It's no big secret that trips abroad are the fuel that fuels the engine of my life (otherwise how could I open this website). The magic of these trips stems not necessarily from the big monuments but rather from the small moments that ultimately are the ones that are etched most strongly in memory. Whether it's the smell of an autumn morning in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris, the taste of the pastry you ate at a magical patisserie in a small village whose name you've forgotten, the sounds of an organ in an ancient church, and more. All these little things that you don't think about every day sit deep in your memory, waiting to be released and overwhelm you. And so, like the Madeleine cookie in Frost's book "In Search of Lost Time," a small trigger brings you back to these places in a split second and fills you with pleasure, peace, and sweet longing.
I recently found such a trigger. It is the book “First Morning in Europe,” which contains a long series of short stories, or rather miniatures taken from trips, compiled by the writer and journalist Thelma Edmon. The book contains lovely pictures and quite a bit of information and charming anecdotes, but to me that is not the secret of its true beauty. The power of the book stems from being a strong trigger for repressed memories of pleasure that we experienced during our trip to Europe. Although Thelma and I hardly traveled to the same places (Europe is quite big after all), almost every story in her book instantly transported me to the experiences I had and made me feel like I was traveling with her to the places she wrote about. The book’s ability to become a trigger for delightful memories has an incomparable calming effect. I remember how I took this book with me on the bus after a “particularly happy” day at work. I just started reading one of the chapters and all the stress and nerves washed away from me and the pleasure of distant memories from England, Germany, Italy, Austria, and of course France, I was overwhelmed. Since then, this book has been permanently on hand at home and I highly recommend it.
So for all the Francophiles who want to return for a moment to their travel memories, I brought you a sample chapter from the book:
The History of Apple Pie – Lamotte Beuvron, France
I told him that on the way from St. Patrick’s to Paris we would stop at the hotel where the tarte tatin was created. He was busy reorganizing the contents of his suitcase and had almost reached peace of mind when my voice touched him. “What are you talking about?” he asked, always ready to check a whimsical deviation from the main path.
“The upside-down apple pie.”
“Where is it?”
"Lamotte Bibro."
“I’ve never heard of this place.”
No wonder. No one travels to the faded town, about 170 kilometers south of Paris, unless their soul longs for a taste of the original tarte tatin. And mine did. So the car abandoned the A10, which leads straight to the Latin Quarter in what is arguably the most beautiful part of the world, and turned onto the A85, a road along which rain was pouring and with autumnal forests on either side. The 78 kilometers added to the journey seemed unnecessary when the car entered the town's main street. The rain had stopped, but the air spread a blurring curtain over the inconspicuousness of the low houses.
And here we discover the hotel, “Hôtel Tatin,” a graceful and modest structure named after the sisters Stéphanie and Caroline Tatin. They purchased the establishment in the late 19s, and from their kitchen came the fame of the cake in question.
There are different versions of the event that created the tart. The most popular one says that Stephanie was in a hurry one day during the hunting season, when the hotel was filled with starving men from hours of gunfire in the nearby forests. She made a mistake and placed the caramelized apples in the copper pan first, and only then spread the layer of dough on top of them. Without embarrassment, she turned the cake over as soon as it came out of the oven and served it hot. Some historians claim that the upside-down tart was common in the Loire Valley decades before, but a good story is worth telling.
At the hotel entrance, we found a narrow staircase, the walls of which were covered with reddish paper, and a cramped reception desk. A young woman in a white apron emerged from the kitchen and cast an indifferent glance at the couple coming in from the drizzling outside. In the small, warm dining room stood the large coal oven, in which Stephanie baked her cakes. A heavy iron appliance, covered with decorated ceramic tiles. On the walls hung newspaper clippings and a black-and-white photo of the sisters at the hotel entrance at the end of the 19th century. Both of them, in long white aprons, stand erect near a carriage about to set off with its two passengers. The cake was served to us by the same clerk-waitress. It seemed that she had returned and experienced a weary bewilderment, and that she was still not interested in delving into its solution. The famous tart was placed before us: the apples were not caramelized enough, the dough was anemic, as the hostess had said. When the driver pulled the car key from his pocket and tapped it on the table, a slow hallucination wrapped in stale smells unraveled.