In the land of champagne

This is the first post of a series of them which will describe our trip from Frankfurt to Guadalajara, through France, with our car full of stuff after three years living in Frankfurt. Life is now incredibly hectic, so the frequency of this blog may diminish a little bit, I am afraid.

Our trip from Frankfurt to Guadalajara had as first stage Rheims, capital of Champagne and widely-known for its Gothic cathedral. Despite of these two important highlights, which should make an appealing tourist destination of Rheims, we found a very quiet city with very few tourists. I do not know whether something else could be done to increase its potential, but we expected something more from Rheims.

Its cathedral though is impressive and superb. It is one of the best Gothic cathedrals in Europe and the place where kings of France were crowned until 1825. The building itself is really long (over 100 metres) and tall (over 30 metres). There are hundreds of sculptures outside, which can be found in the main façade, in the towers, at both sides,... Inside, the atmosphere is much quieter and intimate as the use of electric light is quite restricted.

Beyond that, Rheims is the capital of Champagne as well, even if Épernay, around 25km to the south, is the place where most caves are located. Nonetheless, in our trip with the car through the region, we could not see any single vinyard close to the highway. In the view of that, we are starting to draw two alternative theories: (i) champange is not made from grapes, but from something else (oil, potatoes,...), and (ii) producers buy the grapes from elsewhere. Really, leaving jokes aside, it was shocking for us not to see any single vinyard in more than 100km.

Finally, I did not know that Rheims was the place where the surrender of Germany was signed in 1945. There is a tiny museum in the place where it was signed, the headquarters of the US Army in Europe. Being also so close to Verdun, one really feels the horror of the two World Wars in this area.

All our visit to Rheims was accompanied by a very cold weather, which urged us to seek refuge indoors and which probably prevented us from discovering more. In any case, although we really liked Rheims, we got the feeling that beyond the cathedral, there is not much to offer to the tourist.