ECHOES

The red color of Dutch cheese.

Many people criticize Dutch cheese for its external color. Let's reassure them about the composition of this red paint.
Near Nîmes, in a small village called Grand Gallergues, the sunflower flag, or Provençal sunflower, which is so widely consumed in Holland, is made. This vegetable dye is extracted from the maurelle or sunflowerine, whose scientific name is Crozophora tinctoria.

When the stems of this plant are in flower, the sap is extracted and allowed to ferment by adding... urine. Rags are soaked twice in this liquid, then dried and finally exposed to the ammonia vapors released from horse manure: these rags turn blue and are used to make the sunflower flags that are sent to Holland. Their blue substance, extracted using a water bath, turns red under the influence of the acids specific to so-called Dutch cheeses.

The dangerous sidewalk.

Between numbers 8 and 10 Rue des Solitaires, the sidewalk slopes very steeply. Two serious accidents recently occurred, with two passersby breaking their arms, one an arm, the other a leg. The local councilor, asked to intervene, asked the Prefect of the Seine department to have his technical services repair this dangerous sidewalk as quickly as possible.

The largest train station in the world is not in America.

France should be proud of having the largest train station in the world, given the importance of its railway network. And it is the department of Seine-et-Oise that holds this honor. In fact, the small town of Juvisy receives services from Paris via the Orléans and P. L.-M stations, in a bundle of thirty tracks which it then extends in a fan shape across the whole of France, to the south and west of Paris and to Switzerland, Italy, Spain and Portugal.

• Chrozophora tinctoria or maurelle, not to be confused with other sunflowers from Provence

• Gallargues-le-Montueux in the Gard region

• Hollande and Dave cheese. With or without the original recipe ingredients?

• Juvisy train station