Europe

Paris

Posted on by Laughingnomad

From the Louvre to the Eiffel Tower, from the Place de la Concorde to the Grand and Petit Palais, the evolution of Paris and its history can be seen from the River Seine. The Cathedral of Notre-Dame and the Sainte Chapelle are architectural masterpieces while Haussmann’s wide squares and boulevards influenced late 19th- and 20th-century town planning the world over. The banks of the Seine is designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The outstanding handling of new architectural techniques in the 13th century, and the harmonious marriage of sculptural decoration with architecture, has made Notre-Dame in Reims one of the masterpieces of Gothic art. The former abbey still has its beautiful 9th-century nave, in which lie the remains of Archbishop St Rémi (440–533), who instituted the Holy Anointing of the kings of France. The former archiepiscopal palace known as the Tau Palace, which played an important role in religious ceremonies, was almost entirely rebuilt in the 17th century. Notre Dame is an UNESCO World Heritage Site.

We have been in Paris less than 24 hours and have had many adventures already!

We found a cute little Basque restaurant last night-Bob had squid in its own ink and I had cassoulet. Soon many French men started arriving-all of them gorgeous and interesting looking-place was dripping with testosterone and Bob laughed at what he called “my flushed face.”

We sat next to two young girls from Boston who were going to the Univ of Paris. When I asked them if they were going to marry a Frenchman they pulled faces and said-No, they definitely were not! They were going to go home and marry an American! I told them I had read that in the 60’s the feminist movement was strong but that it had virtually died out. They agreed and said that the men won the feminist war in France!

This morning we set out to find an internet cafe. I walked into a book store and asked for internet. The guy pulled a face and kind of spit-more like a big “poof” out of the side of his mouth and held up both hands flat out toward me. So we walked down the street and asked a younger guy at a news stand. He did the same thing!!! “Poof” out of the side of his mouth. I laughed and pointed at the face he was making-he laughed back-he had a little English-he said the internet was for the “young.” Don’t know what he considered himself-he looked to be late 20’s. Then he said France was small and didn’t need the internet and that the post was better. I think he was pulling my leg so to speak. So we laughed and walked away, eventually finding our treasure.

Bob is amazed at all the little green maintenance men with green brooms riding in green little trucks and on green motorcycles!

We had asked the manager at the hotel we were in in London what advice he had for us in France since he had worked here for 2 years and was going to Nice to work soon. He said that in rural France to try to pronounce French with a sarcastic tone and “they will like you better!” He said that people in rural France regard Parisian French as “snooty.” What do we know. We still have to find out how to get on the train!

A Good Thing

Posted on by Laughingnomad

It’s a Good Thing to take along a tour guide and in this group that will be Bob-most probably because he has the greatest need to know where he is located at all times. On the train yesterday leaving Paris he is standing looking out the window for an interminably long time. Fnally he turned around to sit down and said “I guess they know where they are going!”

TVG Trains Better Than Hitching

Posted on by Laughingnomad

High speed (TVG) trains travel over 200,mph. In 1965 when a college friend and I traveled through Europe; it took all night to get from Dover to Ostergard on a roller coaster boat! But then in 1965 the Captain invited us up to the steerage! In 1965 we also hitchhiked…which I wouldn’t recommend doing now either. Can you imagine just having to get from one city to the next in the rain having to stick your head in the window of a stopped car or truck to get a “hit” about how safe it was!

In Bayonne France; having breakfast in a small hotel built in the 1700’s we talked to an English woman at the next table who is now living in Spain and who also traveled through Europe and South America by hitching rides-but she quickly added that it was no longer safe for anyone to hitch (or “autostop” as it was called in Europe.

Incidentally, in the summer of 1965 John Kennedy called up the first group of “advisors” to go to Viet Nam: The rumor spread like wildfire that there was going to be a draft call up before the summer was over! Young hitchhiking American males were abandoning their travel and enrolling in any summer school program they could find in Europe by the hundreds to avoid the draft. That summer that I turned 21 jerked me into one of my most early formative experiences.

Chunnel Tickets in London

Posted on by Laughingnomad

When Bob went to the train station in London to buy a train ticket through the chunnel to France, they did not bother to tell him that if he had a Eurostar ticket for travel through Europe his chunnel ticket would be 60 dollars less per ticket. (Special saver packages are not available to Europeans which may have something to do with it).

