April 2 – 5: Toulouse
It was only 2:30 in the afternoon and I was already on my fourth train of the day. I was shocked we had even made it on board this one. Mom had flown into Paris that morning and we had two hours to get across town and catch a train headed south to Toulouse. In most cities two hours is plenty of time to get across town. But Paris isn’t most cities. And using public transportation always throws an extra element of je ne sais quoi into the mix.
It wasn’t our day: the RER suburban trains running from the airport into Paris were down. The transportation gods thoughtfully pointed us to alternate trains which would take us “into Paris,” but without a more specific final destination. We were close to the center of Paris when the conductor spontaneously announced that this stop would be the train’s terminus. We hurriedly gathered our bags and ascended the escalators until we emerged onto the busy streets of midday Paris. I looked around, attempting to get oriented. Seeing few other options, I made the executive decision to hail a cab. Keep in mind that, in big cities, taxis—or cars in general—are often not the fastest means of transportation. There are a lot of factors to consider. I waved one down and asked the driver if he thought we could make it to the Austerlitz station in half an hour. “Ça va être juste,” he told me—“It’s gonna be close.”
So Mom’s first experience in Paris was an aggressive taxi ride, racing against the clock in lunchtime traffic. She was having flashbacks of rush hour China. Our driver honked and weaved with the best of them and got us to the station with about four minutes to spare. One problem: neither Mom nor I had cash in euros. (When will I learn?) I ran around frantically trying to find an ATM with no success until the driver finally (albeit reluctantly) agreed to take Mom’s dollars. We ran to the train. Our two seats were the only empty ones. We clumsily boarded, smashing through the tiny aisle-way with our baggage.
We arrived comfortably in Toulouse that evening. Unsurprisingly, I had forgotten to write down directions to the hotel. I asked around: “Rue Raymond IV, s’il vous plait?” No one had heard of it. This didn’t strike me as strange until we finally stumbled upon the street we were looking for, no more than 100 meters from the train station.
Hotel Président was pleasant. The staff were friendly to the point of being un-French. Mom and I hadn’t eaten, so we threw our stuff down and went out in search of a late-night dinner—not an easy task anywhere in France except Paris. Luckily, we found a tiny Döner Kebab place just down the road (see “Berlin” for more info on Döner Kebab). We ordered a couple of falafels and slid into the back corner to grub. We ate mostly in silence, mesmerized by the Arabic language channel showing on the restaurant’s TV. The program was some kind of kids’ talent competition, à la Star Search, but instead of singing and dancing the children recited verses from the Qur’an.
We had a satisfying tour of Toulouse the next day. Mom adapted quickly to my style of traveling: Walk a lot but also take plenty of breaks. Relax with lunch and wine; recharge with espresso and pastries. Seek out the strange and different. Never pass by a friperie (second-hand shop) without going in. People-watch at every occasion.
Toulouse gives the impression of a place that could challenge Austin to a weird-off. The city has France’s second largest university population (after Paris), so it’s not only brimming with students but also has that twenty-something bohemian overflow that seems to exist in the best university towns. We had hardly left the hotel before running into an enormous fresh fruit and veggie market. Soon afterwards, we found ourselves walking through a creative, concept-inspired recycling campaign. Street art and street performers were everywhere. A group of tents were set up on the main square—ambiguously, so that I couldn’t tell if it was a protest or a true shantytown. The tents’ inhabitants (I assume from all the flannel) sat nearby on a 70s-colored velvet couch. Young, hip-looking couples in plastic framed glasses strolled the streets while their children skipped along sporting shaggy hair and Chuck Taylors. I think I saw more male pony-tails in one day in Toulouse than I saw the entire time I was living in Troyes.
- recycle dudes
- crazy weird street performers
At some point we had picked up flyers for a free dance and music performance that evening in one of Toulouse’s “desanctified” churches, meaning the building now belongs to la publique and not the diocese. We swung by a bit early and spoke with a woman wearing a knitted shawl, a long, flowing skirt, and workboots. She gave us a program and eagerly told me that I should translate it for Mom before the show. Then she said to come back in twenty minutes.
It turns out the show was a performance of Yeats’ one-act play At the Hawk’s Well. The program noted that while the majority of the interpretation would be in French, certain parts of the script would be recited in English “not for comprehension, but for their musicality.” It went on to explain that the words were to be heard as “fragments brought from the wind” and that the performers were to be thought of as “entities” rather than “characters.” “This is going to be weird,” I told Mom.
In the end we were glad to have gone. I probably got more out of it than Mom did, but the dance was skillful and original (though painfully slow), and the music (flute, harp, and xylophone) was unique and full of emotion. After the show we were treated to some homemade apple juice. And—get this—no one hassled us for money! It was actually free and not just promotionally free.
The following morning we took a train south to the fortified city of Carcassonne. Romans first built a fort on the hilltop site in 100BC. Since then the cité has been controlled by the Visigoths, a count named Bello, the Trencaval family (who built a castle and a basilica within the ramparts), and the Catholic Church during the Crusades. It fell under the rule of the kingdom of France in 1247.
