So Hannah met us and we spent one day in London, walking mostly. Saw Big Ben, Westminster (I think?), and toured a museum where Winston Churchill and his advisors lived during WWII. The next day we flew EasyJet to Edinburgh, Scotland, where we spent two days. We went to the Castle, walked the Royal Mile, saw the outside of Holyrood Palace, rested in the Botanical Gardens, and had fish ‘n chips in a local pub. Neat town with lots of old architecture mixed with modern shopping and restaurants. We especially enjoyed the Scottish brogue and our marvelous B&B with full Scottish breakfast (omelet, tomatoes, mushrooms, bacon, sausage, toast, juice, fruit, and coffee/tea). About the money system: the British pound (£) is expensive: £1 = $2 US, and all the prices were the same in pounds as we would find in dollars in the US (for example, an Applebees-type meal was £8, but that’s $16).
Next we took the train to Stirling, Scotland, where many battles were fought in the time of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce (seen Braveheart?). Stirling was much smaller and the landscape more picturesque. We spent 3+ hours exploring the castle with an excellent audio guide, and met a nice bus driver who got us to the Wallace Memorial, a tower at the top of a hill with a great view. We shared an attractive and tasty meal at the Portcullis, where Matt discovered Dark Island, his new most favorite dark beer from Orkney. A loud night at the hostel with a local high school soccer team denied us some sleep, but nonetheless we boarded a train for Glasgow the next day.
We only had 4 hours or so in Glasgow and needed somewhere to stash our backpacks. The luggage lockers at the train station were expensive, so we decided to stroll the town a bit in hopes of finding a place to sit. Lo and behold, half a block away was the main stop for a bus tour of the city! So we stowed our bags in the tour bus and listened to a nice Scot describe the city. It was a “wee bit windy” but the architecture was interesting and in some cases amazing. For example, when the university moved to a different part of town, they tore down an important building and rebuilt it brick by brick on the new spot. After the tour we had to find the correct airport (found the wrong one first!) to make our flight.
From Glasgow we flew RyanAir to Paris. Take note: RyanAir is cheap, but you fly to airports that are an hour outside the city, which makes traveling to and from your flight a real pain. After doing that twice, we decided it wasn’t worth the monetary savings. Anyway, from Paris we took the train to Laon, Hannah’s hometown near Amiens. There we stayed with good friends of hers, Claude and Rose, in a lovely loft bedroom that belonged to one of their moved-out children. They spoke German, French, and pretty good English, and insisted on feeding us breakfast every day (rolls and coffee/tea in France). We picked up a lot of French interacting with them and Hannah. While in Laon, we toured the cathedral (amazing, but minus stained glass due to bombings during WWII), the ancient city walls, Hannah’s classrooms (she teaches English to elementary and middle school kids) and the local pastry shop. We also lunched with Hannah’s pastor and his family, Americans who have a Baptist house church where Hannah plays the keyboard. On the last night, Hannah treated us to a traditional French meal, complete with coffee that comes with a piece of chocolate (the French know how to enjoy coffee!). We really enjoyed Laon and meeting all the people Hannah knows.
From Laon we went back to Paris, intending to visit the Louvre but it was closed. So we visited some neat shops nearby (way out of our price range but fun to look—they had a Bodum store) and then walked through a park and down the Champs Elysees to the Arc d’Triumphe (sorry if I misspelled it). Then we flew to Rome, where we got a ride from 2 Tanzanians (Africans) studying to be priests. We met them in the airport (they were speaking English, a rarity in France) and, needing a ride from the airport in the boonies to the train station in the center of Rome, we asked them for a ride. Their friend Tony (a Brit) took us on a crazy ride through the city at 1am, where we almost killed 2 pedestrians and 3 motorcyclists. As Tony said, “In Rome, red lights mean ‘proceed with caution’” to the motorcyclists. We survived and got to the train station, which was the wrong one. But a hotel representative (shady guys who try to sell you cheap hotel rooms for high prices) offered a room 2 blocks away at an ok price, so we took it. We were tired of big cities and wanted to get out of Rome ASAP—it just felt dirty, corrupt, and way too big.
The next morning we boarded a train to Venice, and found a nice, simple hotel for a good price. We spent 2 days in Venice, and saw churches, San Marco square, and many pizza shops. The gelato (Italian ice cream) was amazing and a cheap meal substitute (Mom would cringe to hear this!). We saw lots of neat hand-blown glass, which the city is famous for, but took pictures instead of buying it. Venice smells (think ocean meets dirty Minnesota river) but its labyrinth of streets no wider than 4 men across were fun to navigate. Did I mention it rained pretty much the whole time, but that was fine because we had raingear and it kept the tourist numbers down! I think we would go back to Venezia (Venice) again.
From Venice we took a train to Innsbruck, Austria (a beautiful trip through the mountains in northern Italy and southern Austria). The ski season was just ending, so Innsbruck was pretty busy and the poor tourist-hotel-locater woman was at her wits end trying to find us a hotel. But a new B&B for backpackers had just opened, and she sent us there. Almut was the hostess, and she also owned the cakery and restaurant underneath the B&B. She was the sweetest person and we spent a lot of time talking together (her English was good, and we didn’t understand ANY spoken German). We held off from buying her pastries (baked fresh every morning by her brother) until the last night we were there, which was a wise decision because they were SO GOOD. We would have eaten them every day if we had tasted them earlier! Breakfast was included at the café and we got fresh rolls with fresh butter and homemade jam every morning, with pots of tea and coffee. A great way to start the day. For a treat one night, Matt and I found the German restaurant that I ate at with my siblings on our trip in 2002. The food was just as good as I remembered—maybe even better. Matt wanted to eat there pretty much every meal after that, but it was a bit out of our budget.
