GORDON DUFF: FEAR AND LOATHING IN EUROPE, COLMAR TO PADUA (Part 1)

IN SEARCH OF THE PERFECT HAMBURGER….I WAS MISINFORMED

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor

I had an email last week from a reader asking me if I had been to Padua, a city in Northern Italy.  Not only have I been there but I photographed the military cemetery also.  Americans, certainly not anymore with the dollar worthless and money scarce, seldom get to drive around Europe.  On the other hand, some Americans are forced to whether they like it or not.  I fall into the latter category.  I do some drives in Europe so often they feel like commuting, Paris to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Vienna, Vienna to Budapest.  Today’s run is from the French town of Colmar, through Switzerland and into Italy to Padua.

The photo above is looking left, the next one will be looking right.  Around the corner at the building with the blue shutters is the cathedral.  Colmar is in France’s Alsace Lorraine, capital of the Haut-Rhin region.  Only a few miles from the Rhine, or Rhin or Rhein or whatever, Colmar sits between Strausbourg and Basel, Switzerland.

Not a big town certainly, Colmar is a good place to day trip from, wineries in the Alsace, a heavily forested area, rolling hills, dairy farms.  People can live there and should and do.  Leaving Colmar involves driving south along the Rhine and making sure you have a tax sticker that allows you to use highways in Switzerland.  YOU DO NOT WANT TO SCREW WITH THE SWISS!