The town below the fort, called la ville basse, was pretty typically French. Narrow stone streets lined with shops and restaurants shot off from the main square, which was hosting a chaotic Saturday morning market. We stopped in a café advertising homemade zucchini soup. To our surprise, the owners were part French, part Algerian and part English, so we got French food with Algerian-quality service while speaking English. After lunch we continued toward the cité. Just as we were crossing a highway bridge, the fort appeared majestically atop a tall, grassy hill. We climbed up and entered through the ramparts. Within the walls we found the Comtal Castle, the St. Nazaire Basilica, the occasional house, and about a gazillion restaurants and souvenir shops. It was like being in a medieval village except for all of the unashamed pandering to twenty-first century tourists.
- model of the cité
- oh yeah i live inside a medieval village. no big deal.
- those german dudes were having a party picnic
- St. Nazaire Basilica
After exploring all day we were truly exhausted. The train ride back to Toulouse was quiet. When we got back to our hotel room we collapsed on the bed almost simultaneously. We didn’t even go out for dinner, opting instead to finish off some snacks Mom had brought and watch The Daily Show Global Edition. We were going to have to seriously improve our stamina if we were going to make it through the next couple of weeks.
April 5-10: England
This section warrants a bit of backstory. In December, I was approached by Marc, an elementary school teacher in Troyes who was planning a trip to England with his ten and eleven year olds. He was looking for chaperones, and he wanted native English-speakers. In small-town France there weren’t many of us, but that just made playing “spot-the-English-speaker” even easier, like picking out the yuppie at a keg party. I signed up, eager to hang out with kids after teaching twenty-somethings all year. A few months later Marc was still a person short, and Mom bravely jumped on board.
Mom and I had found our way back to Troyes on the evening of Sunday, April 5th. Marc picked us up at the train station and welcomed us into his home for the night—the logical plan, since we had to be on the bus by 7:00 the next morning. His daughter Amélie, in town from her study abroad program in Spain, had some friends over—one of whom was actually a student of mine. (Another symptom of living in la province.) We watched as the dining room transformed into a crêperie. We had our choice of egg, ham, sausage, salmon, cheese, and leek dip. And that doesn’t even count dessert. Of course, Mom and I had also gone the crêpe route for lunch, bringing my French pancake total to exactly five for the day.
We were on the bus to England before sunrise the next morning. The children were hyped out of their brains. Understandably. Four days on England’s central coast, with planned activities including fencing, archery, wall-climbing, a market, a castle, a boat ride, and shellfishing. No parents. All your friends. Possibly the coolest thing to happen in your ten years on Earth so far. Mom and I quickly realized that these children would slowly and tortuously destroy us over the next five days. There were forty-four of them and only six of us. Mom discovered that although the children understood almost no English, a good reprimand is all about the tone of your voice.
Aside from a couple of troublemakers—I took away a nudie magazine within the first fifteen minutes—it was a good group of kids. They were incredibly patient and complaint-free for what turned out to be a fifteen hour trip. Waiting for the ferry across the English Channel set us back quite a bit. We sat in a parking lot in Calais for over an hour before boarding the ferry. As hundreds of cars and buses lined up I struggled to imagine how we would all fit. That was until I saw the boat. Like many Cincinnatians, when I hear “ferry” I think of the Anderson Ferry, which we west-siders use as a shortcut across the river to the airport. It maxes out at about fifteen cars. This beast of a ship was like thirty Anderson Ferries, complete with a bar, a restaurant, a cafeteria, and an arcade. Needless to say the children were bubbling over with excitement. We sailed into the white cliffs of Dover with no catastrophes, only two close calls: one lost but recovered backpack and one seasick but vomitless little girl.
- good thinking
- on the ferry
- Mom and me
- white cliffs of dover
Once in England it was back on the bus. We tried to keep the kids entertained with movies (two thumbs up for Ratatouille), but as soon as a movie ended the chaos ensued. Mom and I sat towards the back and scolded all of the little heads that popped up: “Hey, sit down. Sit down. Sit! Assieds-toi!” It was like playing verbal whack-a-mole.
Around 10:00 that night, we finally pulled into our destination, the Kingswood Activity “Centre” (different from a Center) in Overstrand, North Norfolk. The building was a late nineteenth century mansion, transformed into dorms and activity halls with a distinctly Harry Potter vibe. Mom and I got the tightest room for absolutely no conceivable reason. And, as I apparently deemed noteworthy enough to jot down in my journal, “the whole place is run by cute boys in their twenties: BONUS.” (Two weeks later my friend Brandon discovered this phrase in said journal and, understandably, severely ridiculed me for hours.)
The schedule for the first day consisted of breaking up into three groups to participate in various activities such as fencing, archery, wall climbing, repelling (“abseiling” in BE), and, a crowd favorite, aeroball. Aeroball is exactly what you’re probably imagining. You know those inflatable bouncy rooms you see at church festivals? Try telling me that you’ve never wanted to play basketball in one of those. (Ok…maybe only for the hops-challenged among us.) Aeroball, baby.
