Sam's Eurotrip

Not only is the Eurotrip over but I'm already feeling like I'm starting to get settled into the Raleigh life once again. It's hot today, however, with a good dose of that North Carolina summertime humidity - a far cry different than the weather across the pond, and just another thing with which to re-familiarize myself. I've already gone to Target, had some sweet tea, enjoyed some pepper jack cheese, and just mellowed out while driving and listening to music, all things I missed whether I knew it or not.

My trip means a lot to me for a variety of reasons. I feel so humbled to have encountered a handful of cultures that are so rich and steeped in tradition stretching back over the centuries. It is really awe inspiring to think that these nations have existed in some form or another for so much longer than the United States, which is comparatively so much younger a country. I found myself wondering if this is any explanation for why things like public transportation, health care, etc. are more "advanced," but also couldn't help but think about the cultural quirks like the Spanish siesta that seem to prohibit progress at times. All things considered, the quasi-immersion I experienced in 5-6 different cultures (the sixth being that of Italy, but I just wasn't there that long to feel a huge impact) is something that I will not soon forget, especially because it makes me appreciate things of our American culture that I might have otherwise not given the time of day.

I thoroughly enjoyed my first experience in a Spanish-speaking country, fumbling around at first, though finally coming to some point of being conversational by San Sebastian. It was frustrating to listen and comprehend conversations that were not based on literature, history, or any other subject normally covered in a Spanish language class, being that such an atmosphere of conversation was all the experience I'd gained prior to the trip. I spent a lot of time asking how to say certain things, realizing that my vocabulary for common, everyday things isn't exactly comprehensive just yet, though learning new words along the way. I found myself thinking in the language more as my time in Spain went on, but I know that I have to keep practicing in order not to lose the progress that may have been made!

The trip made me feel, I think, more independent and confident in myself in terms of managing a relatively-tight day-to-day budget, travel itineraries, and simply my own attitude. I got markedly better over the course of the journey at realizing my own foul moods whenever they might arise and correcting them. I feel a sense of empowerment as well as related to my upcoming move out west - the 6 weeks abroad seems to have become some sort of litmus test for my ability to stay safe and get everything done that I want to, and I think I did much more than pass. If anything, the trip made me much better at planning out meals and doing my best to conserve food (and therefore money!) and water while still taking care of my body!

I'm glad to be home. The six weeks amounted to the perfect length of time for traveling, at least for this starter course in backpacking through Europe. There are so many places that I would love to visit again - Prague, Barcelona, Granada & Sevilla in any season but summer, Lisbon, San Sebastian - and so many places I'm still longing to visit. Needless to say, I know I'll go back before too many years pass. I'm hoping to be able to use my experience to talk my parents into braving the 9-hour flight over and indulging in some European culture before too long; Dad, you would love Germany for its beer, food, rich culture, and precision in everything, and Mom, you would love the wine, food (tapas!), and beautiful scenery of Spain. I owe the two of you a bazillion thanks for helping to make this trip possible, for supporting me, and even for worrying about me until I touched down at RDU last Wednesday. I really do hope that someday soon you can see some of the amazing things I had a chance to see!

For now I'll bid my readers "cheers" one last time, though if I ever have poignant memories that need to be documented I may be back. Also, if I find a way to share more of my photos (there are thousands, of course) I'll be sure to put a link up here.

Thanks for reading, for following along, and for (I hope) traveling with me for the last six weeks. It was an unforgettable journey!

Cheers,
Sam

[Postscript: Wolfpack Shout-Outs, Part II - We ran into a middle-aged Raleigh couple while walking along the Seine on the last night in Paris. We'd walked past them without much ado but quickly heard a loud "Go Wolfpack!" from behind us. Turns out they, Larry and Pam, were big State fans, and their 19-year-old son was competing for the US National team at a motocross event in Belgium. They had been enjoying a weekend in Paris while abroad watching him compete. We chatted for a few minutes before going our separate ways and, while we kept walking toward the Eiffel Tower, we heard Larry exclaim quite jovially, "that's good stuff!"]

Farthest North: Dresden, Germany (51.051N, 13.738E)
Farthest East: Prague, Czech Republic (50.083N, 14.417E)
Farthest South: Tarifa, Spain (35.006N, 5.609W)
Farthest West: Cabo da Roca, Portugal (38.780N, 9.500W)

Warmest Place: Seville, Spain (45C)
Coolest Place: Prague & Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic (10C)

Largest City: Madrid, Spain (2,905,100)
Smallest City: Bad Schandau, Germany (2,999)

Longest Train: Paris to Strasbourg, 22 cars (TGV)
Shortest Trains: Cesky Budejovice to Cesky Krumlov, 2 cars; Strasbourg to Offenburg, 2 cars

5,000+ photos
42 days traveling
40 intercity train rides
35 blog posts
23 intercity bus rides
16 different accomodations (hostels, hotels, apartments, friends)
12 border crossings
10 days' worth of clothes
9 languages
8 countries
4 capital cities
4 overnight trains
3 fireworks shows
2 currencies
2 books
1 overnight bus
...
1 unforgettable trip

300+ km/h on the TGV to Paris - enjoy!

