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Interior of St. George's Church, Selestat |
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Crucifixion, Selestat |
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Kintzheim Castle |
March 17, 2003
Selestat - Chatenois - Kintzheim
distance hiked: 6 miles, but mostly without packs
The next day, we got up early and wandered into the old town, stopping in at a café for breakfast. The place had a jungle-themed mural on the walls, and displays around the restaurant of large bread sculptures in the shape of crabs and clowns, with notices that these could be custom-ordered for parties.
Further on, we wandered into St. George’s cathedral, a church built starting in the twelfth century, featuring ornately painted columns and an unfinished fresco.
Satisfied with our tour of Selestat, we got our bags, checked out of the hotel, and headed on to Chatenois, our next stop, just a few miles distant. Before leaving town, we stopped at the train station so we could get a Herald-Tribune and a phonecard (Le Seigneur des Anneaux collectible edition).
Chatenois was a very short walk away—shortly after we crossed the bridge over the freeway outside Selestat, we were on its outskirts. In town we passed by a school—children played outside at recess. A boy, maybe nine years old, called out, “Are you walking far?”
“No,” I said, “Not today.”
In town, for the first time we reached a hotel where we had reservations on the day we had them. But the hotel door was locked. A sign indicated that on Monday, the hotel was closed until 4:00, a fact that the owners had neglected to disclose to me when they confirmed my reservation. This was a problem, since Shorty and I each had 30-pound bags on our backs and after our hard day yesterday, had every intention of taking things easy today. We checked at the Chatenois tourist office to see if we could leave the bags there temporarily, but the tourist office was closed till May.
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“Well,” I observed to Shorty, “The hotel doesn’t have my credit card number. We’ll just check in somewhere else.”
There was a little place across the street. I went in and found myself in a busy, smoky bar. The bartender asked if she could help me. I asked about a room—she said they were 24 euros.
Though never one to turn down a bargain, for a room with two beds, this struck me as probably too cheap.
I went down the street to the Hotel Dontenville. This hotel had rooms for the same price as the hotel I’d originally reserved, so I took it. It was a small but very comfortable room with a view of the mountains to the south.
After a few minutes rest, we decided to try to walk to Chateau Haut Koenigsburg, a castle whose picture you’ve probably seen even if you don’t recognize it by name. Before setting out, we were going to stop in at the small town grocery to pick up a few things for lunch, but found that it is closed on Monday afternoons. I still had almonds and dried fruit I’d brought from the states, so we headed on to Kintzheim, the next town to the south.
Above Kintzheim at the base of the mountains, we had a quick lunch before climbing up to Castle Kintzheim. In faint italic letters, the map noted the castle as Volerie des Aigles, which I assumed was a reference to the castle’s height, or something. The slope to the castle was steep. Periodically, we heard woodpeckers knocking and loud screeches.
“What is that?” Shorty asked.
“Woodpeckers?”
We arrived at the castle. The wooden doors were closed, but I pushed one gently, and it opened. Volerie des Aigles was not a figure of speech, it turns out: right now, it was an out of season tourist attraction. An empty ticket booth stood to our right, just inside the castle walls, facing the courtyard. In the courtyard itself, we could see four or five posts, each with an eagle tied to it. Seeing us, they shrieked and flapped their wings every time we made a move.
There wasn’t a soul around. Shorty stayed put, facing the eagles at the entrance; I decided to explore for a few minutes. Continuing around the courtyard, I found more eagles chained to posts, as well as vultures. On the far side of the courtyard, sitting in full sun, were cages full of owls. They hissed when they saw me.
Hearing footsteps, and sensing that we were actually trespassing, I went back to where Shorty was.
“Very Hitchcock,” she said.
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“I have a bad feeling that Montagne des Singes isn’t just a fanciful name, either,” I said, referring to another faintly italicized point on the map on the way to Haut Koenigsburg.
But in any case, Haut Koenigsburg was now decidedly no longer on our agenda for today. Even without our packs, our feet were very, very sore, and we decided to just walk back to Chatenois.
We went back on a different path, walking through the village of Kintzheim. In the back yard of one house, we saw a small flock of chickens eating baguettes.
Back at the hotel, we watched last-ditch efforts to avert war continue their collapse, then went to see if we could find a grocery store. Since the little grocery in town was closed for the day, we tried to find the hypermarket that a small billboard in town advertised as being only 2 minutes away by car. We figured we could manage that distance on foot. But after walking on a busy main road for a while, we saw another advertisement for the same hypermarket, now saying the hypermarket was 3 minutes away. We walked back into Chatenois.
We explored the town cemetery for a while. Rather than the green lawns we were accustomed to in American cemeteries, this one was mostly gravel. Each grave was covered with a variety of memorial plaques.
The sun was growing lower. We stopped it at the winery just a few doors down from the hotel and picked up a bottle of wine. The winery was owned by relatives of the people who owned the hotel. After a walk through the tiny walled old town, whose chief feature is a church with impressive green tilework on its steeple, we went back to the hotel room. Flipping through channels on the tv, I found myself presented with the choice of watching syndicated Simpson's reruns in either French or German. Hurray for globalization!
We had dinner in the hotel restaurant: duck with morels for me, and beef in pepper sauce for Shorty, both with fried potato and egg dumplings on the side. We also shared a tarte flambee (the one here was my favorite one of the trip, though Shorty disagrees).
We had the BBC here, so we watched news of war. Also of immediate concern was that the BBC was reporting that a French rail strike was scheduled to start tomorrow. Already certain that we would not be able to hike all the way to Andlau, our next stop, tomorrow, we intended to use the train to get us partway there. This was a problem.