- our pad
- “l’escrime”
- jacob’s ladder
- then i missed
- abseiling
- rockclimbing
- kingswood centre
Sounds like a pretty good day, right? I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Two problems. First, ten year olds have endless reserves of energy. It’s inexplicable. We had every minute of this trip scheduled so that the kids wouldn’t have a free moment, get bored, and stage some sort of wild children’s revolt on us. Second, the center’s staff didn’t speak French and these kids didn’t speak English. Most of the activities came with important safety instructions. We translated when we could, but the staff still insisted on yelling guidelines to the children in English: “Put your hands on the rope!” We were lucky if one of the kids understood the word “hands.” The wise ones among the staff gave up early. By the end of the second group they had started yelling instructions only to entertain themselves, now aware that their English was meaningless to these small French ears. “Put your donkey on the starfish!” “Broccoli!”
For all of the flack England catches for its food, we were pleasantly surprised by the delicious, hearty meals the center served up. Whopping portions, too, after coming from France. After dinner was the dance party, the one time in my life where I’ve ever seen a language barrier actually ease a situation instead of complicating it. The kids didn’t notice that the guy leading the Cha Cha Slide slid to his left, and slid to his right. (Take it back now y’all, one hop this time.) And since the dance master genius was facing the kids, they just followed his lead. They slid right when the music said left and slid left when the music said right. (Criss-cross criss-cross, cha cha real smooth.) Apparently mirror image choreography was not part of the Kingswood staff training. Nor was turning around to face the same way as your observers. But since the kids had no idea what the music was saying, the Cha Cha Slide went on uninterrupted.
9:00 has never felt so much like bedtime. After facilitating shower-and-pajama-time, we finally went to sleep. But not without breaking into the complimentary wine and chocolate in our room. We felt like we deserved it.
We spent day two in the city of Norwich. We parked the bus on the outskirts of the city and then paraded ridiculously, single-file to the town’s Cathedral. One of the church bigwigs welcomed us and gave us a well-intentioned but brief and hard-on-the-ears tour in extremely anglicized French. After she bid her farewell, Christophe, history buff and one of the kids’ teachers, proposed a re-do. So we had a second tour. This time in native French and in much more detail. He pointed out the earlier, Romanesque characteristics of the church and taught the children how to distinguish them from the Gothic touches added on later.
- Norwich cathedral
We ate our bagged lunches in the cloître and I spied on the kids’ conversations around me. Suddenly I burst into laughter, almost spitting my water on Mom. “What?” she asked suspiciously. “The children behind us are arguing about whether “Christ” is Jesus’ first name or his last name,” I told her. “Public school kids,” Mom sighed sarcastically.
Two hours in the afternoon were reserved for the open air market. We split up into groups of eight children and one adult. I worried about how Mom would communicate with them, but we figured that as long as she made it back to the meeting point with eight little heads, everything would be okay. My group spent most of their time buying sweets—veritable kids in a candy shop. Luckily, most merchants were patient with them, even though the interactions consisted mostly of pointing and a cheerful “sank yoo!” I finally noticed that the children had no idea how to count pounds, so they would return to the merchants again and again, buying one item at a time until their money was gone.
- covered market
- buyin stuff
Back together as a group—still hadn’t lost any—we headed to the Norwich castle. The adults were visibly worn out. We basically let the children have free reign of the castle, playing royal dress-up and sending pennies down the wishing well, until the building closed and the castle staff shooed us out.
- at the castle
- royalty
Back at the center that evening the planned activity was “circus skills.” Something about given the freedom to “clown around” (get it?) must have brought out the worst in my group. I had one boy smack a girl (pretty hard) in the behind with a baton and another boy hurl over the side of a lobby couch. We decided to cut circus time a bit short and call it a night.
Day three was boating and shellfishing. Our boat captains promised seal-sightings, and while they weren’t as social as we’d hoped, we did occasionally spot their shiny black heads popping out of the waves rolling away from the boat. “Les phoques!” the kids would yell, which innocently means “seals” in French, but sounds like something altogether different in English and prompted curious looks from our captains and fellow boat-goers.
- un phoque
- cold girls
Later at the rockpool we searched for shellfish while the tide was low. One of the guys on the Kingswood staff gave me a crash course in rockpool ecology. I followed him, but I felt ridiculous clarifying my understanding: “So the limpits hang out with the barnacles and the dog welks feast on the periwinkles?” Total jibberish.
I wandered around hopping from rock to rock until I stumbled upon Mom washing some rocks she had collected. We were joined by Damien, from the Kingswood staff, who chatted us up about America and how much he wanted to go there. It was interesting for me to hear an English guy romanticize America the way I tend to romanticize Europe and the UK. Of course, he was envisioning the adventurism of the west: surfing, rock climbing, snowboarding, and probably not life in Midwestern suburbs—a totally different kind of adventure.
“It’s amazing,” he noted, referring to the group of Frenchies, “that I’m never going to understand these people who are my neighbors and yet you come from so far away and we speak the same language.” Of course, as the conversation continued we realized that this last part may not have been as true as we originally thought. (“So, okay, trousers are pants and pants are underwear? And crisps are chips and chips are French fries?)
