Jumped the Tracks

The Netherlands and Germany

2011-11-15T08:42:00.000-08:00

With autumn deepening, Brian and I left the alluring Mediterranean coast and drove northwards. It was a thirteen hour drive (which we spread out over two days) from Cavalaire to our next rental in the town of Zeddam in the Netherlands. Several people pointed out to us the seeming strangeness of visiting the southern countries first and then the northern countries as the cold began to descend, but we enjoyed ideally comfortable weather along the coast and then drove through France, Germany, and into the Netherlands as the leaves were turning color, a gorgeous sight worth donning warmer clothing to witness.

Our rental in Zeddam was a large two level apartment right next to the town’s church (the church bells rang to mark the time through the day and night, which surprisingly we grew to enjoy). After our long drive and the instant feeling of comfort we experienced in Zeddam we decided to stay two weeks rather than just one. The location was perfect, with lots of nearby cities to explore (our favorite being Arnhem), beautiful countryside all around us, and a fantastic pancakery right across the street from us (which put the American version of pancakes to shame). The owner of the restaurant was very friendly and like most of the Dutch spoke excellent English, so for the first time on our travels we were able to converse at length with those around us.

The owners of our rental, Edwin and Diane, were particularly gracious hosts, going above and beyond the call of hospitality to answer our myriad of random questions and even getting internet in time for very last minute arrival. We questioned them about the Dutch love of bicycling (EVERYONE bicycles in the Netherlands—whether they’re old or young, fat or skinny, goth or posh, they all do it), the pastoral landscape filled with farm animals (everywhere you look there are sheep, cows, pigs, geese, ducks, chickens, horses, goats, on and on), and the education system in the Netherlands (which makes ours look appallingly outdated). The Dutch it seems aren’t so neurotically nationalistic that they view multilingualism as a danger to their cultural heritage, but rather have sensibly seen the advantages to being able to converse with as many other societies as possible (which is why the daughter of our hosts learns English, French, German, and even a little Spanish in her school).

On the 12^th we left the Netherlands for the Rhon region of Germany, specifically to the town of Gersfeld. It’s a lovely place, nestled in a valley encircled by highlands (which were created by intense volcanic activity hundreds of millions of years ago) in the heart of Germany. It is also where an imaginary line, protected by all-too-real military force, once split the country in half for forty years. Every night we’ve been here a beautiful sunset has colored the horizon with gorgeous pinks and oranges, and always the sky is filled with an absurd number of contrails left by planes that I never actually see. Brian says that the beautiful architecture of the town is typical of Germany and it certainly makes American suburban developments look even more grotesquely hideous than they already did in my mind.

Our hosts for this week are two brothers, their wives, the mother, and several other family members who all rent out several properties in the area. They invited us out to dinner with them the first night we arrived and we happily accepted, relishing the opportunity to dine out with people who can actually read the menu. Half of the family spoke English, the other half only German, so stories shared in either language were translated back and forth, with only minimal confusion. The dinner introduced us to the deliciousness that is schnitzel and the family explained tipping etiquette when we tried to leave far too much by their estimation.

At this point we only have about two weeks left in our trip, and plan on spending our last full week starting Saturday near the Black Forest in Germany. After that it’s back to a rental near Paris so we’re an easy drive’s distance from the airport for our return flight on Dec. 1^st. After traveling for this long we’ve become pretty accustomed to moving from place to place week to week and yet are feeling rather ready to find a place to grow some roots in and develop longer lasting connections with those around us. Yep, we’re feeling ready for home, but not so greatly that we’re not enjoying our last few weeks of Europe exploration!

Moving Right Along...

2011-10-23T12:45:00.000-07:00

"Why do people move? What makes them uproot and leave everything they've known for a great unknown beyond the horizon? Why climb this Mount Everest of formalities that makes you feel like a beggar? Why enter this jungle of foreignness where everything is new, strange and difficult?"

