. 

Here's the view from the front door. It's pretty hard to compete with natural beauty such as this.

The interior of the château was equally impressive, with a central rotundra that was the focal point of all four floors.

The wedding took place at a small church in nearby Gillois. The ceremony lasted about an hour and was fairly consistent with a Catholic wedding ceremony in the U.S. (aside from being in French, of course). 

Here's the bride and the groom shortly after the ceremony began. The photo also gives a nice feel for the church interior, which was pretty much everything you'd expect from a centuries-old church in the French countryside. While it may be normal for the French to attend a wedding in a place such as this, it was definitely a unique experience for me.

And here are the newlyweds outside the church after being presented as man and wife.

After the wedding we headed back to the château for the the reception, which was held in another building on the property where we were staying. This is where I began to experience the marathon nature of French weddings.

First there was the cocktail reception, which lasted a couple of hours and included all of the guests from the wedding. Basically, French weddings have two tiers of guests: those who are invited just to the cocktail reception and those who are invited to the cocktail reception and the subsequent dinner reception. You'd think that having two tiers of guest would make things a bit awkward, but apparently not.

The highlight of the cocktail reception (at least for Emilie and her aunts) was the bouquet toss. Surprise, surprise, but guess who caught it? Yep...Emilie. I don't know if "caught" it is the right word, actually, as she used rugby-like tactics to take out the opposition and ensure she came down with it. Perhaps a formal protest with the bouquet-toss governing body is also in order given that the bride throwing the bouquet was her sister. Interesting how it ended up in Emilie's hands. I think the fix was in...

The dinner consisted of countless plates (appetizer, multiple main courses, cheese, dessert) and all were great. And throughout, there were various "animations" -- basically speeches with photo slideshows by the best man, the maid of honor (Emilie) and a couple of others.

After dinner, the reception went late into the night. And during this time I noticed a couple clear differences with many of the U.S. weddings that I've been to. First, as the wedding was in the countryside, there was no time cut-off. People stayed as late as they wanted as there was no one to complain about the noise.

Second, the bride and the groom closed down the night. Normally, I feel like the bride and groom are gone before you know it. In this case, however, they were the ones giving the late-night requests to the DJ when few others still remained. I think they definitely did it right.

Englischer Garten

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After three hectic days of sightseeing across Bavaria, we decided to set a much slower pace for our final day (particularly given the 5+ hour drive home that awaited in the late afternoon).

 
As such, we began with a relaxed brunch at a restaurant that one of my friends from work had recommended. It had an outdoor patio, which was perfect given the beautiful weather. Here's a picture of a church that was near the restaurant.

We spent the balance of our visit walking around the Englischer Garten, a public park in central Munich that was created in 1789 and is larger than Central Park in New York City. The park's name (I presume no translation is necessary...) comes from the general style of landscaping that was used when it was created.

The park has plenty of open areas that people were using for sports, sitting around with friends or simply laying out in the sun. There is also large lake where you can rent boats to explore if you so desire. We didn't have the time, but it looked like a nice way to spend the day.

The Englischer Garten is also home to a couple of beer gardens. One of which is adjacent to the Chinesischer Turm, a pagoda-like wooden structure visible in the photo below. 

We walked around the park for a couple of hours and really only scratched the surface. Like Central Park, it would take days to fully explore. Nonetheless, I think we had a nice introduction and were able to see how many of the "locals" make the most of their city on a beautiful Spring day.

Munich

On our way to Munich on Saturday morning, we stopped in Dachau to see the WWII era concentration camp. It was definitely an eerie feeling to walk around a place where such cruel and inhuman acts took place.

Here's a photo of the infamous gate with the (loosely translated) phrase "Work Liberates". 

Before visiting Dachau, I wasn't really aware of the distinction between a "concentration camp" and an "extermination camp" (Dachau being an example of the former; Aushwitz-Birkenau, the latter). As demonstrated by the absolutely devastating pictures on display in the museum, however, the distinction between the two camp types seems to have been fuzzy.

