Yes, I am a year behind on finishing this series. It is a disgrace. But, I persist. In case you have missed (or forgotten) the previous episodes, here are parts [1], [2], and [3].

So, at this point AC and I had been enjoying the laid-back small-town lifestyle in Saarloius (Germany) for about a week. As the length of our stay was indefinite, and the hotel appeared to be empty, we had no reservation and simply paid for the room each day. At least, that was the plan, until one morning the cheery clerk informed us that we would have to vacate the premises in two days, as the hotel was fully booked. So, we called around. The other hotels in Saarloius were about to be full as well. As were the hotels in metropolitan Saarbrucken, and basically everywhere else in Southwestern Germany. As far as I could tell, there was about to be a massive influx of Germans for some sort of “festival of fire”. And they wanted us out.

Frantic planning ensued. AC’s infirm relative (the reason for our trip) could not yet travel by air, so we were restricted to land routes. We had at least a week to wait. After some deliberation, nearby Paris was chosen as a desirable resting spot. The next morning, we woke early and hopped on the high-speed train, springing for the outlets and guaranteed seating available in “first class”.

Our arrival in Paris was…unfortunate. We arrived during rush hour, me lugging three sets of bags out of the station into the Parisian heat. The taxi driver watched me struggle, with a (possibly imagined) smirk. As we drove into the city, through the smog, I decided that Paris was overrated. It was smelly and dirty and filled with people. I hated it already.

The taxi dropped us off at the front gate of our hotel, in the Quartier Latin. The hotel was nice, and AC took me out to a pleasant little spot with cafes surrounding a park. French teenagers came and went on mopeds. The situation seemed altogether less dire. And then the bill came. 12 euros ($18) for a mojito. Also, none of the restaurants were open yet - they close between meals, and apparently “dinner” starts at 8 pm. So I dined on Paninis, purchased through a window (small windows in the sides of buildings seem to be a primary source of nourishment in mainland Europe. Basically a drive-thru for pedestrians). Then we strolled along the Champs-Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe. Five minutes after we arrived, Parisian police told us the monument was closing, and we would have to leave.

Paris and I, we just could figure out how to make it work.

On returning to the hotel, AC learned that Air Canada had arranged a special flight for her and her infirm relative. They would leave in the morning, flying back to Canada in First Class (!). I was being abandoned in Europe, and in vile Paris, no less! Naturally, my Air Transat return ticket was immutable. I had 3 days to kill before there was any point in returning to Frankfurt. Panic!

When morning came, AC took me for fresh pastry. We strolled through quiet streets, where the filth of the previous day was being hosed off as fresh bread was unloaded from trucks. In contrast to the previous day’s madness, it was quite pleasant. But soon she was off in her taxi, and I was left to my own devices. I grabbed a Panini, paid for a few hours of hotel internet, and considered my options.

Clearly I was not going to stay in Paris. AC had a brother in Spain, but travel time was too high. Friends in Berlin were busy. London, though - London was just across the channel, mere hours away. Hotels were expensive, but I managed to find a bed in what seemed to be a reputable hostel, and a return flight to Frankfurt on Ryanair could be had for a dollar! So, it was decided - London. I made my bookings and checked out of the hotel. I had an afternoon to waste before I boarded the Chunnel train, so I figured I would spend it walking around Paris, (briefly) seeing the sites. I would be a turbo-tourist, taking in what was on display in this foul city so I could say that I’d been there and seen that, and then get the hell out.

I wandered Paris for a day. In those few hours I stumbled across castles, cathedrals, and massive gardens at every turn. This journey is documented below. But most importantly, I discovered that Paris and I got along quite well, once we were over the initial awkwardness of introduction. In fact, by time I had to catch the Eurostar train to London, I was regretting my decision to leave (in part because the price of the train ticket and hostel would easily have paid for 2 more nights at my hotel in Paris). But, it was done. I was finished with the continent and off to England.

