France
During the summer of 2006 I went to several countries in Europe starting with Ireland moving on to France, from there Belgium, and on to Germany. Here Are those tales.
So This Is France?
My morning started on the ferry. I managed to get up in time to watch the sunrise off the coast of France. A few hours later the ferry docked in Cherbourg. While exiting the ferry I got separated from my friends when the police rushed on board to arrest a woman. Never a dull moment. I ended up in a different shuttle to the terminal than them. Shortly we met back up and discovered that I was the only who managed to get an entry stamp on their passport.
Luckily Tim had a valid stamp in his passport. He was in France a few days earlier. So we wanted to get Sean’s stamped so he wouldn’t have any issues when he tried to exit the country. This left us walking around under the direction of several different officials for four hours. We went back and forth across town before we gave up and decided to quit.
Later on I stopped at a newsstand to find directions. I found he sold movies as well, and had such quality titles like “assdivers 4.” It kinda made me wonder if there was even much point in visiting a sex shop while in France. Needless to say I found a point, and a sex shop, regrettably I think the news stand had a better selection.
Done with Cheerbourgh and onto Caen
Caen and parts east
My goal was to make it to the edge of Cheerbough on foot, and then hitchhike to Caen. So I sat down on the curb to start making myself a sign. I just started coloring in the letter “A” when a man yells from his car if I was headed to Caen. It turned out he was a D.J. and commuted between the 2 cities several times a week. His car broke down last week, and someone was nice enough to give him a ride, so he was sort of returning the favor.
During the ride, he coached my very basic French along, and I helped him with some English so he could pick up back packer chicks. While riding he gave me an idea of the things I needed to see while in Caen. So on his advice I went to a bunch of cathedrals and chalets around town. Later I called him back and spent the night in his apartment. He offered his shower to me, but it was essentially a sink with a shower curtain around it. I wasn’t feeling so brave, so I just washed my face and passed on the rest.
When I got done in Caen I caught a train to Le Mans. Unfortunately Le Mans is not worth visiting unless there is a race going on, the entire city was torn up for road construction. The track and race museum are inaccessible when there is not a race. Since I was in town on a sunday almost everything was closed. So I walked about 4 kilometers out side of Le Mans and prepared to hitch again.
Once outside of Le Mans I got picked up by a pleasant none English speaking gentleman. We didn’t communicate much, but he took me to Orleans. There I stopped in a supermarket and purchased a tent and dinner. Next I found some bushes and slept for the night. The next day I started hitchhiking north towards Paris.
Early that morning I got picked up by a very high spirited truck driver named Ousin. This man was awesome. He told me a lot about the European trucking industry, and he was the first person I have heard use “booko” in a sentence. We were talking and he asked me, “how will you flirt with the booko dammes in Paris if you don’t speak French?” That was so out of the blue I had nothing for him.
He dropped me off right next to the subway station I needed to get to St. Lazare. Once in the downtown area I walked along a really posh shopping district until I reached the Eiffel tour. En-route I made friends with a Finnish gIrl. We walked we talked about where we were from. I think I made what was possibly the most American move ever when I asked her “what language do they speak in Finland? German?” We split up once we reached the base of the Eiffel tower.
I was really unprepared for the sheer volume of people that would be at the Eiffel tower, There were so many bodies they seemed to make the tower a lot smaller than it is. I started to head away from the tower once the crowds got to be too much. But I stopped and decided to people watch at the base for a few hours instead. The sheer of people milling around the tower amazed me more than anything else I had seen in Paris up until then. There was a representative from every single social and ethnic group present. When I left I decided to take the long scenic route to the Norte Dame cathedral. On the way I met possibly one of the most beautiful women I have ever spoken to. Her name was Annika, she was a French and English speaking German girl. She was heading to one of the museums to see if the renovations were complete one the outside. Turns out she is a architecture buff like me, but we have slightly different feelings towards the art deco movement. She decided since I went out of my way to walk her to the museum that she would return that favor by walking me to the Norte Dame. She had been in Paris for a year, so she acted as a bit of an impromptu tour guide for me, pointing out the different districts and things I should see.
We grabbed lunch in a cafe in the cheaper part of town before I walked her across town to the spot we originally met. I then walked back across town to find a youth hostel for the evening. After trying five different hostels, it became apparent I would be sleeping outside for the evening. So I called Annika. We met up and went to an Indie rock concert at the Flecchete Dior (the golden arrow) and we talked for a few more hours before calling it a night separately.
One of the errands I managed to run while walking back and forth across Paris was to pick up a new sleeping bag. the one I had was ruined outside of Le Mans while I was train hopping unfortunately. I really wanted one of the uber-nice ultralight bags I found in the sporting goods shop, but they were out of my price range so I ended up going with the store brand. ( Yes the cheap store brand).
At this point it was pretty late. So I ended up pitching my tent in an abandoned lot with a high privacy fence around it. There were a few surprised faces when I came over the fence the next morning with my backpack. My goal for the day was to find a sun dappled beach. I had enough of the big city.
Row row row your tent
That morning found me In the North paris train station or Le Nord Paris Gare. I caught the first train that morning to Abbeyville, France where I then proceeded to hike 6 kilometers from the train station to the edge of town where I found one of the most awesome public park I had ever seen. No bus ran to it, so you pretty much had to walk there. I ate lunch there and watched the ducks for an hour or two before trekking another 4 kilometers (2 of which were through waist high winter wheat) before I hitched a ride with a family headed to Calais. Calais is on the north coast of France and the main point of entry for Brits heading into France. So I assumed a few people there would speak English. Unfortunately I guessed wrong. So after an hour of hanging out in front of Le Abbatoir (sp?) or the slaughter house district, I decided to risk my bad French on the locals. After a day of traveling, I found my coastal city, I couldn’t wait to get to the beach. About half way on the route there it starts to rain. Now normally a little rain isn’t very much of an issue, but this was the kind of rain that would make Noah panic, I mean biblical amounts of rain. Instead of doing the smart thing and finding a hostel I just found high ground on a sand dune and pitched my tent before calling it a night. Unfortunately my night didn’t last long, about three hours later I was busy bailing water out of my tent with my shoes.
The next morning I wandered over to a local lavomatic. There I spent way to much money washing and drying my clothes, but while there I met a great New Zealand Family who had been traveling around Europe for 5 months. At that point they had planned to spend the entire year out on the road. They were great to talk with. From there I snuck onto an Rv lot and grabbed a shower in the deluxe model before skipping town. My taste for endless ran had been sufficiently filled for the year.
The train dropped me in Tourquai, Belgium, lucky 13 on my trip. The only reason I knew I was In Belgium was the fact they had waffles in the snack machines.
On a side note, I didn’t meet any rude French people except one.
I walked into a bar in Le Mans to ask for directions, and addressed the bartender in English. She said no, and as I was turning to leave she says in French, “this is not Paris we have no use for your English here.” So of course I turned around and in French asked her if we could try it in Japanese instead. She only gave me a really dirty look as she pointed to the door.
