Oakwinter.com

Ann Gilbert and Elizabeth Parker are to consider themselves chastised for not being in Caen when I am. Shame on you both, trips to Italy and some “being in America” nonsense not withstanding.

Caen is a lot smaller than I remember it. When I was here in December, it seemed like the Maitre Corbeau was nowhere near the clubs we went to near the port, whereas in reality they’re just a few blocks apart. I also seem to remember thinking the train station was really far away; turns out it’s only a 15 minute walk from the castle. I mention all this because I was worried about being able to find certain things again: l’Abbaye aux Hommes (church), Maitre Corbeau (fondue restaurant) and Key West (French-style Tex-Mex).

Maybe it was the cold that made the walking feel longer than it actually was. That’s certainly not a worry this time around.

I finally managed to run across Che Guevara (salsa club) again. I originally had no idea what part of town that was in, but it turned out to be right around the corner from Key West.

Here’s something that sounds like a good idea but isn’t: sleeper trains. Sure, you get travel and lodging all rolled into one, but that doesn’t mean it’s something you should ever, ever consider, even for one moment.

At least not in France.

Here’s the deal: after spending a day in Basel (the parents at the Jean Tinguely museum, me wandering around), we caught a night train to Paris. Departure time: 1:30AM.

As I remarked upon entering our sleeper car, the only difference between this and steerage on the Titanic is that we wouldn’t drown. Accomodations were tight, to put it mildly. Combine this with less-than-effective sound-proofing and you end up with a terrible night’s sleep.

What made this better was the French passport authorities didn’t speak English. I didn’t have any problem understanding them that night when we left, but my French wasn’t exactly at its best when my father woke me up the next morning, saying, “the passport guy’s here and he still doesn’t speak English”.

On the plus side, the train was late getting into Paris, so we got to sleep an extra two hours. I guess if a train’s going to be late, this is the kind you want.

It seems those mountains between Austria and Switzerland are their own country. Who knew.

We woke up early and hoofed it through town to the station to catch our train to Zurich. Buying tickets was fun, thanks to both the Austrian train system and the Austrian dialect of German: you can’t buy international tickets from the machines, and the Austrians seem to pronounce “Zurich” as “Too-reek”.

The train ride took us through the Austrian, Liechtensteinian (or whatever) and Swiss Alps, making the four-hour journey infinitely more pleasant than it would have been otherwise. It was uneventful, save for some issue with my passport when crossing into Switzerland. I don’t know what happened, but the border patrol guy ended up calling my passport information in to headquarters. Maybe it was that my passport’s a bit more battered and worn than the other three American passports we handed him.

After arriving in Bern and finding out hotel, the other three headed out to explore the Altstadt while some chocolate, a nice view and I nursed the cold that had been with me since Germany. I ended up calling it a day at 9:30.

Random tidbits:

• The girl at the desk at the hotel in Bern spoke the strangest German I’ve ever heard, heavily laced with Italian nouns and French prepositions.

• There was a Chris Langley impersonator doing his thing at the park overlooking the river: capris, dyed-black fauxhawk, tight t-shirt, Roman nose, iPod — the works.

Growing up, a travel agency in my father’s hometown ran adds talking up a little town in southern Baveria called Garmisch. Appropriately, one of my tasks when laying out this trip was to figure out how to fit this place into the itenerary. Ergo, we’ll be spending tonight in Innsbruck, which is a straight shot through the mountains from Munich — taking you through Garmish and its sister city, Partenkirchen.

Turns out that there’s not much to Garmisch-Partenkirchen. It’s got some nice mountain scenery, sure, but so does every chunk of land on the German-Austrian border. What makes it worthwhile, though, is when you get back on the train and head to Austria. The view as the train winds through the lower Alps is gorgeous. The whole place is one big postcard, exactly what you expect southern Bavaria to look like.

Things are a little less sunny upon arrival in Innsbruck. After a bit of mapwork, I figure out the approximate area where our hotel is and we start walking. We finally find the general vicinity, at which point I go exploring to try and find out exactly where we’ll be sleeping. This ends up taking quite a while.

It seems Expedia had confused a road named Kirchstrasse (where the hotel actually is) with one named Kirchgasse (where we were). These things are nowhere near each other — as in, 30 minutes-by-train nowhere near each other. I only find this out after asking several people directions, none of whom know where this place is. One of the recognises one part of the address, though: it’s apparently just a fancy name for an exit ramp off the Autobahn.

