Around the world in six weeks.
Melbourne - Paris
Last update? 21.11.04
Really the heading should read, Melbourne to Paris via Frankfurt, but hey at this point in time all we are worried about is start and end points I guess?
Anyway, here's Nik standing outside the central station in Frankfurt. We had at this point been traveling for about 17 hours or so, and we were still another 8 or 9 hours from Paris. Things had been fairly uneventful at this point, no dramas to speak of and we had already conquered one public transport system by buying tickets from a vending machine that had no instructions in English, strange for such a transport hub as Frankfurt?
Anyway, things that stick in mind at this point of the trip are the folks drinking beer so early in the morning, the mixture of take away stalls and cafes providing an interesting counterpoint to the usual ubiquitous McDonalds, some of which are selling beer to locals this early in the morning.
Outside the station was a Taxi rank, and as a former Taxi Driver, I was delighted to see that the predominant vehicle on the rank was a Mercedes, no surprises really considering we were in Germany after all!
Frankfurt was a nice city, what little we saw of it. In the short time we spent wandering around we saw some nice architecture, and lots of folks going about their daily business, of course. We did at one point wander down a street that had been witness to a recent street party of some sort, that may have even been continuing on that night, sadly we were only in town for a few hours as we waited for our connecting train to Paris, so we couldn't hang around to find out. The other thing that struck me and of course it's pretty standard in Europe was the number of push bikes around. Prior to us wandering off we found on the station self service lockers for luggage of all things! Given the current state of the world and the attempted restrictions on people's movements after the 9/11 tragedy, I was surprised. surprised but delighted, this meant we could wander around without worrying too much about our worldly possessions.
We boarded our train and settled in for the long journey to Paris. Despite the amount of time we had spent traveling we were still fairly alert and ready for more. Little did we know that or fist big adventure was only hours away.
The train system in Europe is awesome. trains move between countries constantly. Ticket inspectors get on and off at regular intervals and it's not unusual to have your ticket checked several times on any journey around Europe, regardless of length. Twice while still in Germany we had out tickets checked by German inspectors, without any hitches. I did however, have an embarrassing moment asking for food on the train which didn't supply any. The real embarrassment was yet to come for us in France.
We were sitting quietly in our carriage minding our own business when the third ticket inspector for the trip entered our carriage. A man, small somewhat weedy and wearing a real excuse of a uniform, accompanied by a Bridget Bardot look alike, in an even scruffier uniform if such a thing was possible? Approached us. (The Germans on the other hand had been dressed impeccably). He of course asks for our ticket which we dutifully present. Then in filtering English via the Bridget Bardot look alike, points out that there is a problem with the tickets. We are perplexed, we had just left Germany and not a single eyebrow was raised. How can crossing a border change the status of tickets? What followed was a discussion in broken English via the Bridget Bardot look alike, who that told us the tickets were not valid and we would have to pay an extra fee to get to Paris and then sort out our tickets from there. He then took our tickets from us as he checked out prices and confirmed the issue at hand. We were flabbergasted, these tickets had cost us over $1000.00 Aus and we needed them to get around Europe for the rest of the trip. A few minutes later, the sidekick returns very apologetic and explains he had misread the ticket and in fact our ticket WAS valid. We had just parted with over one hundred Euro each for the leg to Paris via his hand held ATM machine. Now he had to work out how to reimburse us? He couldn't work it out. So he wrote a note on the ticket explaining the situation and gave us instructions on how to get a refund.
Wow what an introduction to France, of course there was yet another ticket inspector before we hit Paris, he didn't even TRY to fathom what was going on, just muttered under his breath and left us to our own devices.
Eventually we arrived in Paris despite a long delay caused by an accident somewhere in the system. Our arrival at the station and the “issue” with the ticket meant that we were going to have to ask someone if they spoke English. As we stood in a queue in what we thought/hoped was the right place at the station my heart pounded and even after years of standing up in front of people and talking as a teacher, nothing matched the state of my nerves at this point. Fortunately my halting“parles vous Englais?” was met with a “Yes a little” a huge sigh of relief swept over us and we felt empowered for having once again made some progress in a foreign country and public transport system. The women we spoke actually spoke excellent english and we were headed in the right direction to solve out ticket problems, little did we know it wasn't completely over yet.
The walk from the station to our hotel was long, we had arrived in Paris on a typical summer evening the usual suspects were hanging around the station, where there seemed to be plenty of life. As we drew nearer to our hotel things got a bit quieter though, which if hadn't been so tired may have set alarm bells off. Nothing untoward happened on this stroll down to the hotel, it just got quieter and quieter. I would argue that we were in some ways in the wrong part of town, meaning a more commercial part of town, less touristy if you know what I mean. For example it took several days to find an internet cafe and when we finally did, the prices were horrendous!
The next day we trudged around trying to find out how and where to get our ticket issue resolved,which we did, and no more hassles were encountered on our train travels through Europe.
Paris, Paris eh what can i say that hasn't already been said? This is what I can say, never before have I questioned my own identity in such an intense and introspective way. Unable to speak French, in a city that didn't seem to a building higher than 5 stories, with very few streets that ran in any sort of straight line for any distance, I was lost and felt very helpless, just asking for food, brought on waves of anxiety.
If by some chance my high school french teacher is reading this, thanks and my apologies. Thanks for being patient, and sorry for not paying more attention. Needless to say my high school enabled us to at least ask. “Do you speak English”. Ouch!
Most of Paris was a blur really we shopped, we Museum-ed, we saw sites, it was a nice City, but not one that I felt was particularly glamorous or romantic — just nice. We stayed in a neat and tidy little 3 star hotel whose main attraction was the 2 black women who served breakfast each morning, I worked out quite quickly that they wanted our room number first, and whether or not we wanted coffee, with milk or black or some other drink?
The Art I guess was the highlight for me, seeing all the great stuff I had been reading about and seeing pictures of in books, was staggering, I enjoyed it immensely, now if I could just brush up on my french for our next visit!
We next went to Rome on the overnight train which again was a first for us together. And has it's own funny little story.