My endless gratitude goes out to those whose stories and pictures figure on the Emerald Quest.
Alex (VeraWench)
June 28, 2005
Updates!
Posted by VeraWench
| Comments (0)Finally, an update! With the 2005 Absinthe festivals in full swing, we have our first report from Boveresse. Enjoy :-)
Boveresse 2005 - Day 1 – Thursday
Posted by Oxygenee
| Comments (0)Rendezvous with Peter and Ted at Gare de Lyon. Breakfast at station café. Ted orders a chocolate pastry. Waiter brings him a cup of hot chocolate by mistake instead. Ted asks for his pastry. Waiter shrugs and indicates that even if he cared enough to change the order, which he doesn’t, altering the bill is a huge hassle. Ted points out it was the waiter’s fault. Waiter says French equivalent of “bite me”. Welcome to France!
On the TGV. Next to us a group of 3 girls from Michigan, just starting out on their post-high school Europe trip right of passage. Introduce ourselves. Lots of giggling.
Animated discussion on the hidden delights of Michigan. It has sand dunes apparently. Also ice fishing. One of the girls in her broad Michigan accent, asks Ted if he’s ever been sledding. Ted pretends to mishear her, as saying “slutting”. Why yes, says Ted, as a matter of fact I go slutting all the time. I love to go slutting. And you?
General hilarity.
Arrive at Neuchatel. Steve Rosat is waiting to meet us at the station – as before, he’s put himself at our disposal as our guide, chauffeur and host in the Val de Travers. Drive into Neuchatel – a prosperous, immaculate Swiss town, with wonderful sandstone coloured buildings. As we enter the business district we see painted on the wall, in huge letters: WHILE YOU AT SCHOOL, WE FUCK YA MUM. More hilarity – why "ya mum"? Perhaps graffiti author is Jamaican. Visualize concerned Swiss schoolchildren rushing home to save their mother from a little Caribbean lovin’. "Fuck ya mum" is immediately adopted as one of the two catchphrases of the trip.
Lunch at the Hotel Peyrou – a superb restaurant in the heart of Neuchatel, run by an Australian chef. The clientele is an odd mixture of solid local burghers, and Euro-trash - the men wearing mainly lime-green linen. the woman with expensive nose jewelery.
From Neuchatel on to Couvet. Check in at the Hotel de l’Aigle. Steve tells me he reserved the best room for me, known as the "Betty" suite.
Walk over to Steve’s apartment nearby to view the lots for his forthcoming sale. Some beautiful must-have things, all eye-wateringly expensive. Start to feel less guilty about imposing on his hospitality during our stay.
In the late afternoon Steve takes us to Le Creux-du-Van, a half hour drive away, high in the mountains overlooking the Val de Travers. On the way there we pass through mysterious mist shrouded pine forests, alternating with fields of alpine flowers. Truly the home of La Fee Verte. At the top of the mountain gentiane grows everywhere. Le Creux is a huge precipice, hundreds of feat high, looking over vast forests below. Quite spectacularly beautiful. We take photos in the nearby meadow. Feel the urge to start whirling around like Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music. Peter and Ted advise strongly against it.
Nearby is a small smoke stained chalet, serving, according to Steve, the best fondue in Switzerland. We enter, and our greeted with most un-Swiss like enthusiasm by the owner, a woman in her forties. It takes a minute to realize that she is blind drunk. She’s an alcoholic, whispers Steve under his breath, quite unnecessarily. The ceiling of the restaurant is hung with hundreds of smoked sausages, prepared on the spot. We take a table in an upstairs room, the walls carved with the initials of hundreds of visitors, and eat a platter of Bundnerfleisch, a type of air dried beef similar to bressola. It’s delicious. I take a photo for Kallisti’s brother’s meat-porn site. The fondue which follows, served with crusty bread baked in the chalet’s wood oven, is even better. We wash it down with beer, cider and a very dubious local wine.
Back down the winding mountain track at breakneck speed, but we’re too pissed to care. To Steve’s apartment for a nightcap – a 1929 SA port I’d brought with. We phone our Hotel, and find out that Jack Turner, a writer for the New Yorker working on an article on absinthe, has arrived. We buzz his room – he’s tired, exhausted from the long journey, and needs to get some sleep. He’ll see us in the morning. Of course we understand, we say sympathetically. Then we walk over to the Hotel, drag him out of bed, and bring him over to Steve’s place. More port, some pre-ban Pernod, some Tarragona.
Stagger back well after midnight...
Oxygenee is the proprietor of La Fee Verte Absinthe House and the Virtual Absinthe Museum.
