Lou Ann's EuroBlog

"Every land has its own special rhythm, and unless the traveler takes the time to learn the rhythm, he or she will remain an outsider there always."
- Juliette De Baircli Levy, English writer, b. 1937

Bon jour!!

First of all, I have to apologize that it's been SO long since you've heard from me (y'all know that at home I'm online practically 24/7, so it's weird to go from Saturday afternoon to Friday morning without a single keystroke!!) I have been sticking to the small towns and not the big cities (as my mom mentioned in her comment ... thanks, Mom!) so public internet access has been difficult to find (not that I've been searching very hard!!)

I won't type forEVER on this entry ... as I'm paying by the half-hour and am also paying for parking (that's what you get when you visit a bigger city!!) Also - this is truly WEIRD, but makes a LOT of sense: the keyboard in France is different than the keyboard in the US. The letter keys are in different places. There's a button I found at the bottom of the screen to change to a U.S. (Anglais) keyboard, but the keys are still marked with the different letters. SOOOooo, I'm only hitting the correct letters if I don't look. I don't usually look a lot ... but it's definitely WEIRD!! :-)

Anyway ... I will start telling you about my journey day by day, and if I don't catch up with myself today (in Orange, France, near Avignon), I will type from that point that I left off when I next find a public internet place. So ... on with the journey......

Day One (6/26/05) - leaving Lorton, VA for BWI and the air...
I made it a priority to attend church in the morning, mostly because I wanted to see "everyone" one last time. The extrovert in me is a little wary of spending most of a month alone ... especially when I know I won't have much internet access or telephone access or conversation even with English-speaking people. So ... I got my fix at Immanuel for the early service and then Morning Song (my adult Sunday School class). I also had my anticipated final trip to Starbucks for the upcoming four or five weeks. (sigh...)

Anyone who travels knows that travel is always an adventure. That's why I don't tend to plan as much as people think would be appropriate for my personality type. :-) Part of the adventure of travel is that things never go quite as "planned". Another part of the adventure of travel is that you meet very interesting people. My adventure truly began while waiting in line at the check-in counter for Iceland Air at BWI. A 60-something man came up and stood in line behind me and began a conversation. I have no problem chatting with strangers in line, so I went along with the small talk. "Where are you travelling?" "For what purpose?", etc. He was on his way to Helsinki. His purpose? "To find a wife." He then went on to let me know, in no uncertain terms, that he would be willing to change his travel plans to accompany me if that would be okay with me. Um ... "No, thank you." How else was I to say it? What a riot!! Anyway ... he was on my flight, but I really didn't see him again after getting through that line.

That's about all on "Day One" ... waiting in the gate area, sleeping on the plane, airplane food in the middle of the night, etc......

Day Two (6/27/05) - Airborne through Paris, France
We landed late in Reykjavik, Iceland (had left BWI about an hour late). I literally had to RUN (like O.J.) through customs and to the next gate (in the next terminal). Sorry, Nancy - Iceland was rainy and the airport far from civilization, so I have nothing to tell you about the place!! I must add that, as we were approaching Iceland, I woke up to a gorgeous sunrise on the horizon. Flying over the ocean is like flying over land, by the way ... you mostly see the clouds below you. But the sunrise from the plane window was fabulous!! Another note about flying Iceland Air ... most of the inhabitants of Iceland are of Nordic descent (the Vikings populated Iceland many years ago). Most (no, ALL) of the flight attendants looked like clones (no joke!!) It was interesting to me, leaving Washington where the diversity is so rich, to be on a plane where all of the employees and many of the travellers looked so much alike. Reading about the Nordic descent of the Icelanders and seeing that they all looked so Scandinavian reminded me why the U.S. is referred to as the "Melting Pot". I love being American!!

When I landed at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, I found my way through the ENORMOUS airport (I'll need to take some pictures ... it looks very futuristic inside ... and the moving walkways go up and down levels without becoming steps. Talk aobut having to HOLD ON!!!) I found my baggage easily. And then, to my surprise, when I went to the customs desk, they were not even interested in talking with me. No stamp in my passport, no conversation, no questions, no nothing!! I hope that I didn't do anything wrong. I guess I'll find out when I try to leave for the U.K. next week.