We head back to the train station and find the tourist information counter. The woman there recognises the name of the place, immediately cancels our reseverations there and books us at a different, much closer hotel.

Dinner is local cuisine at a restraurant where I have to play interpreter. Maybe I should have taken some of the interpreting classes back in Germersheim…

Today’s agenda is a side trip to Aachen (Germany) and Liege (Belgium); they’re both in the same direction, so I’m planning to hit them both in one trip.

Aachen is one of those places I remember reading about in Mr. Lindley’s 10th grade AP European History class. It was the capital of the German part of the Holy Roman Empire, so was kinda a big deal in its day.

Liege is an excuse to stock up on Belgian beer and waffels.

Here’s a fun little anecdote about the three places involved in today’s story: Cologne, Aachen and Liege are all pretty close together, meaning they’re all pretty close to the same four borders, meaning they’ve changed hands a fair amount over the years. As a result, they all have different names, depending on whether you’re talking about them in German, French or Dutch. I can imagine the girl at the ticket counter was a bit confused when I used the French name Liege in the middle of a German sentence. So you know:

• Cologne (English, French) == Köln (German) == Koeln (Dutch)

• Aachen (English, German) == Aix-en-Chapelle (French) == Aken (Dutch)

• Liege (English, French) == Lüttich (German) == Luik (Dutch)

…and knowing is half the battle.

So, Aachen: there’s not that much to see there (that I was aware of) outside of the main cathedral. The cathedral itself is gorgeous, as is the golden box in its center that contains Charlemagne’s ashes (that’s Karl der Groesse for you Germans).

Liege is pretty but kinda rainy, though it has a nice river. After walking around for a bit I picked one of the lookout points marked on the map and started walking. On the way, waffels were procured. I finally found my way to the general area of where I wanted to go, but after the huge staircase I climbed to get there, I wasn’t in the mood to play particulars.

I ended up at a basilica next to something that looked like an observatory tower. The church was locked, and after walking around it a few times, I went to try my luck at the thing next door. I should mention at this point that I’m the only person there. I haven’t seen anyone out on the streets in this part of town, and there’s nobody visible at the basilica or tower-thingy. What is visible at the tower-thingy are some signs that I don’t fully understand but seem to mention government property, so I’m going to take this recon job careful-like.

The tower-thingy turns out to be a memorial site to the various nations that have fought to defend Liege over the past six centuries or so. There are monuments to the Greeks, the British, the French, etc, etc. It’s a huge site involving multiple levels, and it’s a bit creepy being the only human in the joint. Still and all, I’d recommend it if you happen to be in town.

After coming down from the ridge, lots more walking and a bit more rain later, I head back to the station and my ICE back to Cologne (PS: the ICEs beat Thalys-line trains hands down). Tonight’s an early-to-bed, early-to-rise affair: I have to be up at God-awful-early-o’clock to catch an express line to the airport in Frankfurt um die Eltern abzuholen.

I did very — almost satisfyingly — little today.

The day’s activities can be best summed up as: woke up late, lazed about in Utrecht for a while, caught an ICE to Cologne, walked around Cologne a bit. It was a recharging-the-batteries-kinda day; travel (the way I do it, at least, which involves a lot of walking) has to be the most exhausting way to take a vacation.

The walking-around in Cologne was limited by the ever-present, northern-Europe-in-June drizzle. It was surprising to see so many people out shopping, despite the crap weather. The Germans, they are a hearty people.

Tomorrow: more walking in Aachen and Liege.

or, how Rob Lowe became the center of my universe at 4AM.

So, starting at the beginning and proceeding in roughly chronological order: I went up to Amsterdam yesterday, which is only 30 minutes from Utrecht. Let’s just say I have a new favorite European capital (*sshhh*, don’t tell London): Amsterdam (and much of Holland) is what would result if you took Vanderbilt’s campus, blew it up to city-size and threw in some canals. It’s a place that’s everything you’ve heard about it, right down to the “coffee shops” filled with stoned American college kids. Downside: the fabled Red Light District failed to impress. Maybe I just have high standards when it comes to the sex trade and its locales.

After walking around the canals and alleyways for eight hours or so (it was too cold/wet to rent a bike), I headed back to Utrecht with some very sore feet for my trouble. Several hours of hostel-style kibitizing later, it’s time for bed. I go to sleep at 1:30AM.