- attacking damien
- these two were at each other’s throats at lunchtime. this was cute.
- there’s mom
It was our final evening at Kingswood and amazingly the children were still wound up. We played “Olympic” games, the highlight of which was the shoeless relay race. The Kingsood staff entertained themselves by setting up extra obstacles for the children, such as throwing their shoes in another team’s pile.
- shoe races
We went to bed that night sad for the trip to be over but also relieved that we had only one more day of screaming ten year olds. The adults were barely functioning on the bus the next day. When we head counted at the Eurotunnel Marc got forty-three and Christophe counted forty-five. They looked at each other and shrugged. “Close enough.”
(You’ll remember the kid total was supposed to be forty-four.)
- in the eurotunnel
Mom and I had lost most of our will to discipline, and we sank into our books as the children around us celebrated their final parent-free hours. We were interrupted by the occasional tattletale.
“Kate, Kate!”
“Oui?”
“Do you know what lesbian means?”
“Oui…”
“Thomas just called me one!”
We pulled back into Troyes around 8:00pm. We said our goodbyes and Marc drove Mom and me to my (now former) house. I had already moved out but my roommates offered to let us stay for a couple nights while I showed Mom around town. Of course, after spending five sixteen-hour days with ten year olds we were aching to hibernate instead of trek around town. So we talked to my roommates for a moment before hitting the hay, this time with no little ones to bother about showers and teeth-brushing. Ahhh, home sweet home…sort of.
April 11-17: Troyes and Paris
I had grand plans to show Mom around Troyes (the town I had been living in) and the surrounding region. I had talked about renting a car, going to the nearby lakes, checking out a cheese farm, tasting some champagne. But when we finally got to Troyes and were comfortably accommodated by my roommates, all we wanted to do was rest.
Of course, I did show Mom around town, but Troyes can mostly be covered in a twenty minute walk from the train station to the cathedral. We saw the town hall and the several churches and the wood-timbered houses, but the most important order of business was champagne. I took Mom to my favorite cellar, Cellier St. Pierre, which is owned by the husband of a teacher I worked with. We loaded up on champagne and wine, without thinking about the fact that we were on foot and had to haul everything back. And then, as soon as we stepped foot onto the sidewalk, a thick grey cloud moved in overhead and emptied its contents onto us. We escaped into a café for teas and waited for the rain to die down.
My roommate’s sister was in town with her husband and new baby, and we all enjoyed a typical French feast together. Lydia had insisted on buying some escargots so Mom could try them, which she did bravely and without complaint. (I think she actually liked them.)
Sunday was a round of goodbyes. The teacher from my school stopped by to bid farewell and then my roommates took Mom and me to the train station. I congratulated Mom on mastering the French bisous, the two kisses used to say hello and goodbye, without accidentally giving anyone a smackeroo right on the lips. We boarded the train, Paris-bound once again.
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- Mom and escargot
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- Colette (my prof) and me
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- Me and the roomies
I was pretty proud of the deal I had snagged on our hotel, Hotel du Séjour in Beaubourg, near the Centre Pompidou. Only ninety euros a night, and very central. We arrived in a taxi; we had way too much stuff to brave the metro. (Keep in mind that I was moving out and that we had already bought and acquired various goodies.) We checked in with the girl at the front desk. After we paid, she looked sympathetically at Mom and me. “Here’s your key, you’re on the top floor. And, um,” she said quietly, “we don’t have an elevator.” So Mom and I hauled everything up the narrow 19th century wooden staircase, now understanding why the place was such a bargain.
My brother Greg came in from London a few hours later. Luckily, he carried only a small carry-on bag, but the stairs were still exhausting. At least seven flights. At the top, in the hallway outside our room, there was an empty chair. Above it was an attic opening with a collapsible latter you could pull down. I thought I was pretty clever pranking Greg by standing on the chair and starting to pull the ladder down, as if our “bargain” room was actually in the attic. “You’re kidding me,” he glared at me. I hopped down laughing and opened the door to our room.
We only had four days in Paris, so we put on our tourist hats and did it up big. Either nothing very entertaining happened in those four days, or I was just too exhausted to write anything in my journal. Paris is truly tiring, and we kept busy. The Notre Dame, the Seine, the Sacré Coeur, the Champs-Elysées, the Arc de Triomphe, the Centre Pompidou, and the Eiffel Tower. And the Louvre entrance-way. We all finally decided that we didn’t have the time or energy to make actually going in the Louvre worth it.
My favorite memory of the trip wasn’t any of those things, though. One evening we bought some wine and a corkscrew from a shop in St. Michel. We camped out at the edge of the Ile de la Cité, the island on the Seine where the Notre Dame stands, which comes to a point just below the Pont Neuf. There are no fences or barriers, so you can sit on the walls and dangle your legs out over the river. We cracked into the wine and entertained ourselves by waving and yelling bêtises at the passengers of the tourist boats passing by.
Okay, I’m gonna wave the white flag of laziness and resign the rest of this entry to the photos. (Thanks to Greg for the vast majority of them.)
