There is something for all tastes. Big ones, small ones, round ones, square ones, yellow ones, red ones, soft ones, cracky ones… even those enriched with vitamins…

Sweets are little masterpieces!

… This museum is dedicated to all those people who have devoted their lives to a guilty passion, greediness.”

As mentioned, I loved France. The people are kind, the vistas are beautiful, and the candy is delicious. Still, I found traveling a little difficult. Obviously, life on the road is better than slaving away in a cubicle somewhere, but the loneliness and rootlessness of travel can be trying. I had some good days in France - drinking wine and eating cheese with other travelers one late night in Marseilles, walking for hours in the streets of Paris, and finding little empty restaurants tucked away that served delicious French food (my personal favorite was a pork dish with apple and potato… where I shamefully forgot to tip the waiter!) Still, after a month of rushing through Europe, with an average time of 2 days per city, travel was starting to wear me out.

The little things turned into big things. Difficulty in finding hostels, or worse finding a hostel only to discover it shut down all afternoon, leaving no way of knowing if there were open beds, the mounting internet fees while I carted my broken laptop around, the trials of a long-distance relationship, and of course missing the nicer parts of the US - this kept compounding until I realized I needed to take a break. I stayed in a cheap hotel single in Avignon for a few days, just reading and sleeping. I chose Avignon because I wanted to use it as a base for visiting Uzes, a small traditional French town that also contains the Haribo Museum. A beautiful city, I did almost nothing touristy - except for the Haribo Museum of course!

It turned out, getting to the museum was a big pain. A bus ran, but only once per day and not on weekends. The museum itself also cleverly shut down for a lunch break minutes after the bus arrived, so I had to entertain myself until it reopened. Fortunately, Uzes is a nice little city a fairly short walk away from the actual museum, and my bus driver was able to give me directions and chat - surprisingly, he was a native Englishman with a son living in Boston!

The museum itself was, dare I say, not worth the trouble. The focus was really on licorice candy - and we all know how I feel about that - and really lacking in free samples. Particularly free samples of the non-black licorice variety. I did love the dedication (in italics at the beginning of this entry.) Still, there was a lot of information on the production of the Gold Bear gummy bears, the history of Haribo, and the history of black licorice. For example, 70 million gummy bears are made daily - and if all of the Haribo gummy bears made in one year were placed in a line, it would circle the earth three times! I love little statistics like that.

I was also able to visit some traditional candy stores in Avignon. They were appallingly expensive - as much as 20 dollars for a small bag of sweets! - but the owners were always more than willing to talk about the candy. I have a lot of pictures of random French candies now. Provencial candy consists mainly of almonds, nougat, and fruits - almonds are obviously local so marzipan candy is very popular.

Anyway, my little traveler malaise didn’t really end until after I left Switzerland - and to a lesser extent until I made it to the Middle East - but after that break I was ready to roll through the Swiss countryside and explore chocolate and cheese factories there.