 1 Sunday 13 June, 2010 We collect our Fiat Punto from the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof (usually abbreviated to Hbf) which is the main rail station. We started our journey with 11,922 Kms on the clock and when we returned it, we had done over 4000 kms. It served us well. |
 2 Sunday 13 June, 2010 We then drove 240 kms on the A5 from Frankfurt to a little village called Schnersheim, very near Strasbourg in France. Here we were to meet Denis and Nathalie who had a special surprise arranged for us. |
 3 Sunday 13 June, 2010 Our Fiat Punto had only a 1.3 litre engine, barely larger than my motorcycle, and at first I hated it. The first time we stopped for fuel it cost a mere €50; hate turned to love. Our trip average for the whole time we had the car was about 6.5 litres/100 - amazing. My Mazda Tribute gets around 13 litres/100 so the Fiat cost less $A to run. |
 4 Sunday 13 June, 2010 Denis told us to wait near the Schnersheim Town Hall (Mairie) , call him from our mobile and he would come and collect us. Luckily, this shaky plan worked. |
 5 Sunday 13 June, 2010 After talking with Denis, we waited at the Town Hall. Michele told us that they had arranged a special surprise for us but we had no idea what it was. |
 6 Sunday 13 June, 2010 Our special surprise was that we were to meet Nathalie's parents on the Rhine-Marne Canal where they have a boat moored. They had selected a spot near the famous Arzviller Inclined plane for a boat ride and a picnic . We drove via Denis and Nathalie's home in Neugartheim, left our Fiat Punto there, and went in their car to Arzviller, 38 kms away. |
 7 Sunday 13 June, 2010 We meet Nathalie's father Freddie on the Marne-Rhine Canal. This canal runs from the Rhine River at Strasbourg to the Marne River in central France. The canal is 313 km long and connects with the rest of the French waterway system. |
 8 Sunday 13 June, 2010 We park the car and clamber aboard. Nicolas and Louise, a young French couple, stayed with us in Sydney a couple of months earlier in preparation for their campervan voyage around Australia. Denis is Nicolas' father. |
 9 Sunday 13 June, 2010 Nathalie is Denis' wife. Both Nathalie and Denis speak very good English. |
 10 Sunday 13 June, 2010 We motor 200 or so metres down the canal and disembark. |
 11 Sunday 13 June, 2010 Here we meet Marguerite, Nathalie's mother. |
 12 Sunday 13 June, 2010 Marguerite meets Jenni. |
 13 Sunday 13 June, 2010 Cap'n Freddie. Freddiie spoke Alsacian mainly but was also fluent in French and English. |
 14 Sunday 13 June, 2010 What a wonderful surprise. The picnic table is set and we have the inclinator in the background. |
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 16 Sunday 13 June, 2010 Interestingly, Marguerite spoke Alsacian although she could speak a little French. She spoke no English but her warmth was international. Here she holds the lead to a very large dog. |
 17 Sunday 13 June, 2010 The canal was opened in 1853 and was suitable for small ships. Nowadays, the canals are used mostly by pleasure craft. |
 18 Sunday 13 June, 2010 The canal has 154 locks, including two in the Moselle River. There are four tunnels including a very large tunnel to the west of here at Arzviller where it disappears underground for 2.4 kms. |
 19 Sunday 13 June, 2010 This is Freddie's bicycle on which I had my first bicycle ride since we lived in Adelaide 30 years ago. |
 20 Sunday 13 June, 2010 The steady linking of all the river systems — Rhine, Rhône, Saône and Seine — and the North Sea was boosted in 1879 by the establishment of the Freycinet gauge. This specified the minimum size of locks so that canal traffic doubled in the first decades of the 20th century. |
 21 Sunday 13 June, 2010 Our charming hosts. |
 22 Sunday 13 June, 2010 The sign about the Alsatian Tart didn't apply to our table. Tart Flambe is not totally unlike a pizza. |
 23 Sunday 13 June, 2010 Nathalie starts to set the table bringing (of course) fine silverware and crockery, cloth napkins, condiments and genuine French red wine. If this is the way the French have a picnic, we have some catching up to do. |
 24 Sunday 13 June, 2010 Freddie and Marguerite prepared all of this food in the boat's kitchen. The quality of French produce is top class; look at those tomatoes. |