-Yann Martel

I came across this excerpt while rereading the novel Life of Pi (which I highly recommend). While Martel had his own answers to these questions, here are some I've discovered after these last eight weeks of travel (which while not the same as a long-term move can be no less life-changing): For the beauty of the fresh and never-before-experienced. For flavor. To test your mettle. To cut through your carefully developed and maintained ego, your fancy talk and strutting walk, and see what's left. To be awed once more by landscape and culture. To tingle the taste buds with foods not tried before. To be humbled by how little you know, how much you can learn, and how kind others can be. To discover what is truly essential for your happiness. To face the monster that is stress and time and time again stare it down till sanity is regained. To find out how strong your relationships truly are. To live focused on each task, each pleasure, each uncertainty that arises moment to moment, day to day.

When I last wrote, Brian and I had just arrived in Ontinyent, Spain. This was the farthest south we ventured, and even there the summer was definitely giving in to the dominance of autumn. The days were still sunny and warm, but the sun's passage was noticeably lower in the sky, it's sharp summer rays now relaxing into a glancing fall gaze. I could almost feel the relief of the terribly dry earth as the promise of autumn and winter rains neared (apparently the rainfall normally started right around our arrival, so we lucked out again with unusually good weather). Our rental was next door to a very friendly English couple and the property boasted olive, orange, and pomegranate trees (which were so delicious!). We were only a five minutes drive from the center of Ontinyent, which we spent several afternoons walking through in the hopes of finding an open restaurant for lunch (places were open and closed so unpredictably we accepted that two weeks was insufficient to get a solid understanding of the Spanish relationship to time schedules). We took several day trips out from Ontinyent to explore the medieval city of Bocarient, the naturally-formed turquoise rock pools of a nearby river, and the long and sandy beaches of the Valencia coast.

On the 15th we drove back up north to our next rental, a beautiful old stone house with a separate one bedroom apartment attached. The landscape had become greener as we drove back up towards France and the fallow field next to our rental was filled with flowers and butterflies, a lovely place to read and lunch. The house was an easy fifteen minutes drive from the city of Figueres, which we ended up having to travel to every few days when the internet at our rental proved to be inaccessible. Out of sheer laziness (and the foolish assumption that we would always have working internet in our wanderings) we had failed to book a place for the oncoming week. As the days of the week slipped away our panic grew, and I spent nearly all our time at the cafes researching, emailing, and finally hashing out an agreement for a rental in the region of Provence, France on Thursday... cutting it a little too close to sleeping in the car for our taste.

In between these internet quests we spent our time enjoying the sunshine, eating out at gastronomic bars (where they serve a surprising and delectable variety of tapas), watching downloaded podcasts (we highly recommend TEDtalks and the moth podcast), cooking meals in our large kitchen (it even had the luxury of a stove, which we'd had in only one other rental thus far), and exploring the coast. Our hosts recommended we drive out to the tiny coastal town of St Marti D'Empuries for a beautiful beach minus the shore hugging over-development of bigger towns. And beautiful it was. We bravely swam in the fairly chilly and amazingly clear sea water and ran about collecting shells like they were gold pieces. Another day, we drove up the coast to the touristy town of Roses and enjoyed some fantastic tapas with an ocean view. Since it was the off-season the town was half deserted, but we didn't mind because it makes for far less stress and you never have to fight for a table.

On Saturday we drove six hours along the French Mediterranean to the tiny coastal town of Cavalaire, ten minutes from a larger tourist destination, Le Lavandou. The weather has turned a bit chiller and though it was sunny on Sunday, today has been overcast and rainy, and tomorrow is expected to be the same. Still, it is lovely on the coast here (even with the sun hidden, the surrounding landscape is gorgeous) and the homes on the coastal hillsides are all the same warm tones of yellows and pinks, each with it's own meticulously maintained garden. And I'm going to enjoy the relative warmth of this coast for all it's worth this week, weather aside, because Brian has managed to talk me into heading north instead of into Italy as we had planned... and when I say "north", I mean farther north then I can almost stand the thought of. But hey, what's traveling for, if not to shred your precious sense of comfort and control?