- - - - -

By now, some of you may have noticed that this travel log of mine uncharacteristically lacks photographic evidence. See, in my rush to leave Canada, I forgot to bring a camera. But it was during my walk around Paris that I remembered my mobile phone camera. Naturally, the pictures it takes are terrible - low resolution, poor color reproduction, and so on. But I’m going to subject them to you anyway, if you’re willing. Plus, the captions are entertaining. Click here to see the set on Flickr.

If you are new to Flickr, you want to click on the first small image on the right, and then use the small images (again on the right) to move forward. If you start a slideshow, make sure you turn on the captions, or you’ll miss the colour commentary (click on ‘options’ in the bottom right).

In June of 2007, I took an impromptu trip to Germany, which led to a wacky European adventure. This is my story…

When we left off last time, I had just arrived in Saarloius, a tiny town near the border between Germany and France. AC and I stayed in a quaint little hotel called the RATSKELLAR. Sounds cozy, no? Actually the RATSKELLAR was pretty nice, it had a little patio which overlooked the town square (yes, a town square!). Unfortunately, the town square had been completely torn up for renovations, and construction started at 7 in the morning. That meant I was always up in time for the complimentary RATSKELLAR breakfast, also known as Frühstück. Unlike those lame North-American “continental” breakfasts (ie muffin and OJ), this was a hearty German breakfast, with a wide assortment of breakfast meats. Actually I was a bit taken aback by the meat selection - generally I consider bacon and sausages to be the only permissible breakfast meats. But this is not the German way. They did have toast, though, so I managed to keep from starving.

After breakfast I usually hid in the hotel room, fighting off jet lag and avoiding the Saarlanders, who generally didn’t speak a word of English. Also, as a very small town in rural Germany, there wasn’t exactly a lot to see in Saarloius (like I said, the town square was being renovated). I did venture out a few times, to restock the tiny fridge in our room. These grocery missions inevitably ended with me staring blankly at the cashier and holding out money in response to whatever German-questions she asked. Since Saarloius is kind of off the beaten track, the cashiers didn’t seem to have a lot of experience identifying non-German-speaking tourists based on the tried-and-true “please just take the correct amount of money from my hand” gesture. Instead, there would be an initial period of awkwardness, where it was clear that the cashier was trying to decide if I was retarded or just messing with her. I assume she eventually went with “retarded”, because she always seemed to give back the right amount of change.

Perhaps you can now imagine why I avoided leaving our room in the RATSKELLAR.

Other than a minor traffic mishap, in which I was nearly run down by a car driving backwards as fast as many drive forwards, my time in Saarloius was uneventful. AC and I had a nice dinner at an outdoor restaurant, with a waiter who spoke English because he had recently abandoned a failed acting career in Los Angeles. This was nice for AC because he understood the concept of a “vegetarian” dinner. At one point, I also ventured into a coffee shop to get a latte, which I prompty spilled all over the counter. The barrista said something gruff-sounding in German which I took to mean “don’t worry about it, dear customer, I will deal with your mess”, so I made a rapid escape.

Tune in next week, when we get kicked out of our hotel and then flee across the border to France.

As I explained in Part 1, in June of 2007 I took an impromptu trip to Germany, to save AC from boredom in a small town called Saarloius. Last time, I was just getting ready to fly from Toronto to Frankfurt in Germany. Despite the last-minute Air Transat booking, I managed to score an aisle seat, so I wasn’t quite as cramped as the poor suckers in the middle (Air Transat really packs ‘em in). After a several hour delay, we managed to take off, and eventually land without incident. The next step was to get on a train…

AC’s train trip was more exciting than mine, because when she flew to Germany she had no idea how to get from the airport to Saarloius. Actually she didn’t even know she was going to Saarloius. She barely had time to pack before we taxi’d out to the airport and put her on a plane. When she landed, she texted me: “now what?“. Over text message, I gave her directions and told her what to buy. Every half hour or so I would get a text from her that said something like: “In Mannheim - what next?“. And, half-way through the trip I found out that her destination had suddenly changed, so I had to re-direct her. Planning her route by text message, half-way around the world, was pretty exciting - it felt like something out of an action movie. Of course, when she finally got to Saarloius, she just went to her hotel, instead of breaking into an embassy or something like that…

Since I had my itinerary all planned out, my train ride was far more prosaic. There were a few times where I would get out at my stop and discover that I was standing on what seemed like an abandoned platform in the middle of nowhere. But, inevitably another train would show up, right on time.

