June 28, 2005

Boveresse 2005 - Day 1 – Thursday

Posted by Oxygenee at 10:05 PM | 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 01, 2004

Pontarlier Visit 2003

Posted by Oxygenee at 11:07 PM | 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?

Sunday:
Off to Auvers sur Oise and the museum – some mouthwatering spoons and wonderful prints and paintings. Madame Delahaye is petite, immaculately dressed, very charming, but tough and certainly no pushover (except apparently for Ted…). Showed us her Toulouse Lautrec spoon (not on public display) with great ceremony. The other visitor to the museum turned out to be a well-known French collector with whom I’d corresponded but never met – off we went to his house nearby, where we saw another Lautrec spoon, the 1900 Tour Eiffel, and an amazing assembly of fountains and carafes. Spent an animated two hours discussing the possible genuineness of the Lautrec spoons (nerdy…I know, I know, but fun). The consensus: the spoon itself may be genuine, but under the loupe one can clearly see that the TL logo has been individually hand-cut later from each spoon and is definitely faked.

Tuesday:
TGV early in the morning to Pontarlier. Checked into the St Pierre, directly opposite the arch at the top of Rue de la Republique. Visited the local antique shop (whose proprietor is to honest and ethical dealing roughly what Michael Jackson is to responsible child care). Lunch with the deputy mayor of Pontarlier. On to the Francois Guy distillery – very friendly, but their copper absinthe still is rather disappointingly simple. Tasted their newly reformulated product, using their own “genetically modified” plants – IMO, less good than their original blend. Bought some of the local gentiane eau de vie – stunning in a head-snapping kinda way. Next the Pernot distillery – met the charming Madame Pernot, who runs the show, and saw their original Egrot specialized absinthe still – identical to the illustrations in Duplais and other early books. Tasted their excellent Sapin, which is light-years better than Guy’s. Dinner that night at Villers le Lac, a fabulous Michelin-starred restaurant about 40km from Pontarlier (the Feuillantine de Homard aux Noix, Jus d’Ecailleux a la Chicorée, was, and I don’t say this lightly, a religious experience). Decided not to order the 1895 Chateau Chalon at 5300 euros on the winelist.

Wednesday:
The Pontarlier Museum – several unique items, including sealed bottles from as early as 1820, cartons, posters, paintings etc. Then off to the Val de Travers with a mutual Swiss friend who’d dedicated the day to showing us around – Fleurier, Motiers, the sechoir at Boveresse, Couvet, Travers and to Neuchatel for lunch at the Gault Millau rated Villa Peyrou – another superb 6 course meal…. Home via Fleurier and the Jacot chocolate shop (the finest handmade chocolates in Switzerland). Acquired a bottle of the local Boveresse La Bleue – excellent. Back to Pontarlier, stumble on TGV, home to Paris. Decided to skip dinner.