A Much Needed Update

2011-10-09T09:12:00.000-07:00

I will not lie to you: it has been two weeks since our last blog post and this is not because of a lack of internet (though it is quite temperamental in this part of the world) or because of time constraints (as I’ve had nothing I have to do besides sleep, eat, read, and think), but rather because I’ve just been languorously enjoying myself too much to try and collect my thoughts into something interesting to read. But, yesterday was traveling day, which always brings with it enough tension to motivate oneself, so here’s a quick recapitulation of the last two weeks (and forgive me if I seem a bit wordy, but since most of my conversations here allow me only to speak at the level of a linguistically-challenged toddler, I’m appreciating being able to be prattle away with ease):

Quillan:

So where did we leave off? Oh yes, in the beautiful mountains of the Pyrenees in a tiny town where the sun shone every day and was perhaps responsible for making the people a bit more rambunctious. Each day we would go to the bakery in the morning (which had the best chocolate-filled doughnuts on earth, no exaggeration), a restaurant for lunch (tiny and unassuming Café de Flueve proved to create some of the best meals we’d experienced thus far), and the market in the evening (to get ingredients for dinner and try a new bottle of wine). By this time we’d gotten the hours for meals and stores pretty well figured out, except for Sundays and Mondays when hours are so erratic that we just walk until we find something open.

During this week, Brian found himself inundated with work, so we didn’t explore the surrounding area as much as we had in previous places. We did however make a trip to Carcassonne, a tourist destination in this area of France, and found that though the famous medieval city (surrounded by a giant wall with turrets and a massive chateaux and cathedral) was truly beautiful, the place was the worst sort of tourist trap. Inside the walls we discovered an over-priced renaissance fair world, with silly stores selling plastic swords and princess figurines, more restaurants than seemed feasible in so small an area, and even to our puzzlement those terrible hippie-esque clothing stores one sees all over Boulder.

On to Spain:

From Quillan our GPS took us on many a small, winding mountain road till we finally met up with a highway just before entering Spain. One could feel the change from the more well-watered mountains of France into the sun-drenched, scrubby mountains of the Catalonia region. We were headed to a solar-powered finca hidden in the hills, with the nearest town of Rasquera a thirty-five minute drive away. From the website where we found the property we had gathered that it was in a rather remote area and was a bit more rustic, but nothing quite prepares you for what you’re really getting into until you’re there.

We met our guide Tracy on "the edge of town” (these were her instructions and we were very glad we actually found her parked in an empty dirt lot) and followed her fifteen minutes down the TV-3022 to a little dirt road. We left our car parked near the bottom and switched to the Jeep we had rented to get us up the insanely bumpy and rock-riddled dirt track (a twenty minute drive) to the finca. I have to say the view all around us was phenomenal, with mountains and plateaus and a cloudless sky encompassing us.

Tracy offered us all the following advice as she walked us about the property for the first time: use water as sparingly as possible as there hasn’t been any rain for a while though you should have enough (comforting), but be aware that the water isn’t safe to drink or cook with, so only use it to wash dishes and shower. Oh, and use all extra water from dishes and showering to water the plants outside (Brian took issue to standing in a giant bucket while showering to collect the water, though I was happy to do it for the plants!). Don’t mind the goats that you hear clinking about in the hills or the man who comes every day to herd them (by yelling like a murderous-madman). The gas tank should last you through the week for the stove and to heat the shower, but email me if it runs out (also not comforting). Remember to take all the trash down (the forty minute drive) to town and you should charge these three tiny solar lamps everyday in the sun for use at night. And the internet isn’t actually wifi, it’s through the 3G network, and some people can’t get it to work at all up here (though Brian of course found a way, propping my computer up on books at the top story window and using it as a router to send out the signal). And finally, don’t mind the gunshots tomorrow, because it’s only hunting day…

Yet, we had an amazing week at the finca, surrounded by so much beauty and sunshine. Every few days we would travel down to El Perrelo or L’Ampolla for some lunch and to buy a large load of groceries to make it through at our isolated rental till our next long trip down. No matter which direction we looked at the finca we couldn’t see a single other house and this isolation brought with it an amazing sort of relaxation and wonderment. Every night the moon shone brighter and brighter as it waxed and every day we basked in the sunshine and enjoyed the cool breezes that would start up quite suddenly. We were also warned about the wild winds that could suddenly appear, slamming shut doors and windows, and rattling the olive trees all night long, and our last two nights were filled with these intense winds. It just started to get a bit cold on our final day and as we left to go farther south it felt as if we were chasing the sunshine as it fled down the coast.