At 1:45AM, I am awakened by some very unhappy Bulgarian girls. Seems that someone said that one of them could sleep in my bed; needless to say, I had rather different opinions about all that. 30 minutes of early-morning multilingual explanation later, we get a handle on the situation: one of guys working here screwed up and double-booked my bed. Now, if this were a king- or queen-size bed, things might have been alright; however, what we have here is a twin bed, and I am not that close to this Bulgarian chick.

Since there absolutely no other sleeping spaces available for these two kids, my Southern heritage decides to make its presence known, asserting that I should be a “gentleman” (what crap) and give the girl the bed. I grab my stuff and head out into the common room, where two girls are still communicating with accomplices in different time zones. Some Germans had left the TV on, and I settle in to enjoy a late-night showing of Atomic Train, a made-for-TV movie starring a pre-West Wing Rob Lowe as an NTSB investigator tasked to stop a nuclear explosion.

Let me preface everything else by saying that this movie is amazing.
It’s a movie you simply have to talk through, because to not do so would be to rob yourself of half the fun of the movie. Hindi-girl-from-Toronto joins me mid-way through the film’s 122 minutes (it feels like it lasts three or four hours) and I spend a good 20 minutes catching her up on the various plot twists that have transpired in her unfortunate (for her) absence. She goes to bed just before the best part: a man with a broken spine throwing a rope so hard he flips backwards into a bottomless pit.

For serious, find a copy of this film by any means necessary. This is a watch-with-friends-and-booze kinda film. You won’t get the same effect, though, unless you see it as I saw it, dubbed into German.

At some point, the world stopped calling it “Saturday” and started in on this “Sunday” nonsense.

I never really went to sleep, and 10AM feels ungodly late. On the advice of Hindi-girl-from-Toronto, I scrap my planned return to Amsterdam and instead grab the next InterCity to The Hague. She had promised me some shore, some sea, and I spend a good long walk trying to find it. In the end, I’m unsuccessful, but what I do discover trumps even the ocean: north of the city center are massive parks, one Smokey Mountain-style wilderness cut-through with walking paths; the other, a tight maze of two-meter azalea bushes. Anyone coming to the Netherlands, make some time for this.

I have coffee and cake at a cafe where the waiters refuse to so much as indulge my Dutch. Some time later, I return to the train station, find a train and sleep the whole way back to Utrecht.

Current status: sitting across a small card table from my new best friend in all of Holland, Sheena from Virginia. Also, waiting for people to vacate the kitchen area so I can produce foodstuffs.

I’ve got my fingers crossed for having my own bed tonight.

Breakfast report: tea for breakfast is a pleasure I reserve for Euro-travel. This may need to change upon return to the States.

It was raining again this morning (just like the last two days), but fortunately it’s just a persistant sprinkling. Sprinkling or downpour, however, my shoes still get wet. Alas, alas.

The shopping side-trip to Antwerp lasted a little longer than planned and concluded without success; I wish I didn’t disagree so vehemently with most clothing companies about what color jeans should be. Also, it would be nice if the clerks weren’t so shocked when I want to try on girls’ clothes; I’m 120 pounds spread over 5′10″ — do you really think anything in your men’s section is going to fit me?

Purchased: one bottle opener; thus far, I’ve had to MacGuyver my way into beer bottles with my belt buckle, and while that approach may work, it’s not quite appropriate for public use.

(Before someone asks why I didn’t buy one sooner, I didn’t need one until all shops were closed on Wednesday and the stores were closed all of yesterday.)

I’m currently sitting in Antwerpen-Bercham station, waiting for a train to Rotterdam; from there I’ll catch a train to Utrecht, where I’ll spend the next three nights. The guy at the Antwerpen-Centraal station ticket counter advised me to take a slow train to Roo-some-long-Flemish-word and change at Ui-some-long-Dutch-word, and I said, Thanks, but I’ll use the itenerary I have written down. Ciao.

Maestro, some travelling music.

This just in: the main station in Utrecht is huge. The main issue is that the train station merges with a shopping center, meaning that there are a dozen or so possible exits. This leads to a lot of wandering around when the directions to your hostel doesn’t tell you which way to head.

A 4km walk to the hostel, some settling-in and dinner later, I head out to explore Utrecht. Because it doesn’t get dark here until after 10PM, leaving at 8PM gives me plenty of time for adventures. Let’s fast-forward through the next four hours, as they involve me getting seriously, seriously lost. On the plus side, I’ve seen a lot more of Utrecht than I ever intended to.

