Europe, Post 13: Un jour en France!

Bonjour! Okay, I've been slack at getting the final installment of our Europe trip up on the blog, but it's high time to do so as tomorrow we'll be back in Europe – and I'll never get it done if I have all the excitement of a new trip to write about as well! So here it is...

When we found the little village in the north of France where we would be staying on Monday night (my birthday), we decided we should get some cash and fuel before checking in at our B&B. I can't remember the name of the village, but it was 15 minutes from Saint-Omer. Anyhow, after driving around the deserted-looking village for some time with our fuel warning light glaring at us, we eventually came to the realisation that both cash and fuel may need to be sought further afield. This was confirmed by Ben's attempts to ask the only shopkeeper in the town whether there was a “cash automatique” around (thanks Lonely Planet phrasebook): “non”.

After almost an hour and a couple of unsuccessful attempts on Tommy's part (he's the GPS) to lead us to a service station, we eventually got everything sorted out and headed back to our B&B. Well, it was lovely! The room was spacious, charmingly decorated and gorgeously “French”, and the middle-aged couple whose house it was were very friendly and helpful. They had three guest rooms but we were their only guests that night. Along with the B&B we stayed at in Brussels for two nights (with the cats, kids and WiFi), it was our favourite accommodation on the trip.





Following the recommendation of our hosts when we asked where we should go for my birthday dinner, that night we dined in Saint-Omer. On the way, Tommy inexplicably took us down such a tiny dirt road through the fields that we were convinced it was someone's private farm track!! Anyway, we found a lovely restaurant called La Belle Epoque, decided against the snails and frogs legs on the menu as I didn't want unpleasant birthday memories, and ordered an entree of deep fried cheese and mains of duck in honey almond sauce (mine) and rabbit in prune sauce (Ben's). Ben's was passable and mine was scrumptious! :)

The waiter/chef (owner?) was very friendly and told us he had lived in England for a while. When Ben went to pay, he told the man that it was my birthday, so he came over, wished me a happy birthday, and presented me with a pen that had the restaurant's details printed on it (“this is all I have to give you” he said) – very sweet! (It was actually the pen I used for the second half of my exam on Tuesday, after the button from the top of my first pen sprang off and hit the wall.)

The next morning, a previously unheard-of thing happened. For the entire length of breakfast, both of our hosts sat at the table with us in their dining room, and chatted with us as if we were their personal (rather than paying) guests! They told us about their three grown up children's studies, jobs and travels, and we talked about everything from Australia and our travels, to their past jobs and B&B start-up, to what sights we should see in their area that day! It was amazing – such a nice feeling and also a little unnerving to have them watching us eat their breakfast (a bit like it would feel to have the chef sitting at your table in a restaurant, I suppose)! Between them and the waiter, I must say that the French were excellently represented and we saw nothing to indicate the necessity of a “be nice to tourists day” (although, granted, that measure was introduced for Parisians, not French people in general)!

After we checked out, we headed to La Coupole. This description is from the La Coupole website: “Situated in the Pas-de-Calais, 5 km from the town of Saint-Omer, LA COUPOLE is a gigantic underground bunker designed by the Nazis, in 1943-1944, to store, prepare and launch the V2 rockets (first missiles to reach the stratosphere), the secret weapon that Hitler was counting on to destroy London and reverse the course of the war. Rehabilitated as a History and Remembrance Centre, LA COUPOLE reveals, in an impressive setting, the challenges of total war and the stages in the conquest of space, which paradoxically resulted from the V2 technology. ”









Anyway, we had intended to fit a few things in that day, but La Coupole ended up being so extensive and interesting that we stayed for 6 hours! We got to walk all through the bunker and its huge tunnels, surrounded by 5m-thick concrete walls and water dripping from damp bits around us. We had headphones with audio commentary and there were large-screen videos throughout the different sections. There were displays on fighter pilots and planes (biographies, items recovered from crashes etc), models and information on the construction of the bunker and V1s and V2s, and a section on space travel (I think that was the first time I'd ever watched Neil Armstrong's moon landing!).









There was also a lot about the history of WWII and the concentration camps. I found it quite emotionally draining to see so many graphic photos, videos and descriptions of the unbelievably horrific conditions in the concentration camps, but it was good to somewhat increase my limited knowledge of history. By the time we left we still hadn't seen everything, but it was time to find somewhere to eat an early dinner before heading back to England on the train.

After a bit of driving and wandering around the town of Calais, we decided on a sports-themed restaurant called “The Hovercraft”, so called because hovercraft used to be one of the ways to travel between France and England! I had spaghetti bolognese. Ben, to be adventurous and try a new meat for the second night in a row, ordered mussels. An enormous pot of them arrived and while they didn't taste too bad, I found it best not to look at them too closely!! They were also quite fiddly and time-consuming to get out of their shells, so mussels have gone into the “good to try once but we won't be having them often” category!