We’ve arrived safe and sound at our rental for this week in Ontinyent, which turns out to be a bigger town than we expected. We’ll be sure to give you the scoop on our new location in the next few days. Also, check out (if you computer savvy lot haven’t already) our photo albums of each location we’ve been to so far (located on the right side of this page) and we’ll also be uploading some more videos, so watch out for those!

Love from Jessie & Brian!

Welcome to Quillan!

2011-09-25T13:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we drove six hours from the Loire Valley to the small town of Quillan in the Languedoc-Roussillon region of southern France. Yes, we’ve made it to our new hideout in the Pyrenees and so far it’s been a, well, livelier sort of culture we’ve encountered.

Our second rental in the Loire Valley was beautiful, with the sort of French countryside charm one can easily melt into. We explored the chateaux in Loches (which Brian decided was “not all that impressive… I’ll stick with my modern apartment”), ate a great deal more wonderful food, watched a cow give birth, saw some spectacular stars at night, had wide-ranging conversations with our lovely downstairs neighbors from England, took longer walks then Brian has ever taken in his life (more than a mile!), discovered how to make a delicious French aperitif for ourselves (blackberry liquor plus sauvignon = delicious!), had many encounters with strange insects, finally began to bicker less while driving, and at last learned that “gazole” is the same as “diesel” in French (which is incredibly helpful considering how many places have gazole written instead of diesel). It was a lovely week and by the end we expressed our near boredom at the ease with which we had learned to navigate the French lifestyle (in under twenty French expressions at that! Our favorite, of course, being “une table pour deux, s’il vous plait”).

Which brings us to our new location for the week: Quillan in the Pyrenees. One of my favorite bands did a song that mentioned the Pyrenees and a man who hide out there, and I remember wondering “where is that strange place?” It wasn’t until a few days ago that I really connected the two ideas into one and got extra excited to visit this region. I imagined the mountains would loom up upon the horizon like mammoth versions of the chateaus and dungeons we’d seen already, but the country turned from flat to hilly halfway through our drive and when our GPS took us off the giant highway we'd followed for much of the drive and onto a long and windy tiny country road I barely noticed the mountains gathering up around us. After following the wild road through one little town after another, we finally arrived in tiny Quillan, with the Aude River running through its town center and large mountains surrounding the valley.

Brian and I both immediately agreed this town has a decidedly different feel from the northern areas of France we’d experienced thus far, though we weren’t quite sure just yet how to express that difference. We parked in the small little courtyard we had been instructed to and walked to the Café de Flueve, where the owner Mike took us to our rental for the week. The owner hooked us up with a two bedroom on the first floor after we told her we needed internet (even though we’d paid for a small studio on the fourth) so we excitedly unpacked in the largest apartment we’ve stayed in yet.

We were eager to explore Quillan (our location is perfect, right in the center of the town within walking distance of the river, restaurants, supermarkets, banks, etc.) and quickly made our way out the door. As we walked by the church we were again struck with the different feel of the town, which we pondered. Is it the architecture? Well, yes, it’s different, certainly with a slight Spanish influence this close to the border. Is it the number of young people nearer our age running around, blasting their awful pop music, and smoking cigarettes on nearly every street? Yes, there’s a fair bit more of that than any previous place we’ve stayed. Then, we rounded a corner to see a woman running to her car yelling loudly and two men clearly engaged in a serious altercation, face-to-face and sounding angrier every second. The seedier looking individual of the two proceeded to turn over his open beer bottle, pour out the remainder of the contents, turn it around in his hand so that the neck was held firmly in his fist, and threaten to hit the other guy in the face with it. The feeling was tense and poor Brian and I, out on our lovely little stroll, were not prepared for such a shocking and near-violent encounter. We of course were unable to understand what the two were fighting about and our path quickly deviated from the area of conflict, but I couldn’t help but think, "Hmmm, well that’s perhaps a part of the different feel." Quillan is a bit less disney-fairytale-like than the Loire Valley, and a bit more, well, there is no better word I can think of than “earthy”. Tonight after we left dinner, a young woman who’d been kicked out of the restaurant we were eating at proceeded to swear at Brian and I quite passionately in French before spitting upon the ground in our direction. We were both bemused by this unexpected and unintelligible tongue-lashing, and I thought that this was rather how I imagined the Pyrenees before I knew anything about it, like a hideout for colorful characters and self-ostracized social outcasts, which the outside world had yet to turn into a tourist haven (though apparently that’s what Quillan intends for its economic future).