When we went back to the Waterloo station to take the chunnel; Bob tried to get a refund and they rudely refused to give it to him. So he felt gouged. On the other hand, he felt fortunate that he had the foresight to step into a travel agency on the way to Waterloo (you can’t buy train tickets in travel agencies in Europe) to ask a few questions. The very helpful agent on duty told him that when he bought the chunnel ticket, to buy a round trip ticket which was less than half the price of a one way ticket-that he wouldn’t be informed at the point of sale about the difference in price. Apparently it’s a way of making back some of the money lost when a tourist does not return to the country.

In the same way, the Eurail tickets for unlimited travel stops around Europe are very expensive and are not available to Europeans. If however; an American buys one in the states before leaving, there is a substantial savings. The same is true of the Eurostar Saver packages that allow, for example, two people who are traveling together to travel at a reduced rate. The only way we have found to deal with this is to temporarily become a Zen Buddhist.

Mother Country English

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Last night we were walking to the theater and a guy sitting on the sidewalk against a building waiting for the bus after work called out and asked if we were tourists. I turned and smiled and said yes. He said “Americans?” I shook my head yes. He shouted “I could tell by the way you walk!”

I looked back and discovered that the Brits have a whole vocabulary unfamiliar to us that was apparently lost when we crossed the Atlantic or they snuk it in when we weren’t looking! “Potty” means eccentric, the subway is called the tube, a house is “in” the street not on the street and they go “to hospital” not “to the hospital.” A dish towel is a “tea towel.” Food “to go” is “take away” but then they use “take away” in New York too. (That’s another whole vocabulary.) “Bugger off” means go away. A “robot” is a traffic light and the trunk of a car is a “boot.” Actually neither word, “trunk” nor “boot” makes any sense to me. A diaper is a “nappy,” a clothes pin is a “peg.” “Pants” refers to underpants or panties. The correct term for “pants” in England is “trousers.” New Zealanders use “togs” to mean a swimsuit but the English use it to refer to any clothing. Pegs, (pronounced “pigs”) means clothespins. A “powerpoint” is a plug-in or socket. To us in the U.S. it means a microsoft application. Don’t know about England but if you are in Scotland don’t tell someone to “scoot over.” The “scoots” means you have the “runs.” Don’t call it a “fanny pack” when you’re in the UK, Australia, or NZ. That word does not mean “tuckus” there. Instead Aussies laugh at the American tourists wearing “bum bags.”

And then other things that seemed odd to us at first look…yogurt was brought around to sell to patrons at the theater during intermission, (actually not a bad idea). BBC reported on the curling gold medal every time we turned on the TV-very big deal over here…I had never heard of curling.

I watched the Olympics closing ceremony on TV while Bob went to Piccadily Square to get tickets for a play and buy a eurail ticket which is another long story entirely. In the meantime, we were entertained by “Blood Brothers” about twins who had been separated at birth by adoption to poor and and rich families respectively….theme being class differences of course. We are greedy…going to another play tonight; half price on same day. We’ll see what is available.

Oddest thing I’ve seen is Black guy with half his head front to back in a natural and the other half in dreads…a split identity?

I want fish and chips one more time before we leave London for Paris! In pubs we found out the hard way that you have to go up to the bar to order-wouldn’t come wait on you if you sat there all day! Foot long wonderful breaded and deep fried but juicy piece of fish more sitting atop a pile of french fries (chips in England) and sometimes with a cup of peas dumped on top of it all or can just order peas which are called “mash.” Usually served in a stiff piece of paper twisted to make a funnel-like carrier.

Hip Notting Hill

Posted on by Laughingnomad

We didn’t realize that our neighborhood was “hip” until we were sitting in our hotel/bar in Notting Hill a couple days ago and I noticed a newspaper clipping pinned up on the wall above me with a picture of Clinton standing at the same bar with local beer in hand. He and 9 presidential guards had stopped here at the Portobello Gold Pub for a beer and bite to eat on the recommendation of the British Ambassador’s daughter who comes here with her friends. Then I guess because of some hitch they left without paying and of course it made the front page of one of the neighborhood tabloids.

Our $70 room room above the Portobello Gold Pub is barely big enough to turn around in. Toilet down the hall. Tiny sink in the shower which is barely big enough to turn around in. The food is great in the pub downstairs. And all the free internet you want!

The movie, Nottinghill, with Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant was filmed here…Grant’s travel bookstore, now a tourist destination, is just down the street. Diana used to come here to eat-Nicole Kidman comes here to shop.

