(this is an archive blog of our 2007 European Vacation)
Travel can be stressful – displaced from the familiar, sometimes a new language, a new culture and the associated “normal behaviors”. And you might have the experience of finding something different than what you expected. Our trip to France has included all of that, although my expectation of meeting patient and welcoming people has been gloriously fulfilled.
The flight from Denver to Frankfurt took us just north of the Great Lakes, over Baffin Island, almost to the Arctic Circle, past the southern tip of Greenland, over Iceland, north of Ireland, over Scotland, to the south of Paris and into Germany. Every few minutes when the movies were not being shown, they would flash a map of our route and our progress along it onto overhead displays. Taking off at 5:30pm on Monday, the sun stayed to our left the entire trip; even at the darkest hour, it was still twilight out the left side of the plane. And arriving in Frankfurt from the northwest at about 11:00 am local time, there was the sun on our left – until we slipped through and below the clouds that were offering their water to the ground.
I had intended to sleep on the flight from Denver, because I knew we were to escape Paris immediately after picking up our rental car the following afternoon. But sleep was not in the cards for me. Lufthansa treats its passengers well – with food and drink periodically served throughout the flight (with a couple of breaks for movies thrown in). Add to that a Frenchman from near Toulouse (pronounced “too-luz”) on my left and an oil man from Casper, WY, on my right, interesting conversation filled the rest of the flight.
Linda and I had been given center seats in a middle block of four seats. So when two seats in the row ahead of us opened up (the teenager occupants wanted to join their friends further back in the cabin), Linda moved into the middle of the three empty seats. Since no one wanted to sit in the middle block of seats, Linda was able to have an open seat to her left and right, making the flight substantially more comfortable for both her and me (we could still whisper “sweet nothings” to each other between the seats).
The Frenchman on my left, Xavier, was a specialist in sugar beet seeds. His employer had contracts with a seed processor in Sheridan, WY, and a grower in Oregon. He made the trip to Sheridan quite often – he was scheduled to return there on May 29. The Casperian on my right was not nearly as talkative as Xavier. He was on his way to work – in Omar – a trip he made every four weeks for a four-week “shift”. This was a record breaking trip for him – he was able to make the trip to work with only four flight legs, not the normal five or six it usually took. But when we arrived in Frankfurt, he was only halfway in his day-long commute. Even when I worked for four months with a software developer that made systems to facilitate international trade, I did not get the sense of what “globalization” was all about until I sat for almost ten hours between these two commuters.
Xavier had five boys, a 20 year-old, a 16 year-old, one 14 year-old, another at 11 years and the last one at 8. With one daughter at 24, and observing the intense energy exhibited by boys around the church on Sunday morning, I just can’t imagine what having five boys in one house would be like. Being the youngest of three boys – my brothers were 6 and 10 years older, I had no idea at the time what my parents went through to get us out of the house in one piece J! Xavier’s 20 year-old went to school in Toulouse, about 75 kilometers away from home. Upon hearing that, I guessed out loud that his son came home about every two weeks – with a basket-full of clothes to be washed. He said, “How did you know that?” I shared my theory that 50 miles was “laundry distance” for a 20 year-old.
When we arrived in Frankfurt, we were put on a bus-train, hauled about a mile to the terminal and let out in front of multiple automatic sliding-glass doors. The crowd, seeming to know where it was going, led us into the terminal, through a large open room, into a twisting hallway with frosted glass on one side, up the stairs and into a room with half a dozen customs agents sitting in their respective booths. Getting in one line, making it up to the agent, we were then told in German to go to another line. “Ah, so that’s what those overhead signs are about!”, I thought. Recognizing that we couldn’t possibly be a threat to their national security, they waved us through without even a question.
Down a long hallway, more frosted glass (what are they hiding on the other side?), up a couple of escalators, through a very busy concourse, down a long tunnel, catching as many moving sidewalks as we could (thankful that our bags were checked all the way to Paris), through gate areas where smokers imbibed before boarding their respective flights to wherever, finally arriving at the last gate on a very long concourse, A-42, we sat down to wait for our flight to Paris.
Whew! I was now ready for a nap. Catching a few winks here and there, after two hours we boarded our one-hour flight to Paris. Almost immediately I fell asleep. And I missed out on a traditional German lunch – two pieces of buttered dark bread surrounding a thick slice of cheese.