Yet don’t think that wild bottle-brandishing men and crazily-cursing women has stopped us from appreciating Quillan. Non! It’s beautiful here and we spent most of today on the awesome rooftop terrace that we are lucky enough to have access to. There are a delightful number of cafes, boulangeries, and restaurants (and an uncanny number of bars) to be found within five minutes of our apartment (like everywhere in France). We have internet, food, coffee, and sunshine (finally!). What more do we need?!

Brian’s Arbitrary Pros and Cons of France

2011-09-23T07:44:00.000-07:00

Cons

· The Internet

o The connection here is SPORADITIC (yes I made a last minute edit, my mother reads this blog), in fact I’m writing this blog post in notepad while our internet is down

· Chinese Food

o Fact: France is closer to China than we are. Myth: The French cook better Chinese food than us because of this.

· Lack of English speakers

o So far we’ve run into exactly 2 people who have spoken English: The tollbooth operator who helped us advert disaster when our credit card turned out to be too archaic for European automated processing (If you’re looking for elaboration I’m sorry… too soon… too soon...) and the English speaking lady at the Tourist Center

· The conversion rate

o Spending $3 for every $2 back home… if I had a financial advisor he’d be upset

· No Late night snack runs / specific times to eat meals

o We ate nothing but bread, meat and cheese for ½ a week until we figured out that lunch is generally only served from noon to two at the latest and if you don't arrive for dinner exactly at 7pm you'll likely be turned away if you haven't got a reservation (which, considering we neither speak French nor have a phone by which to call, we are not able to make

· No No doggie bags or take-away

o Finish your meal or insult the Chef (ask Jessie)

o Spent 30 minutes Googling for the allusive “take-away” phrase in French

· William Hung would agree the music here is terrible

o 90% of music in restaurants is comprised of English speaking American idol rejects

· Ceilings here were designed for sub 6’individuals

· Cheese really stinks up the fridge/apartment*

o Almost enough to make us never want to buy it again…. almost.

* Ineffably delicious cheese

Pros

· Like the TV series Cheers

o Restaurant owners greeting patrons with a kiss on each cheek,

lots of hand shakes

· 100+ bottles of wine at the supermarket, nearly everything under 6 Euro (a wino’s wet dream)

· 4 Course Lunches for 14 EUR

o Never a duplicate plat du jour

· Style – they have it (which we are borrowing…albeit not cheaply)

· Active Turbo Diesel Cars (currently averaging 50+mpg)

· Scenery

o I feel like I’m walking around in the video game Assasin’s Creed:

· The French aren’t arrogant, we can re-rename our fries!!

o Despite the stereotype, people here are very welcoming and patient as long as you make an effort

· The taste of non GMO, preservative free food from the local country side (will have to ponder salivating inducing analogies a bit longer)

· Driving is EFFICIENT

o No auto piloting here, unless you want to cut your trip/life short, roundabouts literally cut intersection waiting times by 75% which is a Godsend for type A's like myself

· The French diet

o Perhaps it’s the lack of preservatives, perhaps it’s the massive amounts of amphetamines and cigarettes the French consume, but they are onto something….

Driving to Loches (and we didn't even plan the music, but it turned out perfect):

Loire Valley

2011-09-18T11:17:00.000-07:00

The tourist literature proclaims this area of France to historically be the land of castles, feuding aristocracy, and fairytale romance. After spending a week in the tiny town of Saint-Aignan (which boasts its own decaying chateaux and imposing cathedral) and driving through the picturesque countryside dotted with aging but nonetheless impressive medieval architecture, I can attest to the accuracy of those flamboyantly-wordy brochures. It is easy to see why lords and kings built (and fought bitterly to retain) the many castles that today stand as tourist destinations in the heart of towns all over the agriculturally rich Loire Valley. The soil here is some of the most fertile in the country, famous for its sunflowers and vineyards, and the landscape has its fair share of lakes and forests (though today most of the forests in France have been cut down to make room for agriculture, with the exception of a number of protected forests in national parks). There’s nothing like driving into a little town and coming upon a massive chateaux rising far above the town rooftops to make one think of fairytales like Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty.