Notre Dame at night
At the Picasso Museum
Place des Vosges
Bastille
Notre Dame from the back
Hippie priest at Notre Dame giving mass
Inside Notre Dame
The Seine at evening
Edge of the Ile de la Cité
Rue Xavier Privas in St. Michel. Best place for cheap international food.
Drinking wine at the edge of Ile de la Cité on the Seine
Go Go Power Rangers
Budget Hotel
St. Eustache near Les Halles
Inside Galleries LaFayette
Opera House
La Madeleine
Concorde
A gazillion people
Paris from the second level of the Eiffel Tower
From the top level
My Eiffel Tower recommendations: go at dusk and take the stairs down from the second floor
This offends my sensibilities
Sacré Coeur
At the Luxumbourg Gardens
Palais du Luxembourg
The Pantheon
Edge of the Ile de la Cité where we sat drinking wine
At the Louvre Pyramid
Graffiti exhibition at the Grand Palais
Greg surrenders. Eating snails, drinking wine and smirking. I think he's got this down.
April 17-20: Brussels
At the end of our week in Paris, Mom flew back home to Ohio while Greg and I continued on to Brussels for the weekend. My friend Gabriel lives there. (Incidentally, he’s Nicaraguan and not Belgian. I met him while studying in Costa Rica a few years ago.) I knew I could trust Gabriel to show us a good time.
For one reason or another, I wasn’t expecting to fall in love with Brussels. I had this image of a city that was cosmopolitan, yet professional and lacking its own flavor. Sort of like Geneva, Switzerland or something. (Sorry Geneva.) I’m delighted to say that I was wrong. Not only does Brussels have a lot for the typical tourist to gawk at, but it also has a gritty alternative side and a vibrant nightlife. By day we admired the Grand Place, Mannekin Pis, the Cinquantenaire, Bourse, the Cathedral, and the Atomium. We ate waffles and moules et frites. By night we discovered graffiti, absinthe, parties in churches, the Sultans of Falafel, Jannekin Pis, and more delicious beer than I had ever hoped for. (Bersalis and Delirium Nocturnum being two of my favorites.) I appreciated that at every bar the beer was served in its proper glass. Ever ordered a Stella and gotten it in a Bud Light glass? Won’t happen in Belgium. I also appreciated the lack of open container laws. When Greg and I were weary of bar-going, we grabbed beers from a corner store and then enjoyed them on the sidewalk with our falafels.
Bourse
The Grand Place/Grote Markt/Main Square
Gothic Town Hall in the Grand Place/Grote Markt
With Belgian waffles in front of the Mannekin Pis
Cathedral at night
Absinthe
Yes, Brussels has character. And also some characters. One afternoon, as we strolled through an area of downtown where narrow stone streets are impossibly cramped with restaurants, we were called after by the restaurateurs who wooed us with their spiels. I had flashbacks of Turkey—the assertiveness surprised me at first—until I realized that most of these guys actually were Turkish.
One of them reeled us in. He had longish, greased-back, black hair and wore a button-down and ironed pants. He had a large, round nose, a constant smirk, and the belly of someone who had been in the restaurant business for too long. Had he been trying to sell me a car or a vacuum cleaner, I would never have trusted him. But since he had a 12€ ménu and two British women sitting in the entrance-way who assured us that the food was good, we decided to go for it.
We were waited on by a lipsticky blonde woman, who looked elsewhere when she spoke to us and when we spoke to her. While we waited for our food, we were entertained by the restaurant owner who was still in the street and still hustling all of the passersby.
At some point and without our knowledge, the server slipped a huge, black top hat upside-down onto our table. When we finally noticed it we acknowledged awkwardly that we had no idea what it was doing there. It wasn’t until the end of the meal that the woman scolded us for not putting our mussel shells in the hat. Should that have been obvious?
The Cinquantenaire/Jubelpark
The Atomium
April 20-22: Amsterdam
Somehow I never got the hang of being on time for trains in Europe. I often thought I was leaving with plenty of time to spare, only to end up racing down the platform at the last minute, looking for my traincar. The morning of April 20th was no different. I had to catch an early train from Brussels to Amsterdam, and I was out of breath as I finally slumped into my seat.
I opened my book and started reading but was immediately distracted by the familiar sound of American English slicing through the air. It was coming from the seats next to me. I began chatting with the family; they were from Alabama. Rebecca was also a globetrotter in her 20s, and we began relaying our experiences to each other. Somehow the conversation drifted to the restaurant car, where it seemed appropriate to share a beer together, despite the fact that it was barely past 9:00am. We were soon joined by a friendly and well-dressed girl from Morocco, and later by her boyfriend. I hadn’t expected to spend this morning train ride making friends over rounds of Stella, but I was in no way opposed to it.