I don't know if there's any way to really describe the camp other than pure evil. I can't imagine how people found the will to "live" while facing such conditions.

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We arrived in Munich to a much more festive atmosphere: Saturday night was the UEFA Champion's League Final (basically the Super Bowl of European soccer) between Bayern Munich and Chelsea (London). And similar to the Super Bowl, the host venue rotates irrespective of the two teams that have reached the final. Thus, it was purely coincidence that Bayern was able to play the final in its hometown. This definitely added to the craziness.

We began our Munich visit by walking to the Neues Rathaus (New Town Hall), which was built in the late-19th century and faces one of the city's major plazas -- the Marienplatz.

For a better view of the city (and to escape the rabid football fans for a few minutes), we decided to head up to the top of the building's main tower. And at nearly 300 feet, the tower indeed offered a fantastic view. Here's a photo of the nearby St. Peter's Church (Peterskirche), which is the oldest church in the city center and dates back to the 14th century.

We then walked around the city a bit to get a better feel for it. As with the other Bavarian towns that we visited, the architecture was very interesting. And perhaps most impressive, a good deal of it had to be completely restored after being destroyed by Allied bombing during WWII. To the left of the picture below is (part of) the famous Hofbräuhaus.

As we continued our self-guided tour of the city, we saw a number of churches (most notably the Frauenkirche and the Theatinerkirche). We also passed the National Theater (pictured below), where we had tickets to see I Capuleti e i Montecchi (an opera version of Romeo and Juliet) later in the evening.

We finished off our sightseeing on Saturday by visiting two of Munich's famous art museums -- the Alte ("Old") Pinakothek and the Neue ("New") Pinakothek. The first houses a vast collection of works by the "Old Masters" (pre-19th century European painters, I subsequently learned), while the second contained works by 19th century painters.

The general area around the museums is known as the Kunstareal ("Art District") as there are a number of other museums to visit there as well. The area is also home to the Königsplatz, a square that was often used for Nazi rallies during the Third Reich.

After finishing up with the museums, it was time to head back to the hotel to change for the opera. And In order to save some time, we decided to take the metro. This led to one of our more interesting Munich experiences, as a four-person rock group (singer, guitarist, bassist and drummer) got on at the first stop and started performing on the train (the drummer and guitarist are visible in the picture below).

I have to say that it was pretty cool and the other passengers -- most of whom were on their way to pre-party for the evening's football championship -- were loving it.

Our subsequent metro ride to the opera turned out to be equally interesting, as we ended up being on the same line that went to the football stadium. As such, the train was packed like sardines with sweaty, drunk fanatics singing their teams' songs at the top of their lungs. There were literally crowd control police at each metro stop in order to prevent stampedes. Fortunately, we were able to force our way off the train at our desired stop, though we probably smelled like we were coming straight from Oktoberfest.

Despite having to follow up our two interesting metro experiences, the opera managed to do a good job of keeping us entertained. I think it helped that I was familiar with the story of Romeo & Juliet. Otherwise, I would have been lost given the Italian lyrics and German subtitles.

After the opera we grabbed a very nice dinner and then headed to a bar to watch the end of the football champtionship. We arrived in time to see the overtime period and the shoot-out, during which the fans were going crazy. Here's a photo after Munich took the lead in the shoot-out.

Unfortunately, it wasn't meant to be for the local team. Shortly after the above photo, the momentum shifted and Chelsea won the shoot-out. I don't know if I've ever seen the collective life get sucked out of a city so quickly. But at least they handled the loss gracefully. I have a feeling things could have gotten a little ugly had Chelsea been the team that lost given the craziness that we had witnessed earlier on the metro. The word hooligan comes to mind.

The Romantic Road

On day two of our road trip, we decided to follow the Romantische Strasse ("Romantic Road") north from Füssen and stop in some small towns along the way. The road was originally a medieval trade route that linked important towns at the time, though its name wasn't coined until the1950s when travel agents looking to boost tourism. Apparently the route is very popular with Japanese tourists, in particular, as all the signs are in Japanese as well (see below).