Saint-Aignan is a tiny town right on the Loire River that boasts some excellent restaurants and beautiful sights. We stayed in a tiny one room stone cottage on the edge of town. Our hosts were a particularly gracious elderly couple who invited us in for coffee when we arrived. As they spoke not a bit of English we communicated through an online translation website, which though a bit tedious worked well. The gentlemen was even nice enough to take us to the English speaking woman who works in the tourist center in town and afterwards drove us around pointing out the nearest markets, gas stations, etc. This made for an absurdly easier landing than in our first place and we settled in nicely, eating out at our first restaurant that evening, where we proceeded to order the three course menu of the day thinking “France has small portions”. Ha! Two courses in I was so horribly stuffed I sent back half my duck, the side salad, and the huge heap of fries that was my main course. The owner/server was visibly offended by the huge amount of food I left, even after my attempted explanation of “Pardon! Petit appetite!”

Despite such faux pas, we’ve begun to flow with the order of French life. We start our day around eight, grabbing pastries at one of the local bakeries (chocolate croissants being our favorite) and heading to a café for coffee and some games of Rummy. We then proceed to fill our hours with whatever sites the area has to offer or laze about at our cottage till either lunch or dinner when we proceed to eat AMAZINGLY DELICIOUS meals. I generally avoid all-caps, but in this case they are absolutely necessary in order to express the truly sublime experience that is eating in France. Half of the pictures we've taken are of Brian and I stuffing our faces because we want to remember how fabulous each meal is.

Now, I must admit to some sins here (since I’m not religious and thus have no confession booth, this blog will have to suffice). I, Jessie Huffaker, who was once a vegetarian and seriously considered living in a tree to protest our society's mistreatment of the natural world, have been engaging in some morally abhorrent activities (from a hippie standpoint anyhow). I’ve eaten foie gras (goose liver), veal (a baby cow), lapin (a poor little rabbit) and I even went to a zoo (which I had sworn I would never do again since I find it strange to cage up other animals and ogle at them). While I wish I could say I at least have the decency to be ashamed of myself, I’m afraid that I simply am not. Rabbit and foie gras by the way are delicious, while the veal wasn’t good enough in my opinion to justify eating it again. And the Beauval ZooParc, considered the best zoo in France according to our hosts, though really fun at first did leave me with the same feeling of perplexity at the bizarre behaviors of the human animal.

Yesterday we traveled an hour’s drive to our new location for this week, which is also in the Loire Valley (we didn’t realize how close our two places were, so it’s a good thing we love this area so much). Once we had packed up the car and began driving off we discovered that our GPS wouldn’t turn on and we nearly had heart attacks thinking about how we would survive without it. Fortunately, after a bit of battery charging it started working again and took us with no more problems to our next rental in the middle of miles of farmland and unmarked roads. We’ve settled in nicely here, already going out to eat at a delectable creperie in nearby Loches. We’re staying in the loft of a pretty gite located on a working farm. The owners are from England, so for the first time we’re dealing with English speakers and all the instructions for the gite are written in English, which is lovely after two weeks of thumbing constantly through the French-English dictionary and bumbling over a few terribly repetitive French phrases (Bonjour! Desole! Merci! S’il vous plait!).

Jusqu'à la prochaine fois!

Champagne Region: Germaine, Epernay, and Reims

2011-09-09T10:43:00.001-07:00

Well, this was our last day in Champagne country. I wish I could say we did a great deal of sightseeing, but we spent much of our time just trying to figure out where basic necessities are to be found (like supermarkets, clothing stores, atms, and a particularly epic quest to track down contact solution), how to get to these locations (with the help of a GPS that randomly and murderously tries to send us the wrong direction down one way streets and onto trolley tracks), and finally when these places are actually open. My knowledge of French has tripled, which means I now know about thirty phrases, including “Je ne comprends pas” (translation: I don't understand) and “Parlez-vous anglais?” (translation: Do you speak English?). Furthermore, the two least likely candidates to be consider potential morning people have been waking up at 5am every day, before the sun even rises here (curse you jetlag!).