So, after something like 14 hours of travel, I finally made it to Saarloius, and met my Skype nemesis - the angry old man who ran the hotel front desk at night and spoke not a word of English. At first he seemed a bit icy - I’m not sure he realized I was AC’s husband, and not just some tourist she had found at a bar, and was clearly irritated when I hung out in the lobby trying to use the wireless internet. But, eventually we bonded when I worked up the nerve to ask him how to make outgoing calls. After some initial confusion, he grabbed my hand and pointed it at the phone, shouting “NULL” (which he pronounced “knool“). I realized that he meant I needed to dial 0 before making outgoing calls, but he wasn’t sure I got it, so he shouted “knool” at me a few more times, with increasing volume, until he decided he had said it loud enough that I understood. After this incident, he was as friendly as any other angry old German man (at least, I think he was friendly….).

Next up: sausage.

I have been meaning to write about this for the last 6 months. I finally got around to it.

As you may or may not know, in June I took a trip to Europe. An unplanned trip to Europe. For reasons I will avoid discussing over the internets, AC was spending the month in the south-west corner of Germany, in a town called Saarloius. A month in Germany might sound exciting, but Saarloius is very small and very German, and AC doesn’t speak German, so she was kind of bored. Naturally, I had to come to her rescue. In an airplane.

Does this sound like madness to you? Well, it kind of was. But we had been talking about taking a real vacation for a while, and here was our chance. Plus, I got to walk into a travel agent and answer the question “When would you like to leave for Germany?” with “How about tonight?“. Downside: flying “tonight” is expensive. Actually I didn’t get to fly “tonight”. I got to fly “in 3 days, when the next Air Transat plane leaves for Frankfurt”, because Air Transat charges half of what Air Canada does when you want to book a trip to Europe only 3 days in advance. In retrospect, I should have paid for the Air Canada flight…

I spent the next 3 days alternating between packing, organizing things for when I was gone, and blind panic. Oh, and trying to call AC’s hotel with skype. This was harder than it sounds, because I was calling at roughly 3AM in German time, and the overnight attendant at the hotel front desk was a grumpy old man who didn’t speak a word of English. Initially I tried to formulate sentences with Google Translator, like “room 9 please”, but I’m sure I butchered the pronunciation and the grumpy old man was completely disinterested in trying to decipher my broken dialog. Our conversations would go like this:

<rms> Hello! raum 9 bitte!
<grumpyoldman> !?!!!?!?! (angry-sounding german words here)
<rms> …..um…..raum 9 bitte? (pronounced slightly differently, with less certainty…)
<grumpyoldman> !?!!!?!?! (more angry words)
<rms> ….ok….I’ll call back…

I quickly abandoned my valiant attempts at cultural exchange and had a German friend call, who learned that (1) the grumpy old man was on his cell phone and I should just call back later, and (2) he would prefer if I just called the room directly and left him alone. I could never get that to work, so we eventually established a system where I would call and shout “Carpendale, bitte” (shouting because the skype connection was abysmal), and he would shout back “Carpendale, ja, ja” and connect me.

I started to realize that communication might be an issue on this trip. See, I’ve been to Europe a few times, but only to England and Ireland, where I speak the native tongue (well, sort of). But I quickly discovered that in Germany, most people only speak German! Troubling. So, I spent a while on iTunes, filling AC’s iPod up with “how to speak German” podcasts. I had a brilliant plan to listen to these on the plane, and do the accompanying worksheets. Seriously. I think I managed to listen to the first 2 or 3 before I realized that, like with the French, there was no way I was going to teach myself anything beyond “please” and “thanks”. The backs of the worksheets were good for doodling on, though.

Anyway, now that I had a plane ticket, German podcasts, and a growing realization of the madness of the whole plan, I was ready to go to Germany…