Floating through Europe - author's barge cruise from Strasbourg to Nancy

National Review, Dec 31, 1989 by Priscilla L. Buckley

Floating through Europe

WE DID not see "the tiny walled town of Boersch," "the eighteen-century monastic wall paintings of Saverne," nor "the Chagall windows in the peace chapel in Lutzelbourg," all of which had been promised in Floating through Europe's appetizing brochure of a six-day cruise on the hotel barge Lys from Strasbourg, capital of Alsace, to Nancy, capital of Lorraine. On the other hand, we did get an afternoon's cruise on the Moselle, which the brochure had not mentioned, and a night's stay at picturesque Toul. No matter. Canal travel is like that. Waters can be too high or too low, locks break down, and channels need dredging. Passengers learn to accept what is proffered.

Robert, our captain, tall, lanky with disheveled longish blond hair, a disarming smile, and 22 years of living behind him, picks up our party of seven at our hotel in Strasbourg and drives us to Saverne, where the Lys awaits, tied up along the Rhine-Marne canal just below the Renaissance palace of the Rohans, which will be illuminated tonight for our delectation. We have the usual welcomeaboard drink, Cremant, an Alsatian white bubbly, while the crew disposes of our bags in the cabins below. Each cabin has its own shower, toilet, and washbasin, but, as on all boats that cruise narrow canals, the cabins are cramped. We will do our living and our eating in the spacious lounge above and, when autumn breezes permit, on the foredeck.

There has been a hitch, Robert confesses. The replacement cook he had been promised has not arrived, but Nick, the boatman, 25--the only boy in his class, Nick tells us, who took home ec. instead of shop--puts on a brave show for dinner culminating in "Crepes a la Nick," his approximation of Crepes Suzette. Monique, twenty, stewardess and jack-of-all-trades, an attractice British law student, serves the four-course dinner and pours the wine, which, like all other liquor, is included in the price of the trip (about $250 per person per day).

Next morning, Monique dons her tour-conductor that and takes us on a drive through the Alsatian hill country. (Robert is off in telephonic pursuit of a cook.) The land is intensively cultivated: corn fields interspersed with orchards, large rolls of hay, fields of dried sunflowers, pastures, and vineyards. Vineyards are so valuable here that some grow up in vacant lots right in the towns, among the old stone houses on the narrow cobblestoned strees. Poplars stand like fuzzy popsicles on the crests of hills, outlining roads and fields.

Everywhere there are flowers. Ivy geraniums cascade down the sides of the houses, swamping window boxes; orange and mauve, gold and pink, lavender and rose, flowers in rectangular boxes line the balustrades of bridges, hang from fountains, stand in round stone-and-iron planters at road intersections, decorate lampposts.

We turn into a narrow archway and park in the yard of the Dirringer winer, a two-hundred-year-old family business. The daughter of the house greets us in halting English and ushers us into a cellar. The family owns about 35 acres of vineyards in the surrounding hills. Different patches of vine on different exposures with different drainage and soil conditions enable them to bottle a number of the renowned Alsatian white wines, among them Sylvaner, Riesling, Traminer, Gewurtztraminer, and Tokay, a sip of each of which the young woman pours for us, apologizing all the while that she can't serve us the traditional Kogelhopf cake with it. But what can one do? She shrugs her shoulders. It is Monday and the bakery is closed.

On to Obernai, possibly the loveliest of the hilltowns along the Routes des Vins, a small flowery village with ancient half-timbered houses and steep gables tilting asymmetrically over streets that open onto the wide Place du Marche, where we lunch at the Halle aux Bles, some of us on choucroute garnie (sauerkraut, pork, and sausauge), Alsace's most famous dish, others on the highly touted regional onion pie. Back at the Lys, we start the climb up the Vosges mountains, lock by lock, toward Lutzelbourg, where we will spend the night.

We're tootling along a new cut in the narrow Zorn valley, climbing steadily toward the justly famous vertical lift, "le plan incline de Saint-Louis Arzviller," as it is called. On the opposite hillside a huge (disfiguring) concrete ramp has been constructed at the steep angle of a cog railway. We negotiate an S-turn in the canal and sail into a large lock at the foot of the ramp, and tie up. A wheel turns slowly and heavy concrete slabs, their surfaces flush with the ramp, move slowly down from the top station, their weight counter-balancing the 16 tons of the Lys, plus the water and lock in which we are cradled, and the lock itself starts to move up the ramp, passing over the concrete slabs. At the top, spectators, each of whom has paid ten francs ($1.65) to watch the spectacle, stare down at us. There is, by the way, no charge for use of this engineering marvel or for use of the locks on French canals. At the top, another huge lock gate goes up and we sail out into the upper canal. The vertical lift has raised the Lys 130 feet and cut out 17 locks in a now-bypassed stretch of the lower canal. Now we enter the ghostly tunnel of Arzville, 2.3 kilometers long, lit at intervals by dim yellow lights. Thirty minutes later, as we emerge into the welcoming light, we are jarred by a long freight train roaring through a companion tunner to our right. Another brief tunnel and we are through the Vosges and looking down on the quiet plains of Lorraine.