The first town that we visited was Dinkelsbühl, which was founded in the 11th century and whose look is considered representative of a typical German town in the 15th - 17th centuries. The town is also notable in that it was a "mixed imperial city" during the reformation -- i.e., it had a joint Catholic-Protestant government with an equal distribution of Catholic and Protestant civic officials.

The city's medieval wall and towers were very well preserved, in part because Dinkelsbühl made it through WWII virtually unscathed.

Many of the towers were ultimately converted into small homes (or perhaps apartments is a better description), which we were a bit surprised by. It would have been really interesting to tour a few of the towers to see what the interiors were like, but that unfortunately wasn't in the cards.

We spent the majority of our time in Dinkelsbühl simply wandering the streets of the old town and taking in the main sights. I particularly liked the general architecture of the buildings -- basically a lot of angular, A-shaped rooves with interesting exterior designs.

Our second stop of the day was Nordlingen, another medieval town along the Romantic Road. Like Dinkelsbühl, the town's external wall remains completely in tact and you have to pass through a gate to enter. The town is a little older, though -- it celebrated its 1100th anniversary in 1998.

As with our visit to Dinkelsbühl, we spent most of our time simply walking around the city and enjoying the sights. As seen in the photo below, the buildings in Nordlingen were also characterized by A-shaped rooves and interesting designs in the walls.

We later learned that Nordlingen was the town shown during the glass elevator scene at the end of the film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Our final stop of the day was Augsburg, where we would spend the night before heading to Munich for Saturday and Sunday. By this point the weather had deteriorated a bit, but it was still nice enough to walk around for some sightseeing before dinner. Here's a view of the Rathaus (city hall), which is the oldest secular Renaissance building north of the Alps.

Like Dinkelsbühl, Augsburg was a mixed imperial city during the Reformation. This is evidenced by the St. Ulrich's and St. Afra's Abbey, pictured below, which consisted of both a Roman Catholic church and a Protestant (Lutheran) church. Needless to say, the interiors of the two churches were considerably different.

While walking around the city we came across the following building, which had the most colorful exterior walls that we had seen during our visit by far. I'm not sure exactly what the murals depicted, but I presume they had something to do with the city's history or perhaps some religious context.

Before calling it a night we stopped for dinner at a restaurant near our hotel. As a whole it was a rather uneventful (albeit good) meal, except for one thing: I was surprised by how many people were having beer with dinner at a nice restaraunt. Sure Bavaria is known for its beer, but I never expected it to play a central role during dinner (basically replacing wine). Then again, the heartiness of Bavarian cuisine clearly goes better with a nice, cold beer than a fine wine (at least based on my limited experience).

Bavaria

For the 4-day Ascension holiday weekend, Emilie and I decided to do a road trip through the Bavaria region of southern Germany.

Our first stop was Füssen, a small town near the Austrian border that began as a settlement during Roman times. And while Füssen is no doubt a very nice town in its own right, we had actually chosen it due to its proximity to a specific sight that would serve as our first visit of the trip: the Neuschwanstein castle.

The castle was commissioned by King Ludwig II of Bavaria during the 19th century and was to serve as both a personal retreat and a form of homage to the composer Richard Wagner. Also of note, it later served as the inspiration for Disneyland's Sleeping Beauty castle.

Our visit included a castle tour that touched upon the life of Ludwig II, the history of the castle itself, as well as the stories behind the many rooms that we passed through. It was very interesting (particularly the mysterious circumstances surrounding Ludwig's death), though I'd have to say that my favorite part of the visit ultimately turned out to be the castle's surroundings. As evidenced by the picture below, the views that the castle's location afforded were absolutely stunning.

After finishing up our visit at Neuschwanstein, we decided to take a bit of a detour on the way to our next stop and drove across the border to Austria. The drive provided beautiful alpine views and we were surprised to see a lot of snow even at relatively low elevations. Apparently it had been very cold in recent days with a fair amount of new snow.

As we returned to Germany we passed through the resort town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, site of the 1936 Winter Olymplics. Shortly thereafter we arrived in Ettal, which is known for its Benedictine monastery that dates back to the middle ages. The current monastery, pictured below, was constructed during the mid-18th century.