October 03, 2004
Welcome
Posted by VeraWench
| Comments (6)The Emerald Quest will from now on function as a blog. Bear with me while I configure this damn Movable Type interface and get my small group of travelers author accounts.
October 01, 2004
Pontarlier Visit 2003
Posted by Oxygenee
| Comments (0)Vera's Note: Oxygenne is the proprietor of The Virtual Absinthe Museum - The World of Absinthe & Absinthe Antiques (formerly Oxygénée's Absinthiana).
I was recently able to spend an absinthe-soaked few days in France, mainly in the company of that prince amongst absintheurs, Pierreverte. A few very brief notes
Friday:
Peter is something of a local celebrity in Paris, being greeted with effusive cries and kisses on both cheeks by almost every bistrot proprietor and cavist we met. His French is astonishingly good. Visited a local brocante fair – was offered an “unrecorded absinthe spoon” – actually a broken sugar tongs - for around a thousand euros. Dinner at Peter’s flat in Montmartre, where the charming Sabine cooked us a superb Magret a canard.
Saturday:
The market at St Ouen – a huge rabbit warren - very little absinthiana, and what there was of poor quality and overpriced. Some fascinating stalls though, including one selling 19th century erotica with a range of extraordinarily life-like and…er..lifesize antique carved ivory dildos….perhaps…Queen Victoria’s Secret?
Continue reading "Pontarlier Visit 2003"
The Man from Chert - Visiting with Julian Segarra
Posted by Pierreverte
| Comments (1)
Had a little field trip to chert to visit julian segarra with germanandy...this is the middle of nowhere in spain...but the nicest family one could ever imagine, or hope to visit when no one speaks the language...but here are a few quick points, since i leave tomorrow again and don't have much time...segarra absenta is distilled using grape spirits, and two plants...grand absinthe and green anis...that's it...oh, and it is colored naturally with another plant, that being an american oak tree...the color is left clear after distilling and then it is aged in oak barrels (well, i only saw one) and that is where the color and the butterscotch or caramel taste comes from...and there is no sugar added...so, i would say a very authentic product along with the 20 or so other things he distills (his gin is spectacular, i told him it was smooth as water and he poured some on his wood table and set it on fire)...a great experience altogether, but i would have loved to have had a translator with us...next time...
Traveler’s advisory when visiting european cities…to avoid depression it is best to be blindfolded until you reach the city’s historical district…
Continue reading "The Man from Chert - Visiting with Julian Segarra"
The Phantom of Auvers
Posted by Wolfgang
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Auvers-sur-Oise is a small town located about 1 hour by train north of Paris. We went there on Sunday the 18th of November. In France, everything is quiet on Sunday. At the "gare du nord" train station, the ticket clerk told us it was a direct ride but in fact we found out that there was a transfer... We ended up at the wrong place, in the middle of nowhere, trying to figure out how to go to Auvers. There was nobody around, the small town train station was desert. We finally found a place to buy a card for the public telephone (you can't use coins in those French public phones!) and we called a taxi...we ended up talking to an answering machine. We then went to the local "cafe" where the whole town seemed to be drinking the Beaujolais nouveau. There was a taxi in front of the place. We asked the waitress about it and she shouted: "Eugene! They are looking for you!". A guy came and explained to us it was impossible for him to give us a ride to Auvers. When I asked if it was very far away, he told me: "about 10 minutes" ! He was having his drink, we where just tourists and it was Sunday... So we waited for the next train...
We finally got to Auvers under a depressing gray sky. The strain station was desert. We looked around and when we saw the old stone church, we where drawn to it.
When I finally got in front of the church, the one Van Gogh had painted, I understood the meaning of his painting. This Church really looked haunted! We took some pictures and went to the cemetery where we found Van Gogh`s humble sepulcher surrounded by flowers. The old stone church he painted, the small town where he lived his last years, his remain just there six feet under and this terrible gray sky...
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September 02, 2004
A Happy Blur - Vera in New Orleans
Posted by VeraWench
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Wake up at 5AM on Friday morning, print out directions, check email , pack a few turkey salad sandwiches and hit the road. Blasting the latest punky cheese from Placebo, I roar happily down I-10 in a caffeine-fueled frenzy, singing along, watching the sunrise smear itself across the indigo sky in long thick smudges of gold.
I’m occasionally unnerved by the unhealthy purring of my car when I reach certain speed – it’s been making all sorts of odd noises since Chuck rotated the tires last weekend. The previous night I had dreamt all four of my tires blew out at once.
This is only my second trip to the Big Easy. Last time we flew over was in 1999, four naïve gothlings with no fake ID’s and limited tolerance for alcohol.
