Celebrating the 70's - A chronicle of time and temperature

July 14, 2024

Saturday 13 July 2024

We drove to Colmar in Alsace, France today. A good 2.5 hr drive to number 1 Avenue Foch and our room in the basement of a castle tower. Not the dungeon of course. It has windows looking upwards on to the footpath. Lots of streets here named after WW1 Generals.

The Bastille Day celebrations are happening here on Friday, Saturday and Sunday with the big one on Bastille Eve (today/tonight). So, we wandered into town for a look around.

Colmar is a beautiful city, just south of Strasbourg in Alsace. So, a mixture of French and German language, architecture,heritage and food and wine. Flashy and the Major were here for a night in 2012 on the Route du Vin part of their ‘Battlefields and Burgundy’ tour. Flashy remembers it as a nice little medieval town of a few hundred people with a hotel, canals and a couple of restaurants.

He was a bit surprised when we arrived and found it was actually a city of 200,000 people with hundreds of restaurants and thousands of tourists, gathered for the National Holiday to celebrate the French Republic. He must have been a bit confused back then.

The day commemorates the storming of the Bastille and the historical significance of the French Revolution and its impact on the global advancement of democratic ideas. It serves as a reminder of the fight for liberty, equality, and fraternity, making it a meaningful occasion for reflection, celebration, and patriotism. So they say. A bit like Australia day, really.

Wandering into town after a late afternoon arrival, we found Zinc Restaurant in the old town, which was mentioned by Audrey, our host in Neuilly le Real and enjoyed a good meal. Tart Flambee is an Alsace specialty and is basically a very, very thin pizza base with a sprinkle of onions, lardons and cheese. Very delicious and goes well with a couple of coups of Kir Crémant. A scallop risotto and veal au champignon, with a Grand Cru Alsace Riesling, also excellent. Then at 10.00 pm we headed for the big deal celebrations in Rapp Park.

While there were thousands of people gathered in Rapp Park, there were no real signs of French nationalism. Very few flags; no half drunk tarts with red, white and blue face paint; and no national anthem playing anywhere. This felt very un-French. There were however, a lot of tattoos and body piercings and generally casual summer dress. Could have been in Sydney.

The shock of the vaguely remembered Colmar of 2012, finally set in for Flashy, when we arrived at Rapp Park to find a circle of food vans (mostly not French) around an arena with 20,000+ people facing a giant stage and two giant TV screens, projecting the U2 take off band performing. Quite well, as it turned out

You can imagine the derriere to derriere, bust to bust, cramming of the crowd, awaiting patiently for a drink or pizza - and the long anticipated, 11 pm, Spectacle de lumière et de couleurs aquatiques (coloured water fountain display).

The band was quite good. Half the songs were performed in English. Very strange. Then the water show started and it was certainly spectacular. Coloured fountains (20 of them) rising to about 300’ and set to music and song (all songs in English). Flashy particularly liked 'I believe in love', by Cher. Bloody hell, this is supposed to be the French National Day!

Lady P commented that she missed the smoke, sound and smell of gunpowder associated with fireworks and Flashy thought a couple of 4” salutes over the top of the water spouts would have been good. However, a very impressive display, despite no song or music of a caractere nationaliste Francais.

Shuffling out of the park with the crowd, Flashy was pleased that he decided not to go the Olympic opening ceremony in Paris. He’s not a crowd sort of guy.

All this activity was thirsty work, so a bar on the way home beckoned. There were some friendly French people singing along to English pop songs and occasionally getting up and dancing in the bar. Eagerly awaiting midnight, we anticipated the barman might play the national anthem. Should one stand? Hand over heart? Didn’t matter, they played more pop crap. Maybe tomorrow, being the 14^th, there will be more expressions of the sentiment behind the storming of la Bastille.