Tomorrow: Amsterdam.

After a night marred by thin walls and an improperly-configured internal clock, I woke up at 7 to find Brussels oddly quiet. I figured that perhaps Belgium was like Spain and Portugal, i.e., no-one so much as wakes up before 10:30AM and important things don’t start to happen until the afternoon. So, I go about my plan of daytripping to Antwerp and Ghent (in that order).

The trainride to Antwerp was spent making notes on Flemish; I’m starting to get the hang of the basic structure. It is like encrypted German: it needs deciphering.

Also, note to self: Spanish words do not belong in French sentences. For example, the answer to “avec ou sans?” is not “con”.

If you’ve seen Vanilla Sky, you know that scene where Tom Cruise runs through a deserted Times Square? Picture any one of the “everyone in London has been killed” scenes in 28 Days Later, and you have the approximate creepiness factor of being the only person out in Antwerp this morning. I used my detective powers to figure out that it was a holiday from the fact that the trains were operating on the “weekends and holidays” schedule on a Thursday.

So, given that absolutely nothing was open, I got to do several hours of leisurely, uninterrupted window shopping and street-wandering in Antwerp before heading on to more of the same in Ghent. In Ghent the catherdrals were open, so I joined the dozen or so American senior-citizen tourist groups in checking out the city’s six or so massive churches. Fortunately, they’re all in the same district.

Returning to Brussels involved sleeping through the train station I intended to get out at (Brussels has at least five stations), which just meant I got to do more walking than initially planned. Like in Ghent, the tourists were the only ones out on the streets, at they served as good indicators of “you are coming to something famous” (or, if not “something famous”, then “something on a map”). This led me to see a few dozen retirees gathered around a little boy peeing with a cocky air.

I have committed myself to sampling as much local cuisine as possible. Given my limited knowledge of Belgian foodstuffs, this has been mainly composed of waffels, fries and Stella Artois. Not that I’m complaining.

Begin sleep-deprived rambling….now!

“Three Modes of Transportation” made the title too long, so just use your imagination to insert it in the right place.

Don’t let anyone tell you different: just because you sleep on the plane doesn’t mean that “today” at any point turns into “yesterday”. As I remarked to myself on the escalator in Victoria Station, “ah, yes, it’s still today”.

Cincinatti has a nice airport. I appreciate that there’s a sizable food court on the secure side of the security checkpoint; Frankfurt Terminal 2, I’m looking at you.

Speaking of security checkpoints:

• It took no more than 20 seconds to go through security in Atlanta.

• I never went through out-bound Customs in the US.

• The British passport authorities weren’t nearly as interested in me as the last few times.

• The guy at the French passport control-point on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link took an uncomfortable amount of interest in my old passport photo. He took some convincing that 16-year-old me is the same person as 22-year-old me.

There’s a French couple sitting next to me in the Eurostar to Brussels (as I type this). The woman is looking over my shoulder, pretending to not read what I’m writing. She’s doing a bad job; my blog entry is clearly more interesting than her magazine article about the Seychelles Islands.

Apparently, the French word for “Internet cafe” is “Internet cafe”, appropriately French-accent-ified. This could turn out to be useful information.

I’m in London and the sun is out; something is clearly wrong here. However, it’s nice to see the place with actual green on the trees; Europe in the wintertime (and even early Spring) is a pretty bleak affair.

Seeing the English countryside by train reminds me of Thomas the Tank Engine. Man, I loved that show when I was 6. I think I even had a little action figure of Sir Topham Hatt.

At this point, Collin goes underwater.

He also goes to sleep. (I don’t know why I expected a tunnel — of all things — to be interesting. I blame the History Channel.) Fortunately, he had the foresight to turn his laptop off before sleeping all the way from England to Belgium.

First impressions of Brussels: it’s chilly, windy and they speak French…all the time — just like in the movies! Flemish sounds like a long stream of nonsense syllables with a vaguely German rhythm.

Let me rephrase that “windy” part: it’s currently so windy that I have trouble walking in a straight line.

Today’s main agenda involved wandering aimlessly around Brussels, trying to stay awake until a reasonable bedtime. I was successful on the first count (my feet have seen numerous kilometers of Belgian sidewalk), not successful on the second (I passed out around 8PM).