You can take the Troll out of the country ...

The Chief Troll, as you may know (and probably don't care), spends the off-season skipping around the planet to eat and drink in really cool towns. It's a nice change of pace from his football-season life, which consists mostly of sitting in his mother's basement eating Buffalo wings and calculating football data on his beer-bottle-cap abacus.  

 

However, you can take the Troll out of the country, but you can't take the deeply inbred Trollness out of the Troll. We learned all of this during a few days in the Rhone-Alps region of southeastern France this week.

 

Here are a few examples, in photos, of how our resident Potentate of Pigskin simply cannot escape the life of beer-barbecue-and-football-loving shame that haunts him wherever he goes.

 

The city of Lyon is known as the gastronomic capital of France. The Chief's taxi driver, a ball-busting French dude named Bruno (the Big B), even joked that there are three rivers in town: the Saone, the Rhone and the Beaujolais. The first two are actually rivers. The last of the three is the famous local wine.

 

But even in Beaujolais-loving Lyon you can find a special beer for Trolls. Cuvee des Trolls is made in the French-speaking part of Belgium and we found it at a really neat beer pub in the center of Old Lyon called Les BerThom near the banks of the Saone. The bar is so old that it looks like it was carved out of a cave. And it has some really good brew. In the upper right corner of the photo, above the sign for Cuvee des Trolls, you can see bottles of  classic Belgian brews Orval, Chimay and Rochefort.

Annecy is a gorgeous old lakeside town in the French Alps, not far from the Swiss border. Visitors come for the fine food, wine and fresh mountain air. We came for the lone redneck bar in town, the General Lee: Skynyrd and country music on the stereo, cold Bud in the fridge, Confederate flags out front and around the bar, and the Declaration of Independence on the wall. It was about two door fronts down from the corner of Rue President Favre.

 

The owner even has an American nickname: "Junior" Fargeas. He loves the United States (my experience is that most French do) and he shared a shot or two of his own special American-style cocktail: a mix of three parts Jack Daniel's and one part maple syrup. He has no name for it. But not bad, folks. (P.S.: notice the hot French blond girl checking out the guns. Even old and overweight, the Kid's still got game.)

 

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Here, in a true bit of serendipity, was the license plate on our pal Bruno's van that ferried the Chief Troll and some friends around France. We can't make this stuff up, folks: BBQ 69. Cue Julie Andrews in another European mountainside town: "These are a few of my favorite things."

 

Let it be known that we also enjoy a nice glass of 432 from time to time, too.