A View From Above
Ballooning Over Burgundy
I said I’d never go up in a hot air balloon again. But that was a terrified me thirty- five years ago. And here I was, relaxed and enjoying the views of the French Côte d’Or with my family and a handful of French at 1500 meters, hovering over vineyards, pastures, and fields.
In 1979 I was contacted by Hans Bucher, a 39-year-old German balloonist, who was hoping for some free publicity in The International Herald Tribune, for which I was the Swiss Correspondent. Bucher was trying to launch a ballooning festival in Château d’Oex in the Bernese Oberland, known for its cheese and rolling pastures pierced by imposing Alps…
“I hate heights, am a white-knuckle flyer, and get dizzy going up a ladder,” I told Hans, who grew up in Dortmund, Germany, where a significant supply of natural gas had been discovered, tweaking his interest in hot-air ballooning.
“You’d be passing up a good story and seeing the Alps as few have or ever will,” Hans insisted. A week later, Hans was shouting at me to hop into a small straw basket filled with propane gas canisters, tethered by ropes to a giant black balloon.
What was I thinking? I had a husband and three children needing me back in Lausanne.
Suddenly we were off, I, gripping the waist-high rim of the basket with knuckles the color of snow. “Better to have one hand on the rim and the other on this line,” Eric, the charming American co-pilot Hans had hired for the summer to “teach him the ropes” of hot-air ballooning, told me gently. I was terrified I’d faint and was wondering which of these (I hoped) gallant guys would catch me if I did faint. Hans was smoking cigarette after cigarette to tell the direction of the wind while we headed for the Alps. “Wasn’t propane gas flammable, I asked Eric, thinking of the Hindenburg?”
Eric reminded me that the Hindenburg had exploded from hydrogen that filled balloons and dirigibles back then and that those days had long since passed. Hans got his camera out and leaned over the basket to take a selfie of us three. I tried to smile, as Eric was doing; it was a feeble attempt at best.
241 Years of Experience
I hadn’t yet done my research about the French Montgolfier brothers discovering in 1783 that hot air from a fire they’d lit to roast patates and saucissons, caused the paper wrapping their picnic to rise above the flames. Nor had I read that the French King Louis XVI invited the now famous brothers to Versailles to fly a balloon filled with hydrogen, carrying a lamb, duck, and rooster, and that the balloon landed safely. Nor did I know that it wasn’t until NASA in the 1960s developed a balloon from a parachute cloth that hot-air ballooning took off as a relatively safe, unique adventure.
Since moving to Burgundy a year ago, following the death of my husband, Richard, I’d often noticed hot-air balloons floating over Meursault’s vineyards during my early morning walks. In the late afternoon, when I picked up my grandchildren at school in the neighboring village of Volnay, we often saw hot-air balloons above us and over the neighboring village of Pommard. “Would you like to go up in a balloon one day?” I asked them. “Oui,” came the enthusiastic answer. “May we really?”
With the help of Meursault’s local tourist office, I got in touch with one of the three companies that operates hot-air balloons over La Côte: FRANCE Montgolfières.
David La Beaume, of FRANCE Montgolfières, was interested that I’d flown with Hans Bucher back in 1979 and that I wanted my family to experience flying over our adopted land. “Oh, my pilot, Antonio, trained with Hans. Best time would be end of May (it was mid-May and the weather had been very iffy), when the winds will be more predictable,” David said. We picked a date and David asked how many we’d be, our ages and our weights. “We have a basket that fits thirteen,” David told me after I recounted my experienced in the small basket. “And you’ll be comfortable and quite safe,” he added. I really hadn’t made up my mind if I’d accompany my family. In the end I did, after telling my daughter, half-kidding, “Wouldn’t that be a great way for me to end my charmed life?”
She was not amused.
Peaceful and Serene at 1500 Meters
Ballooning over Burgundy, as well as the rest of France, has become a big tourist draw, even though it is a pricey adventure (we five: three adults and 2 children, cost 1,000 euros) and one is at the mercy of the wind, of course. The huge, golden balloon that hovered over Paris at night during the Olympics is sure to make ballooning even more of a "must do" for flush tourists to France. We were hoping to fly over our homes in Meursault, but instead found ourselves cruising south over Pommard’s cow pastures and fields of yellow mustard plants and flaxen wheat.
When we had reached 1500 meters, pilot Antoine asked us how we all felt. Everyone agreed we were “peaceful” and felt safe. I appreciated the soft landing in a cow pasture. The landing 35 years ago was anything but soft. Hans had to quickly let out significant air from the black balloon to keep us from going to Italy over the Alps, already becoming dark in the dusk, using the tops of pines in a forest above Château d’Oex to slow down our rapid descent.
Now, six weeks later, I wonder if "peaceful" and "safe" would be the response to Antoine's question. Since the balloon trip, France is in a crisis; President Macron’s gamble of a "snap election" and dismissal of l'Assemblée Nationale (our Congress) to solidify his shaky hold on centrist power, proved to be a disaster.
Let's hope France wakes up, along with the rest of Europe. The view from anywhere, except perhaps 1500 meters, is not pretty.
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Vive la France! Great country, art, culture and most of all the food and wine. Undoubtedly, the greatest wine varietals in the world…sorry California. I’ve been lucky enough to have traveled there several times. My great grandparents were from Alsace-Lorraine and immigrated to Louisiana and Texas in the 1880’s. My grandparents named my Aunt, Lorraine after their homeland.
For decades my grandparents owned and operated the Hotel Martinet in San Diego, Tx. Captain Richard King from the King Ranch was said to have written in his memoirs, how much he enjoyed staying and dining there.
The view from above in a hot air balloon may be better than on the ground. Sadly, France finds itself in a difficult situation with its faltering economy and society. Unemployment and race relations are abysmal. Race riots, “no go zones,” and sexual assault against women are not uncommon. The result has given rise to the conservatives, Marine Le Pen, RN party.
It would seem that the imperial past has come back to haunt French society. Many from Africa and the Middle East have not assimilated well. The national religion of Catholicism has felt threatened by Islam and calls for massive immigration reform.
The grotesque spectacle of the Olympics in depicting The Last Supper in drag has angered many French and resulted in a massive prayer service in support of the church.
The leadership of Emmanuel Macron has been disastrous, high inflation, unemployment, crime…sound familiar?
French energy policy has been a bright spot. With 80% of electricity generated from nuclear power, it leads the world and should be a model for the US.
Thanks, Calla. Love hearing about your balloon adventure! About France, this is my limited perspective, but Macron seems to me to have been a disaster. He seems to have divided France with his policies which to me seem insane and duplicitous rather than Centrist, rather like the DNC this week.