Anyway ... I also found my way to the rental car place. The gal there tried to explain to me how to get to my hotel (which is about 2km from the airport). The maps I have made no sense to me, and her directions left me confused as well. But ... how hard can it be, right? Hah!!

A note about the rental car: First of all, when she brought me the car, she left it in a parking spot, from which I had to put it in reverse and pull out. I have owned three stick-shift automobiles in my day, so I can't imagine why it was difficult ... but I could NOT figure out how to put the car in reverse. It made sense to me that there might be a "button". But where? I actually had to get out the manual to read it!!! Found the lever on the stick itself (duh!), put the car in reverse, and got it out of the spot. Another thing about the car is that the turn signals don't make ANY sound inside the car while they're on. I usually use my ears to remind myself that the blinker is on, or that I need to put the blinker on ... but no, I have to actually LOOK at the dashboard to let myself know that I've signaled my turn or not. Finally, you should have seen me at my first gas station. This is my normal procedure to get gas: get out of the car with a credit card. Lock the car. Open the gas tank. Get gas. Well, I tried that procedure here, and found that I couldn't get the gas tank open. It was completely locked. It finally occurred to me that I had to unlock the car to unlock the gas tank. DUH, again!! How funny it is when we aren't used to our surroundings!!

Anyway, I was lost before I left the airport complex. The road signage here is SO VERY DIFFERENT than in the U.S. that I just could NOT get myself oriented. In fact, it took me over a half hour to get from the rental car place to my hotel (literally about a mile away). I had several maps, as well as the directions from the gal at the rental place, but to no avail. Traffic circles reign triumphant here (they seem to have one at every major and minor intersection ... even in the countryside), and the roadsigns NEVER (I mean NEVER EVER) say "north" or "south" or "east" or "west". I usually pride myself on being good at finding my way around a place, and have a good sense of direction. But when you go around a traffic circle, and then there's no sign to tell you which way (NSEW?) that you're going, forget it!! I have also found that they don't really use street names on the signs at these traffic circles, but the names of the next town. If the town isn't on your map, you can forget it. Whew!!!

Finally (FINALLY) found the hotel. I went through a huge deal with my cell phone (about a month ago I purchased a new cell phone, with specific technology to work in Europe, for safety purposes) and it didn't work. After several public phone telephone calls to Cingular (which, by the way, was difficult because the only numbers I had for Cingular were 1-800-*** numbers, which don't work from overseas), I finally got that whole mess figured out. It was amazing to me when I had someone at a Cingular store in Manassas who refused to help me because he said that no such non-1-800 number exists!! "Sorry, mam. Can't help you. It's not my fault." Aarrrggghhh!!

Then came the groceries debacle. I asked the woman at the concierge desk at the hotel for a food market or grocery store or something. She said that they don't have such things. (Come on!) Finally, a woman standing in line behind me indicated that she knew of a very small food market, and was willing to let me follow her as she drove past it. WONDERFUL!! She took me through several traffic circles, a few one-way streets, and in five minutes we were at the grocery. She kept going. I found what I wanted (I have decided that I will try to eat simple breakfasts and dinners, fruit and vegetables, etc. from local markets ... and have bigger mid-day meals, as is the custom here). I paid for it (almost over-paid for it, as I didn't understand how to read the screen on the cash register ... but the clerk was honest, and handed back most of my Euros). Then, I tried to leave. Ugh! Another half-hour back to the hotel. Lost again! Since I merely stumbled upon the hotel in the first place, and merely stumbled upon it again, I don't know if I could find it from the airport or from the grocery again if I tried real hard. I'm surprised I didn't end up in Germany for all of the driving around I did trying to look for the place.

I have since come to appreciate traffic circles here ... for one main reason. They are MUCH better for the confused driver than illegal U-turns or sitting at the side of the road, pondering. The indecisive driver can literally drive around in circles until a decision is made. Picture me, in my little European hatchback, driving in circles, with a confused look on my face. LOL!! Such fun!!