Next we headed to another of King Ludwig II's Bavarian retreats -- Linderhof Palace. It was inspired by Versailles (Louis XIV was an idol for Ludwig), with many of its features based on the French palace (albeit on a much smaller scale).

Like Neuschwanstein castle, Linderhof is surrounded by beautiful scenery. Ludwig apparently chose the location due to his fond memories of hunting with his father in the area during his youth.

After Linderhof, we stopped in a small town called Oberammergau to walk around for a bit. The town is known in part for its lüftlmalerei -- frescoes on the walls of buildings and homes that depict traditional Bavarian culture, religious themes and fairy tales. If you look closely at the picture below, you can see some examples on the building.

For our final stop of the day, we visited the Pilgrimage Church of Wies. It was built in the mid-18th century to house a wooden figure of Christ on which real tears were seen in 1738 and ultimately deemed a miracle (hence the attraction for religious pilgrims).

The most impressive part of the church was definitely its interior, with detailed frescoes and sculptures. The picture below probably doesn't do the church justice, but at least it offers a glimpse of what we saw inside.

The Flan is in the Oven

Yesterday was the final round of the French presidential election. As expected, François Hollande defeated the incumbent, Nicolas Sarkozy, becoming the first Socialist president since Mitterand in the 80s. The general feeling isn't so much that there was massive support for Hollande, but instead that people were simply sick of Sarkozy and in need of a change.

The announcement of the (forecasted) results was pretty comical, as in France it is illegal for media outlets (TV, radio, print, internet, etc.) to release the results before all polling stations have closed at 8pm. As such, the French media are forced to play a game of pretending not to know who the projected winner was, despite the fact the results had been leaked via foreign news outlets, twitter messages, blog posts, etc. hours earlier.

It was particularly funny whenever the TV news programs cut to live shots of the two candidates respective supporters. The commentators basically had to pretend not to know the results even though the moods conveyed by the crowds were dead giveaways as to who had won (e.g., ecstatic Hollande supporters; subdued Sarkozy supporters).

And perhaps the biggest joke of the night was the forced drama around the 8pm countdown to the results announcement, which relied on the manufactured suspense of a bad reality TV program (imagine dramatic music and countdown graphics). How the commentators kept straight faces throughout the broadcast is beyond me, though the €75,000 fine for leaking the results surely played a role.

The best part of the legal anachronism surrounding "premature annunciation" was definitely the length to which average French citizens would go to hint at the results without breaking the spirit of the law (most notably via coded blog posts and twitter messages). Here's the link to an article that I found describing this phenomenon with respect to the first round of the election.

Day Trips

This weekend consisted of a couple of day trips to France. On Saturday, we headed across the lake to Evian for lunch with Emilie's sister and her fiancé. It was supposed to rain most of the day, but the sun decided to stick around all afternoon. Here are a couple of photos that I took during the boat ride to Evian.

On Sunday, we headed to Emilie's mom's place in the Jura so Emilie could vote in the deuxième tour (second round) of the French presidential election. More importantly, this allowed us to have a nice lunch compliments of Emilie's mom. Here's a photo looking at back at Lake Geneva during the drive.

Munchen

 

This week I was in Germany for work, spending some time in both Munich and a small town about an hour south called Murnau that is near the Austrian border. It was my first "real" visit to Munich, as every other time I've been to the city simply entailed changing planes at the Munich airport.

In reality, my first "real" visit didn't provide much of an opportunity to see the city beyond passing a couple of landmarks while in a cab. Fortunately, though, Emilie are going back to Munich in a few weeks so I'll finally be able to tour the city property.

Murnau was very nice and had a real alpine feel to it. I never knew that Munich was only a short drive from the mountains. Here's a photo that I took from the hotel.

Given the limited free time, the only other area of interest to report on was the food and drink. There was some very good wurst and, of course, some great Bavarian beers. And everything seemed to be served with spargel -- asparagus. Apparently it's currently in season.