Before I get too far into this I should make a disclaimer and let it be known that I'm actually back home in the States already - hooray! We got into Raleigh last night around 10:30PM EDT, but I still want to do this thing some justice and have a complete record of the trip - I'll go back quickly to Monday night in Paris and work up to arriving back in the States.

Sunday evening in Paris was one of my favorite nights of the whole European experience. We packed a little bit of food and headed for the city a couple of hours before sunset, taking the train into La Defense which is the “downtown” of Paris. Lots of major corporations are headquartered there, as well as many government bureaus, and, of course, the famous Grande Arche. It was fascinating to walk around the area, being that it was probably the first strictly big-city atmosphere that had been experienced on the whole trip! We hopped the Metro down to the Champs Elysees and the Arc de Triomphe, walking down the grand boulevard before crossing the Seine at the beautiful Pont Alexandre III. Walking along the Seine we had a great view of the Eiffel Tower as the sun set off to our right and some ominous looking clouds started to roll in. Though the rain held off until we made it back to Versailles much later in the night, the clouds were pretty epic as the sun went down and dusk eventually turned to dark.

Grabbing a small bit of real estate on the lawn under the Eiffel Tower and just sitting and watching the day turn to night behind the huge steel structure was one of the most enjoyable experiences of my trip. The tower looked incredible in the light of Magic Hour, twinkling with bright flashes of light at the top of every hour. Just after 11PM it was time to get moving – the dark clouds had brought with them some wind and chilly temperatures, but of more importance was making sure that we could catch the last train of the night out to Versailles. I got to have my crepe under the Eiffel Tower just like back in 2003 before heading to the Metro to go catch the train. It was a perfect summer night in the City of Lights, one that I'll not soon forget. Unfortunately it did start to rain once we made it to Versailles and we had to walk through it for a bit to get back to the apartment, but being that it was the first rain we'd had in over 3 weeks we weren't complaining too terribly much!

Tuesday morning was an early start, filled with packing and preparing to make the journey from Paris to Frankfurt. We left Lucille's and Romu's keys with Romu's sister around 7AM and caught the train into Paris, then took the Metro to Gare de L'Est, the train station from which our ride to Frankfurt was due to leave. Unfortunately, though, there were no reservations left available on the direct TGV leaving around 9AM and we ended up having to sit around and wait for a more indirect route – through Strausbourg and Offenburg before heading up to Frankfurt. The wait wasn't too painful, and before too long we were whipping across the French countryside at over 300km/h again – incredible! I have to say that the French, German, and Austrian trains really impressed me, and that I could totally get used to having such great long-distance transportation available here in the States – hopefully someday soon! Just so you know, the TGV holds the world speed record for trains, an astonishing 574.8km/h set in 2007 – over 355 miles per hour! There are YouTube videos of the record run if you're interested!

We arrived in Frankfurt shortly after 5PM and decided to change trains and head to Koblenz in order to check out part of the Rhine Valley, arguably the prettiest part of Germany. The Rhine snakes up to the north and west of Frankfurt toward Cologne, cutting a deep channel into the hills which are lined with vineyards and spotted with dozens of old castles. It was the most beautiful hour and a half train ride (each way) of my trip and I'm really glad we decided to do that instead of hanging in Frankfurt. We made it to our hotel that night, out near the Frankfurt Airport, in order to be close by (and to use a free airport shuttle!) for the flight home on Wednesday. It really set in that evening that the trip was coming to a close, though after being home for nearly 24 hours I can honestly say that it still feels a bit surreal!