But I resented my beer buzz once I arrived in Amsterdam, because my friend Brandon wasn’t at our meeting point, and I felt doubly disoriented and scattered. I wandered around the train station, trying to figure out the most logical next step. I found myself at the information desk, confronted with a woman who came across to me as an emotionless, English-speaking machine. Although she eventually paged Brandon for me, her attitude regarding the ordeal made me feel like an idiot. She looked straight ahead instead of looking me in the eye, and her ennui from answering the same questions over and over coupled with her accent made her sound especially robotic. Although I had read that travelers could speak English “guilt-free” to just about everyone in Amsterdam, I couldn’t help but think that speaking Dutch would perhaps have won me some points.
Finally, I received a call from Brandon, who was stuck at the Frankfurt airport. So I explored the city solo for the afternoon, and returned to the train station that evening, this time successfully finding Brandon. As we took the tram back to the hostel we discussed grand plans of painting the town. But when we got back to our room we made the mistake of laying down for a quick rest. That was around 8:00pm. We awoke the next morning confused and still in our clothes. In Brandon’s case, still wearing his shoes. That day we had no excuses for sluggishness—we were well-rested. So we had breakfast, showered, and headed off to rent bikes for the day.
I had fantasized about riding our bikes through fields of tulips to a Medieval castle called Muidenslot, which I had read about on Wikitravel or something. But as we made our way to the edge of the city, we realized there were no signs clearly directing the route. We sought help from a man loading hardware into his beat-up pick up truck.
“Is there any sense trying to ride to Muidenslot from here?” I asked.
“Where?” He replied, squinting into the sun, confused.
“Mwee-den-slaht?” Clearly I was butchering the name.
“Moy-din-shlot?”
Yes, that.
He discouraged us immediately. Not only was there no direct route by bike, but it was much farther than I had anticipated. He assumed it would take us all day to go there and back. Plus, he assured us that there wasn’t much there. “It’s not like Camelot or anything,” he chuckled. We decided to stick to downtown for the day. We thanked him, turned around, and pedaled into the city.
Amsterdam is famous for its bike-friendliness, so we tried to blend in. Amsterdammers (?) ride in any conditions, with any attire, while carrying anything—we saw one guy with his dry cleaning and another with a mop and bucket. But Brandon and I were obviously not veterans. We didn’t know the city at all and kept stopping, hesitating, and turning around. It didn’t help that the bike rental place had a big metal plate with its logo plastered across the handlebars. It might as well have said “Student Driver.”
But even as a debutant, I adored Amsterdam. We got lost among the city’s repeated canals. We stopped often to relax in a park or grab a beer at a café. We saw Van Gogh’s masterpieces up close. We played pool and ordered bitterballen at a mostly empty bar, god-knows-where. We dined on Indian food and partied in the Red Light District.
Our hostel
A typical canal in Amsterdam
Old bridge
Iwannabesterdam
Amsterdam’s Red Light District has a reputation, particularly among Americans, as a place of utter debauchery. While it made me a little uncomfortable watching businessmen drool over the girls in the windows, and while I wasn’t entirely at ease buying a pre-packaged joint from Eminem’s Dutch twin, the neighborhood in general felt very safe, welcoming, and fun. Places like this beg the question of why most of America’s urban areas, which are much less liberalized, don’t feel that way at all.
Church in the RLD
We returned our bikes to Mac Bikes the next morning, and spoke with a man who I can only assume was Mac himself. He was overweight, over-tattooed and over-pierced. He hit on Brandon immediately. He shimmied a little and said, “ooh, a big one!” or something along those lines. He was American. He asked where we were from and laughed happily when we said Cincinnati. “Uh huh…the Queen City that hates queens!” He had a point.
We spent our last few hours in the city wandering around on foot. Brandon bravely bought a herring sandwich, popular among the Dutch but not very friendly to the American palate. We made our way to the train station. We waited at least a half-hour to buy train tickets. I remember being surprised by this cultural quirk; I expected long lines in Spain and France but not east of there.
Eating a raw herring sandwich
An insanely awesome amount of bicycles
I wanted to stay longer in Amsterdam, but we had a couch awaiting us in Hamburg, Germany. I had successfully scored us a host on Couchsurfing.com and was eager for my first official CS experience. As we zoomed out of Amsterdam, dark clouds gathered overhead. It stormed for a while, and then cleared up. As we approached Hamburg, the sun was going down between two layers of thick clouds.
April 22-27: Germany
I had been told over and over again that I would “get by just fine” with English in Germany. I had taught myself some basic German anyway, but didn’t actually expect to use it much. So when we were lost at the Hamburg train station, I figured I could just ask someone. The first guy I asked was cheerful and friendly, but not even a little bit helpful. When I asked for directions, instead of answering me he enthusiastically asked where I was from and then gave me his business card. CONSULTANT, it read.
Brandon and I had no idea how to buy transport tickets and there was no one at the information desk. We decided to choose a train that looked promising and board with no tickets—I had heard that Germany often operates on the “honor system.” Once on the train, I approached an approachable looking guy and asked expectantly, “Sprechen Sie Englisch?” “Nein,” he shook his head quickly. I was not having much luck. With my broken German and a lot of pointing, we finally realized we were on the wrong train. We got off at the next stop, climbed the stairs to cross over to the other platform, and boarded the train going in the opposite direction.
