dijon

October 25, 2008

I think that every person with wanderlust has little quirks about places they want to visit and why.  Some places make sense.  If you're a nomad, you must go see ____.  (You can fill in the blank.  The Pyramids.  The Great Wall of China.  The Eiffel Tower.  Etc.)  But then there are the little quirky ones that are different for every wanderer.  Two of my quirks are that I really want to go to Cambodia (I read a book about it once) and that I have zero desire to go to South America (sorry Ineedamarie).

When I found out I was moving to France, a new quirk developed.  I really wanted to go to Dijon, France, and discover mustard.  I wanted to go to a mustard museum.  (Surely, in the land of museums, Dijon would have a mustard museum.)  I wanted to go into huge, large mustard stores and get myself into a tilly over which mustard to buy.  I wanted to learn all about how mustard came about and why Maille is still considered the best there is and if Grey Poupon is really a French Dijon mustard or just an American thing with a really funny commercial.

So Zannah and I went to Dijon this month for a quick one day trip as a celebration of both our birthdays.  A little trick I've learned to do when traveling in France is to head straight to the Office of Tourism.  If anything, they give you a map of the city that you're in and unfamiliar with.  But usually, they give you all sorts of insider tips of what to see, sometimes some discounts, and...if there's nothing to see in town (they'll never say that straight out), they'll tell you about a bus tour through their surrounding region.  I did this with KO down in Provence and LOVED IT.

At the Office of Tourism, we obtained our map and started checking it out.  I couldn't find the Museum of Mustard, so I asked one of the workers where it was.

"It closed."

"Oh no," says I, "it's closed today?"  We were only in town for one day.

"No, it closed permanently.  Not enough people were going to it."

Well...it appears that I am the only traveler with the quirk of learning about mustard in Dijon.  SO SAD.  There is a mustard museum in some other town, but we didn't have a car to get out to it.  Can I just say that even now, I am pouting that I didn't get to learn all about mustard from some frenchman with a cute little accent?  That I didn't get to sample all the gloriously weird types of mustards that they make in Dijon?  That I didn't...okay, I'm over it.

Zannah and I decided that without a mustard museum, Dijon did not have enough to offer to keep us entertained all day, so we went ahead and signed ourselves up for a bus tour.  It would take us through the Bourgogne region of France (also known as Burgundy in English).  We had a couple of hours to kill before the tour started, so we went to see what Dijon had to offer.

First off was the Maille store.  Maille is the most famous mustard maker in France.  I already have learned about the yumminess of Maille mustard and have been enjoying it almost the entire time I have lived here.  (As a random sidenote: You can't buy pickle relish here, so I have to make mine myself.  I use a jar of Maille pickles because they have all kinds of other stuff in the jar that ends up making the best pickle relish!  I love Maille.)  Because I can buy Maille mustard in Paris, I wasn't so thrilled that this was my Dijon Mustard experience...going to a Maille store.  Let's pretend that the store I went to was the ORIGINAL Maille mustard store.  (It might have been...I didn't check.)

I did buy mustard, though, so that I could say I bought Dijon mustard in Dijon, France.  I bought three jars, actually:  Blackcurrent of Dijon, Gingerbread and Chataignier Honey, and Provencale.  Blackcurrents from Dijon are one of their main "exports" and I love blackcurrent, so I went with it...pink mustard.  Who knew?

Zannah and I had read online about this famous tower at the Ducal Palace and that climbing it was one of the things you are supposed to do when in Dijon.  The online article made it seem really cool--that you could see for miles and miles, and on a clear day--all the way to Mont Blanc!  We got over to the Ducal Palace and started laughing.  The "tower" was all of about 5 stories high.  How one could see far off was beyond us.  And the Palace was closed.  There was a museum open, (and free) so we took a quick tour of it.

All in all, we wandered around for about an hour and saw all that Dijon had to offer.  So sad for Dijon!  We did find a quiet little park covered in leaves and just sat there enjoying ourselves for about another hour.  Then it was time for our bus tour!

We thought that on a random Wednesday in October there wouldn't be anyone else on our tour.  We thought wrong.  There were two retired couples who were thrilled to see some young people were joining them for the day.  One of them sat next to me in the van for the first hour or so of the tour and drove me crazy, using a particular curse word in every sentence, and talked about all the different kinds of cattle there are in the world.  I think he and his wife figured out that I wasn't so keen on him, so they switched places the next time we climbed back into the van and it got a little better.  (And then he got hammered at the winery, which made him much more pleasant, but that's getting ahead of myself...)

The first stop was Flavigny-sur-Ozerain, where the movie Chocolat takes place.  We saw the window of the chocolate shop and the church that it is across from.  It was a cute town and all...but when we drove through a much cuter town later without stopping to get out, I thought, "Why'd we waste our time in the Chocolat town?  There wasn't even a real chocolate shop there..."

I can't remember now if the candy shop we went to was in the same town or not.  I don't think it was, I think the town was just Flavigny (and not Flavigny-sur-Ozerain).  But anyway...we went to a candy shop in an abbey that made the most famous kind of French candy called "Anis."  They are yummy little white balls made in different flavors.  Again, I had to decide which kind of flavor to get.  I went with blackcurrent again, as well as mandarine/tangerine.  Check out my next post that tells the pretty little love story about the Anis de Flavigny.

From there we went to a winery.  Honestly, I don't know the name at all.  I'll have to ask Zannah.  This whole experience was so amusing.  Zannah is Mormon, so she doesn't drink either.  We both start whispering about how we will get out of the wine tasting at the winery.  Maybe, because it's harvest season, they'll show us what they do with the grapes to make the wine, instead of showing us how to drink wine?

Nope.

They showed us how to drink wine.  Or tried to show us.  Zannah and I stood firm in our refusal to drink.  Our tour guide was very understanding.  The two couples were also understanding, especially because we kept giving the husbands our glasses of wine (which was how the two husbands ended up getting hammered).  The wine guide lady (vinedresser?) was not understanding.  

"You do not drink?!  DRINK!  DO IT!"  (Yes, she actually yelled at us to "do it!")  She then showed us the spit bucket where we could sip and spit without swallowing...and by that point it was a battle of wills and we were determined to come out on top.  We would not drink!  GAH!

The thing was, she was covered head to toe in grape juice.  The minute we left, we saw her go back out behind the winery to continue working with the grapes.  All six of us said that we would have enjoyed learning about the grapes-to-wine process then learning how to drink wine, because well...the older couples certainly already knew how to drink wine!  Oh well.  It really was a little amusing, and it got Mr. Cussing Man to mellow out a bit.

From there we went to a World Unesco Heritage Site called the Cistercian Abbaye de Fontenay.  It is no longer an active abbey but is privately owned.  It was much fun.  

The best part of the whole day, though, was probably when we saw some monks playing soccer in a field.  I took a video.  Here you go...

Then we got on the train and came home.  I had a good time.  I learned alot...

• The French import mustard seeds; they don't really grow mustard here.  Their mustard is famous because of the way it is made.
• The owl is the mascot of Dijon.  Much better than a salamander, the mascot of some town I went to.
• There is a famous kind of cow in Bourgogne called Charolais that makes a very different tasting beef.  I have not had any.  But I saw the cows!  They're white.