Chateau Fleckenstein and the Maginot Line

Trip Start Apr 30, 2006
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Trip End May 12, 2006


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Where I stayed
private home
(Lembach hotels)

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Thursday, May 4, 2006

      Daniel worked all day so it was just us girls. Carol and I went to see some of the sights in the brochure we picked up at City Hall. We walked out to the old grain mill-a former saw mill-just a little ways from the Lubrez home. Then on the the Manoir Fleckenstein, the manor house of the Fleckenstein family, the local gentry. The old part of Lembach is called Flecken, or stork (we didn't see any storks, but there were lots of crows). The house is vacant except when the owner, the current generation of Fleckensteins, come in strawberry season. We walked around a bit more, then home for lunch of curried chicken, French fries (pommes frites) and, of course, cheese. Dessert was sorbet (lemon, almond, and passion fruit) with toasted almonds and whipped cream. Wonderful.
      After lunch, we drove out to the Maginot Line and saw some of the emplacements, bunkers, and a tank. [From Wikipedia: The Maginot Line ,, named after French minister of defense Andre Maginot, was a line of concrete fortifications, tank obstacles, machine gun posts and other defenses which France constructed along its borders with Germany and with Italy in the wake of World War I. (The ones near Lembach were built in about 1930.) Generally The French believed the fortification would provide time for their army to mobilize in the event of attack and also compensate for numerical weakness.] We declined the two-hour tour, underground, with a temperature of 13°C (55° F). We drove on to see Château (Castle) Fleckenstein. Its ruins are on top of a very tall column of rock maybe 10 km from Lembach. We took pictures from the Gimbelhof, a restaurant where we stopped for a drink (Coke for them, apple juice and sparkling water for me). Then we went to the base of the rock. On the way from the parking lot to the gift shop/restaurant/children's play area complex, we climbed up a trail with exhibits that showed the old process of making charcoal from the local trees. That and timber were major products of the area. After looking (and buying) in the gift shop-where we picked up a wonderful (free) booklet on the Jews of Alsace. I rested and Carol and Denise walked all around the base of the stone column on which the Castle rests. Neither wanted to climb to the top-great idea. After they returned we drove back to the house for a dinner of grilled sausages, sliced ham, chicory, carrots, and beets and the usual desserts.
 
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