Luckily, this time we were headed for the right stop. Chris, our host, met us just as we got off the train. He was happy and welcoming, and came off as incredibly normal. He kindly drove us back to the house where we would be staying, which he shared with his girlfriend Lina and a few other friends.
They had prepared flammkuchen for us, which I awkwardly translated as “flame cake,” and assumed was a dessert. It was not a dessert; it was what the French call tarte flambée, which is not “flaming pie,” but more like a thin pizza, baked with oil, cheese, and bacon.
Afterwards, we walked to a pub a few blocks from their house. They lived on the outskirts of the city, and there was something distinctly suburban about the area. We joined some of the locals in cheering on the Hamburg Fußball team. It turned out to be a hell of a game, but most of the crowd knew the team was doomed when the game went to penalty kicks, apparently not Hamburg’s forte. They lost to Bremen 1-0.
We said goodbye to Chris and Lina in the morning. Our stay was short but honestly sweet, and I was delighted that my first “couchsurfing” experience had gone so well. There’s something beautiful and real about putting your trust in strangers.
Our day in Hamburg was great, though pretty uneventful, barring a malapropos mariachi show on the harbor which we enjoyed while eating our first-ever currywurst. We hopped on the ferry (standard, cheap public transport in Hamburg) just for kicks and got off a few stops later. Brandon let me duck in some vintage shops in Karolinen, and I let him order an XL hamburger for dinner. We were in Hamburg, after all.
View of Hamburg from St. Michaelis tower
Mariachi on Hamburg's port
Chris and Lina had helped us arrange a ride to Paderborn, where we would meet up with Nick, who had been an exchange student at my high school. It turns out that Germany is a great place to hitchhike—or, in our case, a slightly less-risky version of hitchhiking in which you can find a verified and reviewed driver ahead of time via the internet. We posted up at Bahrenfeld, a train stop near the highway, and we waited for “Holger” to show up in his blue hatchback. He did, and Brandon and I shoved into his back seat and introduced ourselves to the blonde in his passenger seat, a fellow “hitchhiker.” Three hours later, we pulled into the parking lot of the Paderborn central station, and handed over the agreed-upon amount of cash. Much cheaper than the train would have been.
Niklas was already waiting for us. I ran to embrace him, thinking how much older he looked, and wondering how much older I looked. He drove us to his parents’ home, a lovely, modern, ranch-style house in Paderborn’s suburbs. We chatted with his family—everyone spoke at least conversational English—over a couple of Krombachers. We slept well that night, thanks to the super-comfy beds in the basement guestroom.
Nick woke us the next morning and explained the game plan for the day:
-A German breakfast of bread, jam, nutella, cold cuts, and cheese.
-A quick tour of downtown Paderborn’s biergarten and natural springs
-A short road trip out to the Hermannsdenkmal monument which honors the 9AD victory of German tribes against the Romans
-An afternoon barbecue with Nick’s family. On the menu: meat, sausage, and more meat.
Niklas and me
That evening Nick’s dad drove us to a tiny train station nearby so that we could catch a train to Berlin. (Actually, first we were supposed catch a train to Hannover, which we awesomely missed even though it stopped right in front of our faces. We shyly went back into the train station restaurant, which doubled as a ticket office. They kindly re-routed us, but we had to make the next train—er, make that train “that’s outside right now. Andrea, go hold the door open! Run, guys, run, run!”) Our stay with Niklas was far too short, but Brandon and I were eager for our next destination.
If I ever visit Berlin again, I will be sure not to arrive on a Friday night. The subway was overflowing, mostly with 20-somethings, casually but strangely dressed, beers in hand, heading out for the evening. Brandon and I were pink-faced and dwarfed by our huge backpacks. Not at all in the cool club. Two trains passed before we could manage to squeeze on one.
Now, though, we were pumped up for our first night in Berlin. We quickly dropped our stuff at the hostel and made our way back to the subway station. We had no map and no real plan. Suddenly, we were overtaken by an English-speaking pub crawl. It mostly featured English girls in short skirts clutching cocktails in one hand and handbags in the other, and guys in tight jeans and vintage tee-shirts who were hitting on them. We decided to follow them. We ended up at Warschauer Strasse, which I had read was the “place to be,” but had no idea how to get there. Thanks pub crawlers!
Subway sandwiches were our first order of business, followed by a night of dipping in and out of interesting-looking bars, each one a little divey-er than the last. But we turned in fairly early so that we could properly explore the city on Saturday.
Brandon had requested that we attempt to make it to a soccer game, and there happened to be a fairly important regional league game that afternoon. Union (sounds to us like “onion”) played Unterhaching, and lost 1-0—we seemed to have that effect—but we were so glad to have gone, because there is nothing like seeing a bunch of bachelors drink beer, wear scarves, and cheer their hearts out for soccer.
