Sprinkles

The weather forecast was for "sprinkles", which for a short while had us thinking it would be like the icing on the cupcake, and I suppose that compared to the winds and almost torrential downpour overnight which had every local we waved to bemused, if not completely puzzled by it's lack of seasonality, the odd shower that we experienced was something of a relief.

A surfeit of humidity and inadequate temperature aside, staying in Lutzelbourg is like being in a giant model railway layout. The hills are far too hilly to be believed, the buildings too real, the canals so crisp and engineered, the greens too green. This must be what results when one mixes the French flair for the haphazard with Teutonic discipline and for the traveller and postcard painter at least it's not a terrible mix at all.

While standing among the remnants of the Chateau Lutzelbourg which had it's own beginnings in the eleventh century we cogitated on the numbers of times these villages had been over run by different nationalities, even in the past century they have been alternately French or German territories. Many communities and even regions appear to have retained a strong sense of independent identity so that irrespective of what language is spoken in the governing houses, life seems to go on.

We can't help but think though, that being overrun by a complete country must have significantly more impact than merely having a freeway run through one's street.

I suspect that to someone who has lived through a foreign occupation of any sort, a mere resumption would be a bit of a "sprinkle" really.