 25 Sunday 13 June, 2010 As surprises go, this was as good as it gets: fine dining by the water's edge in Moselle, France. |
 26 Sunday 13 June, 2010 Another surprise awaited us. Freddie has a friend who operates a tour boat ride up and down the inclinator. He arranged for his friend to make an unscheduled stop to pick us up. |
 27 Sunday 13 June, 2010 We wave goodbye to Freddie and Marguerite as we set sail in the tour boat. |
 28 Sunday 13 June, 2010 Before the advent of self-propelled barges, the barges were hauled by two to four horses or mules and then tractors. |
 29 Sunday 13 June, 2010 The Arzviller Inclined Plane is just around the corner from us. |
 30 Sunday 13 June, 2010 Before the inclinator was built in 1969, the journey from Strasbourg to the Marne (with its 178 locks) took six to nine days. Just the locks ladder of Arzviller needed one whole day. |
 31 Sunday 13 June, 2010 As this graphic shows, the inclinator repaced a system of 17 locks and a level change of 44.45 metres over a distance of 4 kilometres |
 32 Sunday 13 June, 2010 The seventeen locks wasted a lot of water; about 600 cubic metres per boat, per lock. In summer, the water required by the locks was greater than the supply available in the surrounding river and ponds. |
 33 Sunday 13 June, 2010 The inclinator works by lifting or lowering a caisson of water containing a boat up or down the slope using a balancing counterweight. As we travel upwards, we can see the huge counterweight on the left coming downwards. |
 34 Sunday 13 June, 2010 We reach the top. We can see Freddie and Marguerite's boat and the picnic table below. While we enjoy ourselves, Freddie and Marguerite wash the dishes and prepare a dessert and cheeses for our return. |
 35 Sunday 13 June, 2010 The new system uses water very efficiently as the "bathtub" of water travels up and down the slope with a loss of only 40 cubic metres per round trip. |
 36 Sunday 13 June, 2010 About 150,000 visitors per year visit the Saint-Louis-Arzviller inclined plane which makes it the most visited attraction in Lorraine. |
 37 Sunday 13 June, 2010 Since the early 21st century there has been a slight increase in merchant traffic and a slight decrease in tourist traffic (although tourist traffic is still 23 times larger). With energy costs for transport continuing to rise, the canal system is not yet obsolete. |
 38 Sunday 13 June, 2010 A tour boat enters the lock below us. |
 39 Sunday 13 June, 2010 We get off the tourist boat at the top and visit this old barge which is now a museum. Inside the barge are photographs of the original lock system. Interesting though is that when the photographs began in 1904, the description accompanying each picture was in German as Alsace & Lorraine were part of Germany at the time. In 1918 the comments changed to French and then back to German in 1940. |
 40 Sunday 13 June, 2010 Panorama of a truly lovely part of the world. |
 41 Sunday 13 June, 2010 We walk back down the hill and get a perfect view of the caisson, riding on rails, transporting a tourist boat. |
 42 Sunday 13 June, 2010 This is an aerial view of the inclinator. We met Freddie and boarded the boat to the NE near the bridge. Our picnic was on the eastern side of the headland near the large body of water. This was a fabulous surprise and a fantastic way to start our holiday. |
 43 Sunday 13 June, 2010 We then travel to the historic town of Saverne in Alsace, 20 kms from Arzviller. The dotted line is the boundary between the two regions. |
 44 Sunday 13 June, 2010 Saverne is situated in a valley of the Vosges Mountains and it is the the only easy route from the west, through the Northern Vosges, into Alsace. During the Reformation (1517-1648) Saverne was the seat of the exiled Catholic prince-bishops of Strasbourg. |
 45 Sunday 13 June, 2010 We park the car and walk into the Grand'Rue (Main Street) pedestrian plaza. |
 46 Sunday 13 June, 2010 We cross the Marne-Rhine Canal which amazingly . . . |
 47 Sunday 13 June, 2010 . . allows canal traffic to pass under the roadway. There are 24 locks in the 42 Km between here and Arzviller. |