Not too much later, we boarded our train (much quicker than on the English side), travelled back to England while sitting in our car under the ocean floor, popped up in Folkestone, and drove home! The next morning we were back at work with the strange thought that we'd had tea in France the night before. And that was our trip to Europe! :D

Off to London again

Today I went to London for my exam, and I am pleased to announce that this time there were no huge fires! (Although there was one only three days ago - Camden Market was ablaze on Saturday night. Click here for BBC photos and here for the blog entry of our visit there in August.)

Like last time, my exam (which was for my Corporations Law subject) was held at the University of East London. I was quite happy with how it went considering how last-minute the majority of my studying was!!! :S Thankfully it was an open book exam, so if I didn't know the answer I simply looked it up - it's quite a strange feeling to be able to do that in an exam!

Afterwards, I hopped off the tube at Canary Wharf for a bit of exploring. I didn't know what was there but could vaguely recall reading something about a nice shopping area.

Anyway, as soon as I stepped out of the tube station I was surrounded by enormous skyscrapers in what was obviously a high-flying financial district. There were giant towers containing acres of reflective glass with identifying logos right at the top - HSBC, Bank of America, Barclays, Reuters etc - and lots of professional-looking people striding around in dark suits. I also found Canada Square, which had an ice skating rink in the centre.

I didn't do much at Canary Wharf, just bought a book and had some lunch before continuing on home, but here are a few photos that show a different side of London to what has previously been focused on in this blog - i.e. modern, expensive and impressive instead of old, expensive and impressive! Note the window cleaners at work - AURGGHHH!!!

Unusual uses for a frozen chicken and more...

On Saturday we had Trev, Sharon, Matt and Kat over for dinner - Sharon cooked a delicious meal and Ben made a yummy strawberry and apple pie for dessert.



Then we tried out Chain Reaction, the new game we bought from Hamley's last weekend with Matt and Kat's Christmas gift voucher...

In a nutshell, players are divided into teams and given a challenge card (see some of our favourites below), which the team members take it in turns to answer as many times as possible in 30 seconds. Each answer must be different from previous answers and correctly meet the challenge before the next player in the team can take their turn (the girls' team managed to achieve 20 answers in 30 seconds during one round!).



The things that emerge under the pressures of time and teammates are hilarious - for instance, that a frozen chicken could be a unit of measurement, cream-filled chocolate eggs can be eaten while sky diving, "have both" is valid agony aunt advice, and "neigh, I'm a dog and I eat grass"!!!



Some of the challenges require actions rather than words... check out the girls' team's discussion of the challenge in the last photo above (warning: this video contains high pitched voices)...

...And then our actual timed attempt at it (warning: so does this one)!!!

In conclusion, to all people with a similar taste in board games to ours: you need this game!!!!!

New videos!

I've just uploaded some videos to older blog entries, so here's where to find them...

September 2007
"Notting Hill Carnival 2007" - 2 new (click here to go straight to entry)

December 2007
"Our weekend in the west" - 1 new (click here)
"Europe, Post 2: Christmas markets in Brussels" 1 new (click here)

Enjoy!

In and out of The Mousetrap...

Yesterday we had a fantastic day in London with Dotti, Matt, Kat, and Elise. (Note of introduction re new blog characters: Dotti recently flew in from Oz to study at Nottingham Uni for a year, and Elise is a long-term Aussie expat whose entire family has been over here for about 7 years. So we had five and a half Aussies in our group of six!)

We met up with Dotti at about midday after she travelled down from Nottingham by train. By a great joint effort of overlooking/forgetfulness, Dotti and I had both neglected to transfer each other's mobile numbers from our recent email correspondence to our phones, so before she could find us at Covent Garden, Dotti had to ring Roxy in Australia to get my number!!!!!

Here's how our day went...

Enjoying the sights at Covent Garden, an area of London with fantastic shops (including The Tintin Shop, where Dotti and I split a pack of badges, and I got a Tintin and Snowy fridge magnet :P), market stalls selling all sorts of fantastic goodies, and lots of buskers and street performers...

Click here for a video of a kilt-wearing performer with a surgical glove pulled down over his head, using his nostrils to blow it up until it explodes!



Walking through West End to Hamley's, an enormous toy store in Piccadilly Circus that Matt and Kat gave us a voucher for as a Christmas present. We bought a game called Chain Reaction (by the makers of Articulate) so are looking forward to trying it out soon!...



Meeting up with Matt, Kat and Elise in time for our 5pm engagement: going to the world's longest running stage production, the Agatha Christie play "The Mousetrap". It was absolutely brilliant, but we can't tell you whodunnit because we've been instructed to keep it locked away in our hearts!...



And going out for a delicious tea in nearby Chinatown after the play.



Afterwards, Dotti came back to Crawley with us and stayed the night, and we put her on the train back home after the meeting and lunch today.

