We left the capital by a grey rainy day to spend a few days in Burgundy . Burgundy is nice in winter . This is a cold country . Grey . Sometimes white . But stone cold . Cold is getting its way in the earth and fields and woods . People have these thick old houses to keep warm .
Going through places , you smell the fireplace and the burnt wood just by walking in the streets . This is a time of the year people enjoy staying inside . Like the life of the trees and plants takes refuge in the roots , people stay indoors and wait for the cold thing to pass .
Semur en Auxois is a medieval town in a part of Burgundy called "Auxois" . The town is impressively beautiful and we like the old big cobble stones on its streets . We stopped for some patisserie , spent some time in a cozy bookstore . It was warm there . Read pages at random in some of the books displayed .
Auxois is a hilly region . It has beautiful grassland with these great healthy meat cows , the "Charolaises" .These cows are white and the cold season of eastern France does'nt seem to bother them . They stand stoicly in the adversity looking at who knows what . Even with this snow , I am sure many had just a piece of roof on the side of the meadow as protection .
Winter is a dimension that molds people . In the past , they built houses with small windows here , not to prevent the sun heat from coming in, as they did in the south , but to prevent the heat of their stoves from evaporating under the long and austere winter season .