While I was on my grocery stop, I found a "tourist" office, and found a woman who speaks a little English. She was wonderfully gracious. She talked to me for quite a while and gave me maps and information about getting from the airport into the city of Paris (I would compare the distance to that of Dulles to downtown DC). She talked about the trains, and apologized but was certain to inform me that she did NOT think that a woman alone should travel the train from Charles de Gaulle to downtown Paris after dark. She needn't have apologized ... I was happy for the advice. In a few weeks, I have an extra day in Paris, and was thinking about taking the train into the city. I'll make sure to be back at my hotel long before the sun goes down!!

Well ... back at my hotel that evening, and after a few weeks of sleepless nights at home (anticipating the end of the school year and this trip) and not much sleep on the airplanes, I fell asleep at 8:00 p.m. and didn't wake until 8:00 the next morning!! What a gift!!!

Day three (6/28/05) - Paris to Strasbourg
This day continued along the pattern of ... it's VERY difficult for me to drive in this country. (And, by the way ... I'm finding myself glad that I am not planning to drive in the U.K.!!) I just wanted to get OUT of the Paris metro area. There are LOTS of interstate-type roads in that place, and I had studied and studied the maps I have, and knew exactly which roads I needed to look for in order to get to the road I wanted. My ultimate goal was Alsace/Lorraine, via the city of Nancy, using the national road N4. I could SEE N4 on a map. I could see all of the super-highways I needed to take to get to N4. But ... on one of the beltway-type roads (as in, large circle around the city), I took the wrong direction (because, of course, there wasn't an "east" or "west" in the signage, and I didn't know the names of the smaller sub-urbs to know which way to take). I thought I had gotten on the right way ... and it took over a half hour to even realize that I was headed the wrong way. Then, to get off and back on again in the opposite direction was difficult ... and getting back on in the opposite direction put me in major mid-morning traffic!! Whew!! It was lunch time before I got to anything that resembled country-side, but found the going quite easy for the next several hours.

The French country-side is FABULOUS!! There are small villages around every bend, and over most of the hillsides when you look across the horizon. The thing that I find to be most special is that there is always a tall steeple in the middle of every village, and you can almost always see a steeple somewhere in the distance from wherever it is that you are driving. What a fabulous reminder of God's omnipresence!! :-)

I stopped at a little restaurant ("Auberge Saint Christophe") along the roadway. There were tables outside, and that's why I stopped, but the man who runs the restaurant wouldn't let me sit out there because he said it was too loud (with all of the trucks going by). I didn't want to argue with him (he didn't speak any English), so I sat inside. When he found out I was from the U.S., he made it clear to me that he had been to the U.S. once ... for the Olympics in Los Angeles where he won four medals for swimming. Cool!! He was wonderful ... and kept trying to talk to me. He even pointed to my Michener novel (Centennial) and gave me a thumbs up ... he must like Michener!! :-) I don't usually know what I'm ordering here, but since I'll eat just about anything served to me, I ended up with a mayonnaise salad, some kind of meat (still don't know what it was), and strawberry crepes. They were good. :-)

By the way - Tammy, your "magic word" is coming in VERY handy. "C'est bon." and "C'est beax." and "C'est..." everything!! Thanks so much for that pointer!! Between that, and "Je ne peaux pas parley Francais." (Spelling?), I find that people are more than happy to meet me more than halfway!! Thanks!!!!!!!

I stopped in the city of Nancy, thinking it was a small city (if I've never heard of it, it must be a small city. Bad logic!!) It was horrible trying to find downtown and the visitor's center, but got very valuable maps, information, about the Alsace-Lorraine region. I ended up driving from Nancy to Strasbourg (only got lost a few more times) and was at a hotel by about 8:30 or so. (Paris to Strasbourg should be a 5-hour trip ... I left at 9:00 that morning!!)

Well ... I am running up a small fortune in public internet access fees, and am almost out of my time on the car. I'll save my adventures in Alsace the next time I type. Let me just preview it by saying that it is a most beautiful place, and a place that deserves more than the day and a half that I gave it. It will certainly be a return vacation for me someday!!!!

Au revoir for now!!