 48 Sunday 13 June, 2010 Looking up Rue Poincare there are two interesting jettied houses where each floor gets progressively bigger. Throughout Medieval Europe some roofs are gabled (easier to use a beam & pulley to lift goods to the upper floor) and some slope towards the street (safer for adjoining buildings if there is a roof fire). This street has a mixture of the two. |
 49 Sunday 13 June, 2010 Three gorgeous buildings in a row: La Chine restaurant, the Town Hall (Hotel de Ville) and the Taverne Katz. The tricolor flies proudly over the Town Hall. |
 50 Sunday 13 June, 2010 The Taverne Katz in Grand'Rue dates from 1605. It was built for Henri Katz who was the chief tax collector. The ornate carvings around the windows seem to be more heraldic than religious and I don't remember ever seeing a building as richly decorated as this one. Some bare breasts are visible - shock horror. |
 51 Sunday 13 June, 2010 This is the church of the Notre-Dame-de-la-Nativity. The church contains a finely carved (in the 15th century) pulpit by Hans Hammer, who also carved the pulpit in the Strasbourg cathedral. We enter through the west door as the church faces east-west like most medieval churches in Europe. |
 52 Sunday 13 June, 2010 Notre Dame means Our Lady which means this is a Catholic Church. The church dates from the 12th century. |
 53 Sunday 13 June, 2010 Our next stop is at the Rohan Castle. the Espace Rohan is Saverne's 500 seat theatre and concert hall which is located within the castle. |
 54 Sunday 13 June, 2010 We go inside for a look around but there is nothing much to see. |
 55 Sunday 13 June, 2010 The building was erected between 1780 and 1790 on the site of a previous building that had burned down in 1779. |
 56 Sunday 13 June, 2010 By the time of the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 only the outside was completed. The building then fell gradually into disrepair. |
 57 Sunday 13 June, 2010 Napoleon III had the building renovated and extended and stopped its decline. Napoleon III was elected President in 1848 and initiated a coup d'état in 1851. He then ascended the throne on 2 December 1852 as Emperor, the forty-eighth anniversary of Napoleon I's coronation. He ruled as Emperor until 4 September 1870 and he holds the distinction of being both the first titular president and the last monarch of France. |
 58 Sunday 13 June, 2010 This building is on the same grounds as the Notre-Dame-de-la-Nativity that we saw earlier. Perhaps it was a monastery at one time. Behind it is the apse of the Notre-Dame-de-la-Nativity |
 59 Sunday 13 June, 2010 The Rohan castle once served as a home for officers' widows and after the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 as a barracks. Today, one of its wings is used as a youth hostel and another houses the Espace Rohan. Note: It was after the Franco-Prussian war that the German states became one country and Alsace & Lorraine became part of the new Germany as a result of Germany's victory. |
 60 Sunday 13 June, 2010 In 1853, the gardens were divided by the Marne-Rhine Canal. Since 1858, the castle has housed a city museum and, in the 20th Century, it was joined by the art collection of Louise Weiss, a French politician. |
 61 Sunday 13 June, 2010 Behind the Rohan Castle, boats need to wait for many hours for their turn to go through the locks. |
 62 Sunday 13 June, 2010 Michele is still at work in a friend's restaurant, so we go back to Denis and Nathalies' home at Neugartheim 20 kms away. Michele's place is to the southwest at Romanswiller |
 63 Sunday 13 June, 2010 This is Nathalie and Denis' beautiful home. It looks to be brand new but it is an older building that has been totally renovated. On clear days, they can see the tower of the Strasbourg cathedral from here. |
 64 Sunday 13 June, 2010 After a large breakfast at Frankfurt this morning and eating all afternoon at Arzviller, the last thing we need is more food. However, I always have room for dessert which was six different delights served in small glasses. I managed to find room for four. |
 65 Sunday 13 June, 2010 Michele finishes work and we follow her home to Romanswiller. |
 66 Sunday 13 June, 2010 Michele's home in Romanswiller is only 15 kms from Nathalie and Denis'. Next stop: Strasbourg |
