BargeBlog

Champagne at a snail's pace

We’ve been barging from Chateau Thierry to Chalon en Champagne and back again for the last few weeks. We’re right in the middle of vendage, the grape harvest, and the vineyards stretch out for hectares and hectares around us, running down the hills in straight corduroy rows to the Marne River. The pickers are out in force, hunched over while stripping the vines of their peridot and ruby grapes. The big champagne houses are here, names like Mercier, Moet, and Dom Perignon, but every small town has its share of ten or fifteen small places with proprietors touting their family’s bubbly.

On a little train, we’ve toured Mercier with its 18 miles of caves. The excavated chalk was sold to porcelain manufacturers in Germany, the sale of which paid for the excavation. Very clever of Mr. Mercier in the 1850’s. Then the best part – tasting the fruit of all the labor, champagne.

We sipped the champagne, felt the bubbles explode in our mouths. I thought of old monks stumbling on the discovery and wondered at all of the culinary inventions of the world. Who figured out how to eat the first snail, artichoke, or even the first egg? I raised my glass in silent salute to the brave pioneers of the past. A sign hung on the wall, a quote from Madame Bollinger, one of the grandes dames of Champagne: “I drink champagne when I'm happy and when I'm sad. Sometimes I drink it when I'm alone. When I have company, I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I'm not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise I never touch it – unless I'm thirsty.”

Full Circle

Memory is a fickle thing. I pride myself on mine, but I know it has holes like Emmental cheese. For example, I don’t remember numbers. My own social security and current phone are about all my mind manages to retain. I often think brains are like hard disk drives, with a limited capacity, sometimes randomly accessed and other wise with agonizingly slowly sequential reads.

So, it didn’t surprise me when we closed the gap in our travels this year, completing our grand loop of a voyage, when Paul said, " You remember this canal? We were here in 2000." I looked ahead at the quiet tree-lined waterway. It looked much like any canal to me. I shook my head. "And here’s where we joined the Marne. Look familiar?" Vaguely. But it didn’t matter. From now on, we will be on previously traveled rivers and canals. I was sure to remember more, wasn’t I?

Imagine entered into the lock before Chalon en Champagne. We’d been here before on our maiden voyage and liked it. At least Paul said so. I just couldn't get a grasp on it as I glanced over the lock wall. I walked ahead and then, like the water flowing over a lock gate, the flood of memory came rushing back: the charming cathedral, the half-timbered buildings, the kids fishing in front of our mooring.

Later that evening as we sat with our guests Marsha, Karen and Rollie on deck, Paul spotted a familiar barge coming downstream. Even I recognized this boat – I jumped up. "My God, it’s Vertrouwen!" Our training barge. Paul called over to offer mooring next to us. We knew the boat was often in France during September, but with over 3,000 miles of waterways, what were the odds we would see her?

Roger Van Dyken stood at the helm and Vertrouwen sidled up next to Imagine like an old friend. Roger said, "Looks like these two old girls know each other." I hugged him, met his wife and hugged her and shook the hands of each of his six students. "Our first day on the canals," he said. I sighed. In another September, back in 1999, we too were experiencing our first day on the waterways aboard Vertrouwen.

We invited each other to view the boats. Vertrouwen hadn’t changed from what I remembered. With leaded glass windows and elegant lines, her gracefulness had sold me on the beauty of European barges. The students swarmed Imagine, studying our take on barging as a barge and breakfast. In our salon, underneath the skylight, I read the first few pages of "Learning Curve" describing piloting into my first lock with Roger at my side. Then applause from all of my audience, tears in my eyes, I hugged Roger again.

The next morning, one of the students stood at the helm as our two barges separated. We watched as he circled Vertrouwen and headed her into his first lock. We applauded and Roger shouted, " These guys are great. They might even challenge your title as students of the century." I hollered back, "Not possible. We were last century’s students!" And I lifted my coffee cup in salute to the bargees of tomorrow.

Sorry Charly

Just inside Champagne last Thursday, we stopped at the mooring at Charly. We hopped on shore and checked out the "nearby restaurant" advertised in our guide book. Closed permanently. Water and electric as advertised? Nope. Town was supposed to be great but Imagine needed Precious Bodily Fluids.
So we moved on to Chateau Thierry. Nice mooring, plenty of room, electric and water. Sweet. A good-sized town, pretty flowers, restaurants and a Champagne house, Pannier. Yesterday we drove to the WWI American War memorial and cemetery. The memorial marked where 310,000 American and French soldiers fought along side one another.