Upon awakening as we were approaching Charles DeGaulle airport, I noticed that the French country-side – at least here in the north – had very few rectangular fields. It was as if the fields were defined by being “on the left side of the path” or “on the right side of the path” – wherever “the path” led. And there were small villages spotting the countryside, literally every one to three kilometers along these winding roads.
Up to this point, our travel plans were unfolding uneventfully, just as we had planned. When we arrived in Paris, we went to the baggage claim area, found a luggage cart and loaded our bags in just a few minutes. No worries, right? Well, almost right. I was expecting to find right outside the baggage claim area the booth of our rental car agency, Kerwell. Alas, no Kerwell. There was Hertz, Avis, National, Budget, Eurocar – but no Kerwell.
I asked at one booth where the Kerwell booth was – “Kerwell? What’s that?” was the reply, in very broken English. Apologizing for not speaking French, I tried to explain that we had arranged for a rental car on the Internet with a company called Kerwell. “Not here, try Hertz,” was the reply. Not yet understanding that Kerwell was only a broker of rental cars, I asked one or two company’s representatives if they knew about Kerwell. Finally, I was told that I needed to have the confirmation slip that was given to me by Kerwell when I booked the reservation to know which rental agency had my prepaid reservation. I began to get a sinking feeling. With one hour of sleep in the last 24, I was not feeling up to the challenge ahead.
Coupled with that, Linda was asking me why I had not paid more attention to one of the few tasks assigned to me in preparation for the trip. Our last two months before the trip were rather hectic. With me starting a part time job, trying to get the ducks in a row for an extended leave of absence from the church and the preparation for the upcoming Association of Unity Churches conference at which my new employer was going to be sponsoring the digital signage, it was not as if I didn’t have anything going on. However, I knew that she had a point! I could have been more attentive to making the arrangements for the rental car. J
So off I went to find an internet terminal to access the Kerwell website to find our reservation confirmation. That would seem to be easy enough, right? We found Linda a spot to sit with our luggage; I walked ten paces to an elevator, pressed the “down” button without noticing which floor I was on (there were cars driving by outside the window and there was a fountain in the center of a circular drive – you’d think that I was on the “ground floor”). I noticed a “boutique level” on the elevator panel. I pressed it, the doors closed, then they opened; I was facing another similar concrete wall like on the floor I had just left. I walked around the corner… into the twilight zone.
There ahead of me was an information desk. Yes, the person spoke English. She directed me to a hallway around the corner to the internet terminal. I found it – and it was occupied by a person checking her email, and writing responses. When it as apparent that she was a long way from being finished, I went into a newsstand and asked if there was another internet terminal nearby. “No, but you can buy a wireless access card for either 7.50 Euros or 15 Euros, depending on how long you need internet access.” That’s equivalent these days to about $11 and $21. Not wanting to blow our travel budget, I went back to wait at the terminal. She was still writing an email. So I went back to talk with Linda about our options. That’s when I realized that Rod Serling must be off in the corner somewhere narrating the plight of the lost American minister.
I went back to the elevator twice, each time entering, pressing the “ground floor” and having it open to a room full of people – but Linda was nowhere to be found. She should have been just a few paces to the left of the elevator. But there was just a wall there! There weren’t even any chairs like there were a few minutes before! Functioning on one hour of sleep, I was not able to get my brain around the fact that Linda was two floors ABOVE the “boutique level”, not below it. You remember that theme of the Twilight Zone? It was playing loud in my ears!
With a bit of panic, I located a fellow that looked like he spoke English (he was wearing an airline uniform). I asked him where the rental car booths were located (I couldn’t think of any other landmarks on the level which I left Linda). He directed me to the “Parking Level” – two floors above the “Boutique Level”. Back to the elevator, feeling a bit contrite and a lot embarrassed – and greatly relieved – I found my long, lost Linda sitting just a few paces to the left of the elevator – just where I had left her fifteen minutes before. There are exit ramps from the Twilight Zone!
