How many people have fallen in love with France because of Dude? How many people have ever wanted to go to France along the story written by Toude, to be a shepherd on a hillside in Provence, to spend the afternoon in a cozy town in Alsace, or to go to a hotel by the Champs-Elysees in Paris, Memories of the Napoleonic era sleeping together?
“That day, Mr. Hamel sent us a new copybook, which was filled with beautiful round characters: ‘French’, ‘Alsace’, ‘France’, ‘Alsace’.” In the middle school textbook, Todd’s The Last Lesson brought me to meet France as a child. The place where the story of The Last Lesson takes place, Colmar, a small town in Alsace, makes me wish I could hand over the long-forgotten innocence to France for collection.
01
Beautiful street scene “painted”
Unlike the busy capital Paris, Colmar, with a population of only 60,000, is natural and fresh, and time seems to have pressed the pause button here. In a small town, the suspension bridge is old and independent. I thought it was cold and deep, but the sides of the bridge are crowded with colorful flowers, leaving only a warm feeling. The water of the Grand Canal is clear and calm. The buildings by the river are not tall, but they are beautifully colored, pale yellow, sky blue, mint green… It is hard to tell whether Colmar imitated fairy tales, or whether all fairy tales are based on her.
Around 2003, Hayao Miyazaki also seemed to guess that the quiet and beautiful scenery of the small town of Colmar was enough to heal and satisfy a childish innocence. As a result, the animation master far away in Japan drew this not-so-famous French town into his next masterpiece, Howl’s Moving Castle. The quaint Pfistai hut and the wooden walls dotted with delicate peach hearts are warm memories of the lush years of the post-80s and 90s.
The Timber House is one of the landmark buildings in the small town of Colmar. It stubbornly inherits the architectural style of southern Germany in the early 20th century: the building is built with logs, and the walls are filled with a mixture of grass stems and soil. Apply brightly colored paints such as sky blue, lemon yellow, and glitter. The floor of the house is not high, and it is usually a two- to four-story building, but the whole house is built without a single nail, and the craftsmanship is quite ingenious and elegant.
In addition, the wooden house also has many romantic elements. The A-shaped roof is covered with wavy tiles, and when the sun shines, it will turn into a sparkling river surface or the caudal fin of a mermaid swimming; the building walls are not only beautifully colored, but also inlaid with elegant Wall lamps, arched window frames, and some are covered with cyan vines; whether it is the windowsill or the fence above the second floor, there are always a dazzling array of flowers… ivy, roses, wooden brackets, isn’t this a place for Sleeping Beauty to sleep? the castle?
Different from the delicate and bright wooden tendon house, the temperament of the Pfistai cottage is more serious. The “hut” is just a nickname given to it by tourists. This mansion with a history of nearly 500 years is not an exaggeration to call it a castle. In 1537, the Pfistai Cottage was built by the hatter Louis Scherer of Besançon, and has since been extensively expanded. This mansion has both a gentle and natural sloped roof, a sharp and straight Gothic spire, and a slender and narrow attic. Several building types are mixed into one, which makes people want to sigh: horizontally, it looks like a ridge and a peak, with different heights and heights.
In fact, the Pfistai hut is just a building that Colmar had “early tasted” in the Renaissance, and her volume is relatively taller than the wooden reinforced house. In that era when construction technology was not developed enough, it was very dangerous for designers to paint lifelike murals on tall outer walls. These frescoes combine the characters of the New Testament and the Old Testament and the portraits of emperors, which perfectly reflect the preferences and tastes of the bourgeois merchant class under the influence of humanism. In addition, the building has been owned by the Pfistai family since 1841 for half a century, and the present name derives from this history. However, it may be more convenient to call it “Howl’s Moving Castle” – this mansion is the prototype of the moving castle in the movie.
In the movie, Sophie stitches the hat by stitches, which is also Miyazaki’s inspiration from the craftsmanship of local hatmakers; the steam-filled train passes by Sophie’s window, which is a local sightseeing train. Although the real tourist train does not have the blurry steam like the movie, its green appearance and the convenience of trackless driving make it more smart and cute than the steam train in the movie.
02
Toy Paradise and St. Martin’s Church
The overall scale of Colmar’s Toy Museum is not large, with only three floors, but it introduces the development history of dolls, and exhibits various exhibition halls with dolls of various periods, models of cars and planes, and dynamic trains. The toys on display were not stunning, even somewhat bland. Plastic dolls, fat or thin, blond or brown, wearing jeans, jackets, high-waisted skirts, puff-sleeve dresses that were popular in the past… But please believe that there is always a doll that looks very similar The one we loved when we were kids.