Yesterday, Brian and I successfully infiltrated the notoriously haughty and chaotic streets of downtown Reims and bought some quality clothes, quite stylish if I do say so myself. I now finally have some warm attire for the cloudy, rainy weather we’ve had here in France thus far. Reims is truly a beautiful city, like every part of this region of France, with a huge central shopping district brimming with tourists, golden statues, fountains, little cafes and bakeries, and even a huge and gaudy carousal.

Earlier we explored Epernay, the nearest big town to our tiny Germaine, which is a perfect example of the architecture of this area, boasting beautiful cathedrals, narrow cobble stone streets, stone works from the 1500’s, and canals brimming with truly jade green water. We had hoped to grab lunch there, but upon arriving every restaurant was closed down, despite our earlier googling which had informed us lunch was generally from 11 to 1 in France. Instead we wandered about till our hunger pangs sent us back to the one place we knew to get food: the supermarket. So far we’ve basically subsisted off coffee and pastries for breakfast and cheese, cut meats, and bread for dinner, being too jet lagged and overwhelmed from our daily treks out into the wild French world to deal with getting dinner out.

As of tomorrow we head off to our second vacation rental, located in the Loire Valley, a four hour drive that takes us south west. Brian’s had plenty of practice these last few days driving with the heinously aggressive locals and so hopefully tomorrow’s drive will involve less cursing and stress then it did on our first drive from Paris to Germaine. At least this time we have tokens for the many toll booths… see how far we’ve come?!

Down the Rabbit Hole

2011-09-06T12:36:00.000-07:00

This last day and a half has reminded me that I am not a great traveler. Or at least I am not a graceful traveler, the sort who glides through airports, language barriers, and insane foreign roads and drivers with hardly a nerve tweaked. No, I am messy, nonsensical, and overly-emotional in stressful situations, which has made the last day and a half of travel a twisted and dark revision of poor Alice falling into a wonderland she’s really not quite prepared for.

When we finally landed in the rather dreary Charles de Gaulle airport at 6am, we were already vastly sleep deprived, malnourished from horrid airplane food, and longing to escape the crowds and herding quality of airports. We got to our brand new Puegout 207 with no real trouble, but oh how the madness began when we searched for a gas station. When we followed our GPS down a huge highway, through a labyrinth of tiny side streets full of aggressive French drivers and murderous roundabouts, through what was clearly the industrial part of Paris, to a tiny gas station, Brian’s debit and credit cards with two separate banks were both declined. My one debit card was our only lifeline to getting gas and making it to our first vacation rental two hours away in the Champagne region. When the card went through our relief was of an almost religious fervor and I exclaimed aloud for joy, to the annoyance of a long line of French natives waiting behind two bumbling Americans. Each time we had to use the card at the many tolls along our drive my nerves were at a breaking point imaging worst case scenarios of being stranded at a French toll booth till the end of time.

But despite the many stresses, poor decisions, and near misses we arrived here in the tiny town of Germaine. We spent the day napping off and on, trying to figure out how the little studio functions with instructions all in French. The $4 French-English dictionary Brian so scornfully dismissed has indeed come in handy! And when the owner of the rental property got home he kindly gave us the blessed gift of internet so Brian was able to contact his banks and we could use google translate to communicate to the jolly little Frenchman we’re renting from. Despite his perfect English in emails, he does not speak it much and we are utterly useless when it comes to French (he giggled right at us when I stuttered “we don’t speak French” as if to say good luck you hooligans).

This has been an authentic account of our first day in France, and while it wasn't the most cheerful, rest assured that we are well and excited to be here. Tomorrow we’ll be exploring some of the larger nearby towns (I need to buy some pants and shoes because apparently dreaming of warmth and sun does not make it so and today was CHILLY!). We’ll have pictures and happy stories to woo you back into reading again.

Love from Jessie and Brian!