The story is that the area used to be racially intolerant in 50’s and 60’s so the black community took charge of creating a multicultural festival here which has became the biggest and most outrageous festival in Europe…drawing thousands from all over the world every August.

Hitching-Hiking Europe In 1965

Posted on by Laughingnomad

The summer of 1965, the summer I turned 21, a friend and former roommate, Barbara Stamper and I arranged to meet in London in June. She, a teacher, found an economical route to New York going by train across Canada while I flew from Oregon. She had broken her ankle a couple weeks before but that was not to stop us.

We took separate planes to London. However, when we compared arrival times one of us was using European time and the other one of us U.S. time. So thinking her arrival time was one hour behind mine hers was actually seven hours behind. After waiting in the terminal…checking passenger manifests again and again, I finally took a taxi into London and found a lovely guesthouse…and a bed! This was in the days before Lonely Planet mind you.

The next morning I called every place I could think of in the hopes that Barbara would also be looking for me….American Express, U.S. Consolate, British Consolate, flight desk at the airport…and stayed put. In the meantime I began thinking about what I would do if we didn’t connect and decided that I was all the way here and that I would just take off on my own. But finally, in the afternoon the hotel clerk came to my room…I had received a call! First lesson in traveling…have a plan B!

Before leaving the U.S. I had ordered, through AAA, a shiny bright new red Triumph Spitfire…$2000…from the British factory in London. So the first thing we did was make our way to pick up the car…then to learn to navigate driving on the left side of the road…nearly killing ourselves and possibly someone else until we got used to it.

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Cheese & Wine…Barbara still in her ankle cast

After getting the car and ourselves across the English channel to the Continent, we took off across Europe.

However, when we stopped for the 500 mile check in Milan Italy, the mechanic didn’t screw the oil cap on tight enough…leaving us stranded on a lonely road late at night in southern France near Leon. We spent the night curled up under the tonneau cover. The next morning we locked up the car, hitched a ride the 60 km into Leon, had a good strong expresso, looked at each other and realized there was nothing we could do about the car here! So back we hitched to the car. I looked in the driver manual and discovered there was a Triumph garage in Grenoble.

Finally a smallish funny-looking French truck stopped and we animatedly agreed that after he ran some errands, the driver would tow the car to Grenoble. He did return…to our surprise…and he did tow our car to Grenoble…after first taking us on a tour through several tiny dirt-road French towns with small dirt-floor houses huddled together in small French valleys. This was less than 20 years after the end of World War II and the Marshall Plan had yet to dribble down to the local level. The villagers, who had never seen Americans before, crowded around us…touching…laughing…asking questions we didn’t understand. Our driver, proudly, had provided the day’s entertainment!

We had been watching all the American and European kids hitch-hiking around Europe so once we deposited the car at the garage, (it would take 18 days, the mechanic informed us) we hiked to a nearby market, collected two orange sacks, stuffed some clothes in them, left the rest of the stuff in the trunk, and stuck our thumbs out.

In the end, betting the car wouldn’t be ready in 18 days, we left the car there until the end of the summer when we drove it to Le Havre to put it on the boat for the U.S.

In the meantime we had incredible hitch-hiking adventures in Europe…meeting wonderful people and some not so wonderful.
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We tried to stick with the long-haul trucks that had to maintain a schedule…Barbara and I often lying together in the sleep compartment above the driver. One funny driver in France had recorded the conversation of a pair of Americans on a previous trip…describing how they had to sleep in a park one night. The driver didn’t understand a word of it but was amused by our facial reactions listening to the tape.

First the running of the bulls in Pamplona Spain where we spent the night in a local home, eating fried green tomatoes for the first time, while thousands of others spent nights sleeping in the fields. There were no night clubs or fancy hotels in Pamplona in those days!

Madrid, Barcelona, through the French Riviera…seeing Michelangelo’s beautiful David in Florence…Red light district in Amsterdam (Why are all these ladies standing around?”) Copenhagen, Belgium…Switzerland, sitting at the foot of the Matterhorn drinking beer while watching other young travelers sunbathing on the ice and snow on the side of the mountain.
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After picking up the car in New York I drove to Omaha Nebraska where Bob, the summer before we were married, had jealously spent a dreary summer studying for his medical boards…and piled out of the car in a near state of physical, mental and emotional exhaustion.

This was to be the biggest life-changing experience of my life (and I think for Barbara)…seeing how other people in the world (at least Europe) lived and it put my own life in the States in a precarious perspective. I am still peeling the layers of that experience today…in July 2006…even after spending five years traveling twice around the world.