But we still did not have the confirmation slip from Kerwell. As a last resort, I opened my laptop computer (Linda had wondered with a little disgust why I had brought the computer on our vacation!) to search for any email that included the name “Kerwell”. Then I remembered the reservation was made through a website, with the confirmation slip being presented for printing but was not emailed to me. “Maybe I have the document stored on the system somewhere,” I thought in the midst of my “no-sleep” fog. Sure enough, there it was, in my “European Vacation” folder.
And there was the reservation, booked with the Eurocar rental agency, the first booth that I had inquired about Kerwell (the one that claimed they did not know of "Kerwell"). Pointing to the displayed confirmation slip, the person noted that I had made the reservation for the day before – and that my booking was assumed to have been cancelled since I had not picked up the car on the 14th (we had left on the 14thand arrived in Paris on the 15th). But they did have the car in the garage, they would just have to retrieve it – it would take 15 minutes. “Have a seat”.
After 30 minutes, the car did arrive – and we were two hours late. We were given a map of Paris and of France, directions to the freeway out of the airport and sent on our way – right into the midst of the 5 o’clock rush hour crush! It took us about an hour of stop-and-go traffic to make it from the northeast side of Paris to the south side on the equivalent of C-470, the “peripherique” freeway. After I nearly fell asleep several times (luckily we were only traveling a few kilometers per hour at the time), we made it to the route out of town – but not before we missed two turns and found ourselves in the suburbs south of Paris, winding our way across the residential areas in search of “N20”, our escape route. Once there, we decided to stop for a meal and get a bit refreshed (read that “coffee”) for our drive to Orleans, about 100 kilometers south of Paris.
We found a restaurant just off the highway about 25 kilometers south of Paris. Up on the side of the hill, it was easy enough to find. But arriving at about 6:45 pm, they were not yet open to serve dinner. Being the silly Americans that we were, our meal habits probably seem very weird to the French. Their restaurant opened at 7:00 pm, if we wanted to be the “early-birds”. So we went off to see if another restaurant was open earlier – there was one just down the hill from this one (John Elway could literally have thrown a football from this one to that one).
Easy enough, right? We began another lesson we were to be taught many times before realizing that this is just the way it is. Roads in France do not follow the same “square block” layout as in most American cities. As a result, what seems to be a logical route to a known location is often just exactly the wrong way to get there. This spiritual lesson wasn’t learned in the early days of our trip: preconceived ideas can often prove unreliable in navigating through the cities of France. Being open to the present, being willing to be led by intuition, and being willing to circumnavigate the roundabouts as long as it takes to be sure which way to exit, is often more effective.
After ten minutes of trying alternative routes, making u-turns to backtrack and finding ourselves on the wrong side of a one-way, no-exit highway, we finally arrived at what turned out to be the “Long John Silver” restaurant chain of France, not our idea of the first meal we should enjoy in France. So back into the car, back on the road and up the hill to the first restaurant at which we stopped. Ten minutes later we arrived at our first destination. Noting that we could have ordered ten minutes earlier had we been patient enough to wait for this first restaurant to open, we climbed up the ten steps to our first meal in France.
Of course, the menu was only in French – we were off the beaten path of most tourists. So we ordered what we could figure out from the menu descriptions that made some sense. We were famished and the food was good! Thank you, God.
After dessert (crème brulee, of course!) and a very strong cup of kaffe, we were back on the road, headed south. Not having gotten any sleep in the restaurant J, the only thing that stood between us and the tree on the side of the road was that small cup of expresso. Of course, the crème brulee didn’t
help matters. But after 25 kilometers or so, we exited the freeway and found the first hotel we could. “Sorry, no vacancy,” we were told. But the desk clerk called ahead to check availability for us and directed us to a delightful little hotel off the side of the freeway about 10 kilometers south. Had we not stopped earlier, we would certainly have missed it. The hotel was nestled in a group of seemingly abandoned off of a non-descript freeway exit (no flashing "Hotel -- Next Exit" signs here!). It had a beautiful shaded lawn and a garden enclosed in rock walls, 
antique hay wagons covered with lichen/moss and ivy growing over much of te building. The room we were given (one of the few rooms they had left) was beamed with plaster flush with the exposed face of the beam, and comfortable beds. We fell, exhausted, into a deep sleep at 9:00 pm local time, 30 hours since I had last slept (with the exception of the 45 minute nap on the flight from Frankfurt and the few unintended cat-naps I had on the highway J).