Toy cars are also more retro, although the appearance is colorful, but the model is simple and unassuming. It is worth mentioning that the small museum in this small French town also exhibits porcelain tea sets and porcelain tableware from China, which makes people feel more intimate.
In the Toy Museum, you can enjoy the euphemistic and subtle puppet show, as well as the exquisite and exquisite real estate models, such as “the town on the other side of the mountain“. In this group of model toys, there are beautifully colored wooden bars on display. On the not-so-wide “street”, toy cars are galloping gracefully, and even toy trains are passing through like in animated movies.
Different from the low-key and unpretentiousness of the Toy Museum, St. Martin’s Church in the center of the old city looks like a missionary in a black robe, with a beard and deep eyes. Saint Martin’s Church was built in the 13th century. At first glance, it seems to be full of the steepness and sternness of traditional Gothic architecture, but the Alsatian characteristic tiles inlaid on the roof of the main building make the building appear approachable, and one of the Mongolian-style round roofs makes it a little more. Differentiate between exotic mystery and novelty. Although the church of St. Martin was built in 1234, the Mongolian roof was only completed in 1572, and it did not use the common log materials of Colmar buildings, but was entirely made of copper.
Strictly speaking, the church of St. Martin in Colmar has not been officially completed to this day, because two of the originally designed bell towers have not been completed. However, when tourists are in the middle, they will still clearly feel the intentions of the people of the small town for the construction of St. Martin’s Church: the hall is spacious and bright, the auditorium and the podium are all clean and spotless; the arched windows reflect the sunlight. The color of the rainbow is magnificent, and the stained glass inlaid on it does not seem to fade over time; the huge and towering pipe organ on the wall, despite the precipitation of hundreds of years, can still play a beautiful and solemn movement.
03
Meet the “Little Venice” made of flowers
There is a Grand Canal in the small town of Colmar, which is a tributary of the Il River, giving Colmar the reputation of “Little Venice“. The canal is like a belt carved out of jasper, and its body is shining with a clear and beautiful luster, reflecting the riverside scenery. Flowers are planted on both sides of the canal. Even where flowers cannot be planted, flowers are placed. Even the old hand-drawn passenger boats are placed with flowers.
In the street, the wooden house used for commercial purposes will hang a fairytale-like signature wall decoration with iron frames with different carvings. The maid in a bright apron carried a large round loaf – it was the bakery; the prince in the red cloak rode a sky-blue horse and led the servant also in the cloak – if it wasn’t for the bottom of the wall decoration “hotel”, who would have thought that it was actually the wall decoration of the hotel.
The river surface is the same color as the sky and clouds, and the scenery on both sides of the river is beautiful. When you roam in it by boat, you can look down and look up at the scenery. It seems that the boat has become a bookmark, which is sandwiched in a huge picture book. No wonder Hayao Miyazaki will paint Colmar Town. into their own works. However, being drawn into the movie by an oriental animation master is just one of the many honors that the small town of Colmar has won. She has also won the “Street Art Society Award”, won the “Four Flowers” in the French “Flower Town” competition, and even won the third place in the “Best European Destination” competition in 2018.
As attractive as small bridges and flowing water, pavilions and pavilions, there are restaurants in Colmar. There are only 86 restaurants in France with two Michelin stars, and Restaurant JYS in the small town of Colmar has a seat. It is not only decorated with a pastoral style, but also located on the side of the “Little Venice” scenic spot, allowing diners to watch the flower boats slowly passing by while they wait for the food to be served. One of the restaurant’s signature dishes is the roast pigeon, which is crispy on the outside and tender on the inside, full of aroma and rich in taste. Many people traveled across mountains and rivers just for this pigeon. During the trip to Colmar, even if it is just to settle in this restaurant and sit for an afternoon, it is not a worthwhile trip.
In contrast, Restaurant La Soi is a bit low-key. Not only is it on an imperceptible street corner, but the store can only accommodate a dozen or so customers. However, Jiuxiang is not afraid of deep alleys. This small restaurant requires a reservation half a day in advance to have a seat. The garlic pizza and mushroom pizza in the store are dry, fragrant and salty, with a slightly spicy taste, which are very popular with locals.
The House of Heads, once a wine trading center, is a building that belongs to the same Renaissance period as the Pfistai Cottage, and is equally famous. On its walls, it is decorated with 105 buskers’ head reliefs. Those vivid and rich expressions, each with their own thoughts, seem to explain all kinds of situations in life.
On an afternoon with the luster of old parchment, take a window seat in a restaurant, watch a small boat with a small plate and a glass of Alsace white wine, and watch the boat laden with flowers passing by. Colmar’s years are as romantic as Lamartine’s lyric:
Rest, my soul, in this final resting place
as a traveler before entering a city
With full of hope, sit by the city gate for a while
Take a breath of the fragrance in the evening air…
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