The flight home was not much to write home about, save for some surprisingly good airplane food – cheese tortellini for lunch with some Laughing Cow cheese (so delicious) to put on bread. Coming through Customs and security in Chicago was a bit unnerving, but without much ado I made it back to Raleigh around 10:30PM on Wednesday the 8^th! It's felt really good to be home, though of course I'll be missing so many of the things that made my trip truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

My first ride on a TGV train was AWESOME. After taking it slow getting from Hendaye to Bayonne, Bordeaux, and Poitiers things really opened up as we shot straight up to Paris… the trip is about 800km overall and took less than 6 hours to accomplish, partly because for stretches between Poitiers and Tours and then from Tours to Paris we were doing 300km/h – more than 180mph – crazy! The countryside quite literally flew by and we made it to Paris quite comfortably, changing trains and heading to Chartres on a local line in order to check out the cathedral there. It’s just about as famous as Notre Dame in Paris as it was begun in the late 1100s, though I found it odd that it had two completely different spires, seeming to come from two different eras – one from the 1100s and one from the early 1500s! The cathedral’s interior wasn’t much to write home about, especially because much of the nave was being renovated, but the view from the top of the northern tower was pretty awesome (and well worth the 300-step climb). We caught a train pretty quickly to head back toward Paris (about 45 minutes away) because there wasn’t a single place in Chartres to store our packs and we didn’t feel like doing a whole lot of exploring while lugging them around.

Arriving in Versailles’ train station around 7:30pm we were picked up by Romuald, Rob’s friend Lucille’s husband, the two of which so graciously allowed us to use their apartment outside Paris for our time here! Romu has spent time living in the States as well as in Spain, and as such knows both Spanish and English (not quite as well as Spanish), and of course French, while Lucille speaks French and works as a Spanish teacher in a public school. We all went out to dinner at a little Italian place in Versailles, which has turned out to be quite a nice little suburb of Paris – it has all the amenities of a bigger city, is close to Paris, but is small enough to retain a lot of charm and not be too busy. Getting back to their apartment we visited for a while before saying goodbyes rather quickly after arriving, as Romu and Lucille had to get up early the next day (Friday the 3^rd) to head to the south of France for a wedding / two-week vacation in Toulouse.

Friday was spent recharging a bit in Versailles, doing a little laundry during the afternoon before checking out the gardens of the oh-so-famous Versailles Palace, which was built mostly for the use of Louis the 14^th. The grounds are HUGE, covered in lavish gardens with fountains and sculptures, plus grand canal that is nearly 6km around. It was awesome to walk around but none of the fountains were on – common in the summer, apparently, to save water. However, the 800-hectare (nearly 2000 acres) gardens are open to the public for free, so the people of Versailles go there to ride their bikes, run, or just relax – how cool! That was about all I did on Friday, kind of low-key, but it was worth it to rest up for romping around Paris on Saturday the 4^th.

Independence Day was spent mostly in downtown Paris, checking out the Luxembourg Gardens, the Pantheon (the French version), Notre Dame, the exterior of the Louvre, and the Opera. I got to see most of those places on my 10-day romp through Europe back in 2003, so it was cool to be back and reminisce some about that trip while exploring some new places this time around. That night we headed back to Versailles in order to catch Les Grandes Eaux Nocturnes, or the Great Nighttime Fountains display. On Saturday evenings during the summertime the fountains are all turned on and the gardens are all filled with varied colorful lights, laser shows, bubble machines, and classical music to which a huge line of flamethrowers on the great lawn is synchronized. The night concluded with a great fireworks show also synchronized to music – not quite the same as American fireworks for the 4^th (I missed hearing the 1812 Overture) but quite a nice night out in celebration of the US, even if it was only in our heads!

Sunday was again free museum day, and we headed into the city to check out the Musee d’Orsay, which is housed inside an old train terminal right on the left bank of the Seine. The collection was really cool but we soon found ourselves to not be in the museum-hopping mood anymore (mostly because of the intense crowds – hey, who doesn’t love free admission to a great museum?) and decided to walk around the Latin quarter some before heading across town to Montmartre. Montmartre is a neighborhood in the 18^th borough of Paris that has the best view of the city, as it is perched atop a hill at whose apex sits the Basilica du Sacre Coeur, almost as big of a Paris icon as the Eiffel tower and the Arc du Triumph. After walking around the streets for a while, enjoying different street acts and some people-watching (there were some strange characters!) we headed back down into the city to catch the train back out to Versailles.

It feels good to be finally caught up to the present! Today has been spent going to the supermarket one last time, making plans for our departure from Paris tomorrow, and cleaning up the apartment for a bit. We’ll be heading out for Germany in the morning on a 9:09 train to Frankfurt (another TGV, I’m excited!), but before then we’re going to head into Paris tonight to check out La Defense (the “downtown” of Paris), the Champs Elysees, the Arc du Triumph, and the Eiffel Tower. I’m also excited to get a CREPE with Nutella under the Eiffel Tower just like I did back in ’03 with the Rothenberg trip! That’ll wrap up my time in Paris, and then it’ll be on to Germany tomorrow, like I said, to get closer to Frankfurt in order to fly home in less than 48 hours!

I’ll be back with a trip wrap-up in a day or so; enjoy the tons of updates from today – sorry to be overwhelming – and the forthcoming photos in the meantime.

Cheers!

Sam