The Trip to Paris – Part 3 (final!)

In case you haven’t read part 1 or part 2, go do that, and then come back here for the exciting conclusion!

back to the story. so last time I stopped at the point where we decided that instead of driving to the airport, we would drive a mere 130 km to Rouen and hopefully find a hotel there that was open. oops. heres a visual to just show you how dumb this actually was.

Here’s Moulin Rogue area to Rouen (approx. distance. it was more like 130. you can see the windy road up to Rouen)

Here’s Moulin Rogue area to the hotel where we ended up staying.

anyway, we’re now outside of the city, driving towards Rouen. First thing I notice is that the highways are much darker at night in France, they aren’t nearly as well lit as they are here. Next thing is that there are toll booths every few kms which charge anything from 3 to 10 euros. great…

we start thinking that maybe we’ll find something closer and that we won’t have to drive all the way to Rouen. it’s now late, around 11:30 or so, and we’re nearing a place named Poissy. Its about 30 kms away from Paris. we figure it’s close enough and that it’ll probably have a hotel open that we could stay at. At least till the next day. We drive into a small town called St. Germain, and follow a sign which points to a “Hotel”. We get there, it turns out to be a theater. this kinda sucks, but we figure we’ll just try the next town over. after a few illegal u-turns and other fun, we get back onto the A4 and keep driving. Soon enough we get off the A4 and drive into Poissy. Poissy is asleep. the whole town is literally dead. it’s silent, nothing is happening, there’s one car somewhere off in the distance, but that’s about it. We drive through this old town, and see nothing, drive around it once more, and decide that we’ll head back to the A4 towards Rouen. That seems pretty easy. so we’re driving back in the general direction where we came from. Our headlights light up the blue sign up ahead. Its a sign that points to an exit onto the A4 alright…but it says “A4 (Paris)” Logic tells us that there must be another exit that says “A4 (Rouen)”, so we start looking for that. We pull up to this sign and look at the little map thats on it, and figure that we just have to go back and make a left somewhere and we’ll be on our way. We do that, and we end up lost, no Rouen exit to be found, so we turn back and go back to the sign. At this point

The Trip to Paris – Part 2

Starting off where we ended last time, we had just decided on a hotel, a random pick in our Lonely Planet Guide that sounded about right and was decently priced. we look at the map, seems easy enough, its right up the street, around the corner, and we’re hoping that parking won’t be a problem. Big Mistake.

We start driving from the Bastille area up towards Montmartre. We end up around Quartier Pigalle which is where the Moulin Rouge is (among other landmarks). According to the map we are in the general area of where our chosen hotel is. its a few blocks down and up. seems easy enough. We keep driving, turn, and soon realize that there are a lot of one way streets in Paris (many that don’t really apply, at least according to parisienne drivers who go the wrong way on one way streets if they feel like it.) In Canada we figure that we’ll just go around the block to get to the street we want to be on. Not in Paris. The major problem with us figuring out where we were on the map was the location of street signs in Paris. The names of streets are on the sides of buildings on that street. I had to get out of the car to check what street we were one, especially once it got dark, because you can’t tell what the street name is. We ended up by the Montmartre Cemetary. We look at the map….hmm, looks like we have to go around the cemetary. We go around it and end up on some side street that wasn’t really visible on the map.

We eventually ended up going down some little parisienne street and came to a stop when we were stuck behind about two cars and a few cop cars and i think a fire truck were up ahead blocking the way. the guy driving behind us got out of his car to go and find out what was going on and how long it would take for them to clear the street. We saw him coming back and Billy waved him down and asked him what was going on. he told us, from what we understood from his limited very basic english, that someone had been killed at the club that we were near. We figured we’d take the opportunity to get him to help us out with finding our hotel. He told us to follow him, and with that, Billy threw the car in reverse (there was no room to manouver) and we went up this street (uphill) backwards, going the wrong direction. THAT’S Paris driving right there. We followed him, and eventually ended up taking our own way.

