We decided to take the leisurely route home, and stopped in Mittelbergheim to explore it a bit.

We liked it so much that we have plans to spend our next get-away in this village. This photo was taken on the outskirts.

As we walked around, we stumbled upon these tulips in the middle of a vineyard row.

It was just a single row of flowers… among hundreds of others without any.

In the center of the village, we saw this stately door of a 16th century winery.

On our way back through main street, we spotted a stork’s nest.

Mittelbergheim, you will see us again in autumn.

To learn more about the Alsace, see Strasbourg, France: Plus Colmar and Central Alsace 

Driving between villages, vineyards are what you get to see, wherever you look.

On our way, while looking for a Winstub for our second evening, we visited the nearby village of Andlau where we had stayed previously (autumn 2022). In the center are three restaurants, but none of them was open! One was permanently closed, the other one had a big banner advertising staff hire, and the third one was undergoing a major renovation.

Well, at least, we walked to our favorite picnic spot in Andlau and enjoyed this peaceful view.

My travel partner likes to visit churches. I come along, but only to light candles for our loved ones.

Looking up, I happened to see this unusual contrail. With a glass of wine in hand, I wondered about its purpose.

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

This time, we chose Barr, a fairly quiet village to the south of Obernai, in the Bas-Rhin department. It gets rather overlooked by the usual tourists. We like it this way.

Only this time around in Barr, we found most Winestub (Alsatian-style pub/restaurant) to be closed. Some looked permanently closed, some were maybe shut down permanently. Others were listed as open, based on the website, but we found them closed as well. Of the dozen or so Winestub or restaurants in Barr, we found only one open on our arrival day:

Restaurant Caveau Folie Marco

We enjoyed a very good dinner ( I had La Munstiflette), and the ambiance and service were excellent.

Friends like to ask what we do on these quiet days in Alsace. Well, we walk a lot, eat well, take afternoon naps, enjoy wine in the evenings, walk some more, and have time to reflect. We like to visit ourselves.

We had rented a half-timbered vacation home close to the village center, and everything was in walking distance – as it should be.

When my father passed away in 2005, I was given this demijohn wrapped in packing straw and a metal basket. I guess it holds about 50 liters. When we first got it, I did not check to see how much schnapps was left. Instead we filled some into a jam jar, and stored the demijohn in the basement.

Since then, my husband has taken frequent trips to the basement, where he needed a second pair of hands to pour it into the same jam jar. Every time he came back up, I asked him, if it were empty yet. He always replied, “Not yet.”

18 years later… we still have some, and I have stopped asking. Instead, we brought it upstairs, so it can spend its final years in good company and daylight.

Back then, when I took it off my brother’s hand, I imagined to use this little artifact sometime soon for an up-cycling project. Well, I use it now for decoration. As is.

When I was a young girl, I had to help with collecting the fallen plums. We did not have protective gloves either, when we reached into the nettles to retrieve most of them.

Then the plums were taken to a neighbor, who was the only one with a distillery in the village.

In the 1960s, we had no dentist in the village. When we kids had a toothache, we were told to rinse our pain away with schnapps. When our live-in aunt had a fever, her room smelled like schnapps because of the leg compresses she made from soaking them in it.

Growing up, I had never actually seen anybody drinking this stuff. I only thought of it as a pain reliever.

Now it has become a family joke. “You want to come for a visit? You know you have to have some of Opa’s schnapps!” Once, we actually used it as a pain reliever. One of our American friends arrived from Amsterdam with a bad toothache in tow. While he was here, he used schnapps to tie him over before he could see his dentist in Croatia a couple of days later.

Another time it became a study object of a former student of mine, who, at the time of his visit, studied history at university in Korea.

This schnapps has provided us with so many funny moments to share and remember. For that, I’m forever grateful.

We arrived at a locked gate, which had to be expected at this time of year. We were still able though to tour the grounds a bit.

Gunter Sachs, a German photographer, author, art collector and industrialist, was born in this castle. Gunter, also known as Gunter Sachs von Opel in his earlier days, was one of Germany’s most famous playboys in his days. He was also married to Brigitte Bardot in the 1960s.

The castle park used to be a place of fun for some U.S. army soldiers in post-war Germany.

We enjoyed our view overlooking the Main River valley on this overcast morning.

Last, but not least, for all of you, who remember the nuclear power plant… Luke & Duke are still standing. The plant was in operation from 1982 – 2015, and then it was taken offline as part of the phase out policy for nuclear power in Germany.

This photo was taken from the castle on the hill.

Die Franken sind die Sanguiniker unter den Deutschen. – Theodor Heuss

(The Franconians are the sanguine among the Germans)

We will come back again.

The hotel itself is in the center of the village (Mainberg, a district of Schonungen), and the castle sits up on the hill overlooking the Main River and other villages.

The hotel entrance reflects where the old meets modern.

We had a splendid time there. The rooms are spacious and arranged in a modern way. We had our breakfast in a beautiful ambiance (this room is a wine pub in the evenings).