Tangent onto languages: we could pretty much understand written French and Italian, and somewhat understand it spoken, but German was entirely different. We could recognize some key words written, but spoken it sounded like a Slavic language to us. By the end of the trip, I was actually glad to be back in France because I had picked up quite a bit of French in Laon and actually felt more at home in France!
Back to Innsbruck—this was definitely our favorite spot. We bought a 48-hour city card (24€/person = $34) that gave us free admission to practically all the tourist places, including the 20€/person gondolas. The skiers take the gondolas to the tops of the mountains and then use normal ski lifts afterwards. So we rode several, packed tight with skiers, skis, poles, and dogs. Yes, in Europe, dogs go everywhere, including to the tops of mountains riding in packed gondolas. It was quite the experience. The views were breathtaking and the snow-capped peaks gorgeous. We also toured Schloss Ambras, a local Austrian castle with a collection of oddities (including clogs for women that were 10 inches high), and a bell-making museum. We walked a lot, viewed churches, and window-shopped. The city was casual, the people laid-back, and everything surrounded with mountainous beauty, and we seemed to fit in well.
From Innsbruck we took a train to Munich, Germany, for a day. We went to the concentration camp at Dachau. Dachau was one of the first camps to be created, and its managers established the policies used at all the other camps. It was also one of the last camps to be liberated by the Americans. It had a gas chamber, but it was never used for mass exterminations like Auschwitz. The gate into the camp is famous; written in German is the phrase, “Work makes free”, which tormented those kept inside and never freed. Much of the camp was destroyed after liberation, but the gas chamber, crematoriums, and main buildings survived. The housing for inmates was later recreated on-site, and several memorials to the victims were added as well. It was a somber, intense experience to wander the grounds where death and torture abounded. The whole mentality of the Nazis is simply incomprehensible to me, and downright demonic. One good thing: there were young German soldiers touring the area, and so we hope many generations will remember the awful acts of the Nazis and not walk the same path again.
After spending several hours wandering the grounds of Dachau (and avoiding the large groups of high school students from Italy who weren’t old enough to express respect for such a place), we headed back into Munich in search of a beer garden. One must consume a liter of beer, a soft pretzel the size of a large dinner plate, and real bratwurst while in Germany! It was difficult to transition from the somber atmosphere of Dachau to a “bier garten”, but we only had a few hours left so we made do. Then we hopped the underground to the square with the little miniature people who come out of the clock (Glockenspiel) to wander some touristy streets, window-shopping and eating bratwurst.
Finally we boarded our overnight train from Munich to Paris. We only had to make it onto our plane, and we’d be headed home. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that easy. We made it to Paris Nord, the correct train station, but then when we went to our train platform to catch the train to the airport, they evacuated the platform! Then they reassigned the train to another platform, all in French over a crackling loudspeaker. I caught the train and the platform number, but not which train (they arrived every 5 minutes, and the overhead screens weren’t updated with the routes, and tons of people were pushing onto the train and even more were wandering confusedly) so we had to find someone who spoke English, and fast so we didn’t miss our plane. We found a security guy and asked, “ang-glay?” and he said, “oui”. So we tried “Charles de Gaulle”, met with no success, and tried “airport”. He rattled off some long phrase in French, and we said “which train to the airport” very slowly, and he said, “platform 44”, and we said, “which train”, and he said, “platform 44”. In one last desperate attempt, we said, “any train on 44?” and he said, “oui”. So we went and got on a train, and PRAYED it was the right one!
Thankfully, it was the right train. Now we had to pick the right stop. I had tried calling my sister to ask, but couldn’t get the only pay phone around to work (the rest used phone cards or credit cards, which we were not going to stick into a French-speaking phone—we might have called Indonesia for all we knew!). So we trusted to my 2-year-old memory and got off at the first stop (the correct stop!). Then we had to find someone who could tell us which of 3 terminals our flight left from (the terminals are so far apart you have to take a 15-minute bus ride between them). Finally a train information guy looked up our airline, told us which terminal, told us where to find the bus, and told us the bus was free. I could have hugged the man! So we made it to the terminal. Now we had to find our check-in area (by this time the flight was scheduled to leave in 45 minutes) which you do by walking in a big circle around the terminal. We chose to go to the right, and within 1 minute saw signs for Northwest Airlines and got checked in. Whew! Then through security, and up to the waiting area on some weird moving walkway through 70s-era ugly decor. We were starved, exhausted, and ornery. The plane was more than a ½ hour late to boot!
Lastly, we had a 5 hour layover in Amsterdam. Let me say, that airport is the best airport to have a long layover in! They had tons of comfortable, free chairs; reasonable Internet prices and plenty of access points; several food choices that weren’t too expensive; tons of duty-free shopping, including a large chocolate store and electronics store; and super-clean, free bathrooms fully themed—with sound, murals, and even scents to complete the theme (the women’s was a beach scene). Talk about a modern airport!
The ride home was uneventful, even though they showed the same movies as on the way over. We sat next to a guy from France named Francois, who was coming over for 2 weeks to check out a job in Eau Claire. We talked to him for probably 5 of the 8.5 hours which helped pass the time considerably. Gave him Matt’s email but haven’t heard from him (unless SPAM filters picked it up) but we hope he settled into the U.S. nicely.
Well, hope you enjoyed the tale! I put in a few photos. We definitely think everyone should travel to Europe at least once in their lives—it is an experience you don’t want to miss. We hope to go back someday, especially to Austria and Venice.
Ciao!
Erin Young
Project Manager
CHAMP Software, Inc.
www.champsoftware.com
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