We were lost again, but really close. We finally decided

The Trip to Paris – Part 1

I had already been in Germany for a week visiting people close to us when Billy came. We picked Billy up at Frankfurt International on the 14th of May. We had decided that we would stay around the Bad Nauheim area for a few days to give Billy some time to sleep the jet lag off. We figured 3 days would be enough and that we would leave on the 17th.

We talked to one of our hosts (as we will call them) Roman, and he decided that, being the nice guy that he is, he would find us a good cheap deal for a rental car. He found us a deal on a little Opel Corsa, a new black one. We would be getting the car from Avis and would have to pick it up at Hauptbahnhof in Frankfurt. They said it would be ready around 11:30 am, and we wanted to leave Frankfurt as soon as possible to get to Paris before it got dark.

We spent the few days with Grazyna (our other host, who is a really good friend of my family), she showed us Bad Nauheim and the area, we met a young guy named Tomek (the son of some of their friends) who took us on a little trip to castle called Schloß Braunfels and showed us some other interesting things in the area. We also went go-karting, which was a blast.

Anyway, since the car was going to be ready around 11:30 (or 12:30 i’m not sure), we got up at around 8:30 or so, already packed and ready to go. We were worried about not having air conditioning (Klima in german) in our little car, as our booking papers said the car had no AC. It turns out that all cars have AC despite what it may say.

The germans have it figured out when it comes to public transportation. we had to take a bus from where we were staying to the train station in Bad Nauheim, and then take the train to Frankfurt. This is maybe a 15 minute train ride. You get on the bus, tell the driver that you want to go to Frankfurt, and you get a ticket that is valid for both your bus ride and your train trip. awesome.

We get to the station, and get on the train. According to

Random Thoughts about Berlin

I have to admit, even before I went and saw the city of Berlin, I was already totally fascinated by everything it had to offer. from gritty side streets in the eastern part of the city to modern glass and steel architecture in the newly redeveloped and modernized west, I wanted to see it all.

I’ve noticed this before, and I bet you’ve experienced this as well, but when you haven’t seen a place in real life, you have absolutely no idea of proportion or distance of things you see on photos. When you finally see all these places you’ve seen on photos before, you usually realize that your mind tends to make things larger, and further away (although this doesn’t really apply if we’re talking about going from Friedrichshain/Alexanderplatz to the Olympiastadion in Berlin….it’s still very far.)

Potsdamer Platz (part of it seen on the photo above) is right in between former West Berlin’s central area of Kurfürstendamm and former East Berlin’s Alexanderplatz. When the wall was up, Potsdamer Platz was a minefield right in between West and East Berlin.

Berlin – “The donut shop”

Berlin is one of my favorite cities. It’s rich in history and culture, and is the home of Einstürzende Neubauten. We spent a week in Berlin, living in a nice hotel in former East Berlin in the neighborhood of Friedrichshain (to be specific by Samariterstraße, or at least that was our U-Bahn stop), north of Kreuzberg (yes, that Kreuzberg, of SO36 (de) and May 1st Riots…)

On trips like these, you get to see a lot of funny and strange characters, and realize how much variety there is among people and society, especially if you see this in a foreign country. I have many stories from Berlin that I hope to write up and post, but since I already have this one written up as well, I might as well post it.

Alexanderplatz, East Berlin. we’re walking, its night, probably around 9, 10 pm, and

Paris #1 – the airport walk

I figure a good way to start off a blog that has to do with my travels, is to post one of the many crazy adventures I experienced in Europe, and in this case, specifically Paris.

This happened on the 20th of May, a few days after we had arrived in Paris (and figured out the metro and how to get back to our hotel with the shuttle bus.) The thing with the bus is that it only picked people up for so long…

Here’s the story the way I originally wrote it down in October of 2006.

a little about me

i’m starting this blog mainly to write about my trip to europe last year, which was probably the most exciting trip i’ve ever taken, as well as the greatest learning experience i’ve ever had. I’ll also occasionally ramble and write about things going on, or the film i saw last night or what I’m listening to and why.

but perhaps I should introduce myself first to those that may care (probably a very small population, but in spite of that i’ll write a bit) I’m Mike, i’m a university student at the U of C, majoring in German (more on my love of German in the future). I plan on going to law school eventually…..

Curious what else I do? keep reading!