From the parking lot, you can see part of the castle. It is a good 10-minute walk there, which we did on this overcast morning of New Year’s Eve.

I can highly recommend this hotel. The service is excellent. Mr. Martin, the owner, speaks English as well, and this made our stay more comfortable for our non-German speaking friend, who had come along from London.

If you want to know more about the hotel, then visit Martinshotel.

Of course, we managed a friendly get-together on the Beer Balcony. Can’t leave town without a pit stop here. It was fun having you here, Seth.

I’ve decided to let my Beer Balcony get taken over by vines. Time for a change. But our spirits remain the same.

Pottenstein is always worth a visit. There are many shops along the main road, but some were closed during this off-season.

We also went to our first Christmas market of the season. This one was in Ebermannstadt (25km southeast of Bamberg). What a lovely small market it was. We bought many things such as mulled wine, Bratwurst, Christmas cookies, Gin&Tonic jam, and much more.

Prices are still lower in that part of Germany, so spending money is more fun.

After the Christmas market, we entered one of the restaurants located at the market square. This one, Brauereigasthof Schwanenbräu Ebermannstadt, is one of the finest restaurants I’ve ever been to.

Our view reminded me a bit of looking out at Rockefeller Plaza in New York, also in November of one year.

Service was outstanding (very quick and with a smile each time), and my husband and I both had one of the local specialties. He had breaded carp, and I had a small order of Krenfleisch (boiled pork or beef) in a horseradish sauce with a dumpling.

In my hometown area of lower Franconia, this dish is also known as Fränkisches Hochzeitsessen (Franconian Wedding Meal), and is always served with Bandnudeln (ribbon noodles).

Once I posted a photo of this kind of meal with ribbon noodles on my Facebook page Fränkisch für Ausländer (Franconian Dialect for Foreigners), and this caused quite a stir. Some readers insisted this can only be served with potato dumplings, or boiled potatoes. In my 40+years of cooking and eating out, I had only seen this dish served with noodles.

Then there it was on the menu – with a dumpling! From now on, I will only eat this version. The small white strings you see on the outer part of the plate are radish strips.

This dish is always served with Preiselbeeren (lingonberries).

And yes, we got a six-pack of dunkles Lager to take home.

Visiting Franconian Switzerland means eating and drinking well. At least, to me.

For a mini lesson in the upper Franconian dialect, learn how to say “Of course!”:

“No freili!” The literal translation would be: Ja, freilich = Yes, of course.

So if someone asks you whether you wanted another beer, “Möchten Sie noch ein Bier?”

“No freili!” is the perfect response.

When you first enter the small town of Gössweinstein, you see its castle on top of the hill. The same castle, Burg Gößweinstein, is said to have possibly been the inspiration for Richard Wagner’s opera, Parsifal.

We were there in late November, and it was quite foggy at times.

But nature also displayed its colors.

This shepherd and his herd were a rare sight to see.

We also visited the town of Pottenstein.

We spent most of our first day in Pottenstein, and the first sight next to the church was the Scharfrichter Museum (Executioner Museum). I was tempted to pay it a visit, but my husband didn’t want to. Instead, he dragged me to an antique shop across the road.

In Pottenstein, we also had lunch at a place we will never forget. I will not mention its name, though.

The restaurant floor was dirty, and the waitress immediately told us of her chore of sharpening the knives in the kitchen. She had just previously bought a Wetzstein (whetstone) on sale, and it was not working properly for her… She was going on and on about these dull knives, and how the owner could not dispose of them, because they had belonged to his dead wife. There were moments I thought either we are on Candid Camera, or next time the waitress comes out of the kitchen, she will appear as the witch from Hansel & Gretel.

Of course, I imagined another scenery too, from having read so many mystery and crime novels.

She was also the cook with black dirt under each fingernail. She talked to herself, or the knives, loudly in the kitchen. I really had doubts what kind of food we would get, but I did not mention this to my husband (he told me afterwards he had thought the same).

We promised each other not to leave one sitting alone at the table, not even for going to the loo. We ate very quickly, and agreed, that if that ever happened again, we would pay for our meal WITHOUT touching any of it. And we would leave immediately.

We finished our meal (decent actually, and we detected no other flavor…), and paid right away. The waitress kept talking and talking on our way out, and my husband just closed the door behind us in her mid-sentence.

We both took a deep breath when we stepped outside. This lunch-scare is starting to become a family joke, such as when the question comes up, where we should go for dinner next…

I love frost, the fall season, and Franconia – which also happens to be my hometown area in northern Bavaria.

This was taken from the village of Stammheim towards the village of Wipfeld.

The Main River, the color of the vineyards, the wafts of wog, blue skies and quite a few contrails… where the latter is the only man-made phenomenon.

I wish I could be there right now with some typical mulled wine (German: der Glühwein).

Early frost covers the ground.

Soon, I will get to visit there again.

“The magic thing about home is that it feels good to leave, and it feels even better to come back.” – Wendy Wunder