To celebrate the start of our fall vacation, we headed to our landlord's house in Sierk-les-Bains for the weekend. This was a big test for us: Could our poor American stomachs handle the tartiflette, anise-flavored pastis, & the pressure of living in a language we're struggling with?
In short, yes. In short, we loved every minute of our time with our landlord's family & their good friends that were visiting from Les Vosges–from attempting to help with the kids to feeling like we were a married couple among other married couples.
One of the highlights of the weekend was a driving tour around their small French town's neighboring cities. In less than an hour, the drive took us from Sierck-les-Bains into Luxembourg, the richest (& cleanest to the point of being almost alarming) country in the world & then swung us through Germany.
We enjoyed talking about the changing architecture & languages on road signs, but the trip also opened up a discussion of the countries' energy production. Along the German border stood a row of "éolienne." It took us the rest of the day (& next morning) to get the word right: wind turbines, named after the Greek god of wind.
While swerving along the hairpin curves of the European countryside, our landlord's husband & our tour guide explained that Germany was leading the way with wind power. One article by Reuters that I read while trying to figure out how they had managed to be so ahead of the U.S. on this trend said that 16 percent of the country's energy already comes from wind–and their on track to "kick fossil fuels" by 2050.
We crossed back into France & saw a large wind turbine surrounded by the region's white wine vineyards. After winding up the hill & down a dirt road, we got to the energy park. The earth was buzzing & my ears were fuzzy from the wind when my feet hit the soggy ground outside the van.
Standing underneath the turbine was the strongest sense of fear & hope I've experienced. The near silent swoosh of the unfathomably large blades was sending power down the hillsides. The house working as an education facility near the base of the windmill had two sets of solar panels: one converting light into electricity, one heating the water.
In the distance, we could see a nuclear power center. Nuclear power now supplies 80 percent of France's electricity. While this fact is largely due to the lack of natural resources found in France, the friends we were talking with said they & those they know see nuclear energy as a positive thing for the country.
While nuclear energy requires a lot of water & has a dangerous reputation, it is serving France well & helping lower their pollution levels. France is pushing toward renewable energies & exploring all of their options by acting on them instead of falling back on oil when we're still facing a massive offshore crisis.
It was inspiring to stand on a hill & see all that's possible–four kinds of energy including the diesel moving our van along. I'll borrow words from Professor Jacquinot, scientific advisor to the French High Commissioner for Atomic Energy, found in Alysen Miller's article for CNN.
Would you rather live next to a coal power station or a nuclear power station? I have no doubt that I would choose to be next to a nuclear power station.
Be sure to check out the latest installment of Where's Joe's Head? from our wind turbine adventure, too.
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