Union Berlin Game
Brandenburg Gate
Potzdammer Platz
Memorial for the Murdered Jews of WWII
Berlin Wall
Checkpoint Charlie
Bebelplatz (formerly Opernplatz), the site of the Nazi book burnings
TV Tower and Berliner Dom
Talk about a portable hotdog stand
Plus, such a tiring day meant it was time to treat ourselves to a Berlin specialty: the Döner Kebab. And not just any Döner Kebab, but the very first and the very best Döner Kebab in Europe, at least according to Niklas. The Döner Kebab is “a Turkish dish made of lamb meat cooked on a vertical spit and sliced off to order,” similar to the Greek gyro. Germany was one of the first countries in Europe with a large Turkish population, and sometime in the 1970s, one Turkish immigrant opened a restaurant at Rosenthaler Platz.
It caught on. Today “kebab” (“kebap” in Spain, for reasons of phonology) is a fast-food style favorite all over Europe, especially among young people, especially late-night.
After such a long day, we deserved a nap. Our roommates came in around 9:00 and woke us up, or we would have pulled off our second fifteen-hour sleeping spree. We sluggishly climbed out of bed, freshened up, and headed out near Potzdammer Platz. We opted for milkshakes instead of beer—we were the only ones in the shop, clearly not the typical choice for a Berliner on a Saturday night. Later we stumbled upon a classy wine bar whose cozy patio was stocked with couches, pillows, blankets, and electric heaters.
Berlin seemed like an important place to get a dose of history, so we decided on the “Free Walking Tour” for Day 2, “free” being more accurately defined as “led by history majors at local universities so they’ll work for whatever you give them.” Mary, our guide, was English, early 20s, cute, not nearly dorky enough to be a history buff. We were impressed with the tour and tipped her accordingly. Of course, I think I already forgot most of what we learned, but I know we got to see the former site of Hitler’s bunker and the hotel balcony where Michael Jackson dangled his baby.
Mary recommended that we eat at the Kartoffelhaus in Mitte on the other side of the Spree River. We were definitely pleased with the food—kartoffel not excluded—but we were also highly entertained by our chipper waitress, and I was delighted that she let me speak some German to her and spoke back to me in “Deutschlish.” When we ordered a dessert to share, I distinctly remember that she proudly and squeakily presented us with “two spoons!”
We had a thirteen-hour train ride back to Paris ahead of us, and the only way we knew how to cope with that fact was to buy large cans of beer. Somehow, I had imagined us in a sleeper car…that is, a car with beds, in which one can actually recline. But since I had no idea how to use my Eurail pass or really buy train tickets in Germany at all, we got stuck with regular seats in a compartment. (Think the “mi scusi” scene in Eurotrip.) After a couple hours, we tried to sneak into an empty sleeper car, only to be kicked out minutes later. We soon realized that not only we were doomed to the regular seats, but to a completely full compartment and an uncomfortable all-night shuffle.
We arrived in Paris and met Michèle, a friend of mine who kindly let us invade her tiny apartment in Boulogne Billancourt. We must have looked atrocious because she recommended that we shower and nap.
I’ll be honest. It’s July, two months later, and I’ve sincerely lost the motivation to finish this blog. I apologize to my future self and my fan club, but for the last couple days that I spent in Paris, I’m just going to copy the notes directly from my journal. They go a little something like this:
-Nutella crèpes – Sacré Coeur
-Crappy resto
-Andrea Crews : Lifestyle brand. Thrift-bought transformations. Fashion. Art. Activism. 10 rue Frochot.
-Arc de Triomphe. Champs Elysées. Culture Bière.
-Lost Michèle. Caught in the rain.
-Borrowed cell phone from our skeptical barman.
-Found Michèle.
-Nachos and happy hour.
-“This urine smells like apple pie and baseball.”
-Notre Dame. St. Michel. Jardin Notre Dame for lunch. Snails. Missed the rain.
-Saw a rainbow over the Louvre and the Seine.
-Drank wine at Parc Champs de Mars to dodge the rain again.
-Sucked it up. Classy dinner in front of the Eiffel Tower.
I was a little reluctant to go along with that last one, for fear of losing any authentic Frenchiness that had rubbed off on me during my seven-month stay, but I couldn’t complain about the food or the view. It was a suitable finale. And it reminded me that no matter how much Americans make fun of the French for being wusses or snobs or bohemians or socialists, and no matter how much the French take shots at Americans for being fat and materialistic, our cultures are actually sort of obsessed with each other. Three million Americans visit France every year. We love the cuisine and that friggin’ tower. The French love Barack Obama, they know our movies by heart, and they follow our television series like they have some kind of real, emotional investment in them. It’s like we’re each other’s antidote. It’s like we tell all of our friends that we’re broken up and we hate each other but secretly we’re sleeping together.
I’m home now, and I can feel my memories of my time in France fading away more and more each day. All of the “reentry” quirks have officially worn off. I no longer turn my head suddenly at the “foreign” sound of English a few aisles over in the grocery store. I no longer look for Euro-shaped electrical outlets. English no longer feels awkward and forced in public venues. I’m no longer annoyed by over-zealous waitresses. I no longer get sick from drip coffee. I no longer get the urge to make lots of nasally sounds when I hesitate. But I think that for the rest of my life, a small part of me will always feel a little bit French.
Rainbow
oh yeah