All in all, it was a thoroughly lovely weekend and SO awesome to see Dotti over here!! No doubt she'll feature on here again as we've got a few more plans underway... :)

Europe, Post 12: A grand time in the Grand Duchy

Picking up from where we left off in Tennenbronn, Germany...

Due to a series of unanswered phone calls, indecipherable German voice mail greetings, and a phone number we were given that was lacking a digit or two, we were unable to meet with friends on Sunday morning as per our intended plan. So, mid morning, we set off from the Black Forest en route to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg – a small country bordered by Belgium, France and Germany, and with a population of less than half a million. Click here and scroll down to the Language section - unreal!! That evening, we would be meeting up with some friends of a friend who live in a small village outside of Luxembourg City.

It took quite a few hours of driving to get from Tennenbronn in Germany to the little village of Hollenfels in Luxembourg, where our accommodation that night would be at a Hostelling International youth hostel. On the way, we had our only car trouble of the trip, which came to our attention in the form of a constant flapping sound of uncertain but slightly-worrying origin.

After pulling over at a servo somewhere in France, Ben discovered that the protective plastic “underbelly” under the front of the car had torn away from some of its screws and was hanging down and flapping like an unhinged jaw in the crosswinds. We believe this has absolutely no connection whatsoever to the Black Forest back-tracking that took place the previous day and is documented in Europe Post 10. Anyhow, it was obviously not an important part of our car, as I'm told it is not always on cars in Australia, and since returning to England Ben has torn the entire thing off and thrown it out and nothing bad has happened. :) On this particular day though, he managed to push it back into place and it stayed put for the time being.

Luxembourg is a very nice country – pleasant countryside, green hills and mountains, freshly ploughed brown fields, charming houses, and – the thing that struck us the most – dozens of people out for their afternoon “constitutional”! It was amazing – we would just be driving along a country lane surrounded by fields, then we would come across a corner where a few cars were parked, and scattered along the nearby roadside would be people out walking their dog or just enjoying a leisurely stroll. Very random but a fantastic hobby for an entire country to adopt!!

Once we found our hostel, which simply said “Chateau” rather than the hostel name on our paperwork, there was no sign of anyone around. Actually, that statement applies to the entire village. The hostel was at the edge of the town and was absolutely enormous – it was a long, mansion-like building, four or so storeys high and probably containing a couple hundred dorm rooms – but it was as deserted as the large castle perched on the side of the hill immediately behind it.

After a brief exploration of the town, during which we attempted to find the visitor centre some signs were pointing to – an endeavour we were quite unsuccessful in, despite even finding the bus parking area for it – we called Francisco and Elaine and arranged to be at their place around 5pm. We drove there at a leisurely pace, stopping to take photos of the countryside, as we were quite early.

Much to their surprise, we found their place relatively easily despite their street not being on GPS maps yet as it is a new development. They had only moved in a month earlier and many of the houses around theirs were still being built. So, introductions ensued and a thoroughly enjoyable few hours followed! Elaine is Irish and Franscisco is Spanish, and they have been married for about 5 years. We had dinner with them, and lots of entertaining conversation, and overall had such a lovely time that we've already organised our next visit... we're staying with them on Saturday night in just over two week's time, when we'll be on our way across to Austria to go snowboarding with Matt and Kat!! :D

Afterwards, we rushed back to our hostel to check in before the 9pm cut-off, and were quite relieved to find someone there this time. Then, not only did our beds end up costing less than our original quote, but we also ended up having a four-bed dorm to ourselves! It didn't take long before we came to the realisation that this may have had something to do with the fact that we appeared to have the entire hostel to ourselves!! During our stay there, we did not see a single other person except for the guy who checked us in and the girl who served breakfast. The shower rooms were spotless and empty. I walked up to the third floor to get mobile reception to send a text message – no one in sight. The echoing halls stretched on forever and I think our room was number four hundred and something, but we did not see any evidence of a single other person there!! It was quite a bizarre feeling. I started feeling like we were unknowing victims of some reality TV gag...

The next day, Monday, happened to be my birthday. :) We awoke to proof that other people were alive in the town, as the town bells rang a couple hundred times at 7am!! I think Ben said he gave up counting at about 160 (I gave up once I realised they weren't striking the hour :P). Anyhow, apparently it's not a town for lazy sleep ins!!! So we went down to the breakfast room, which can be best described as... hmmm, what's the word... oh yes, EMPTY! We had the breakfast buffet and huge room full of vacant tables and chairs all to ourselves, and enjoyed some good old-fashioned Cocoa Pops (amongst other treats) before checking out and having a bit of a wander around the castle next door.

Please note that I do not condone the activities featured in the following photos. Sometimes it is just safer to take the photo so they hurry up and get down, as a reaction betraying one's true sense of alarm often serves as a further incentive for such risk taking...

After this, we set off into the capital city to follow Francisco and Elaine's advice as to what to do in Luxembourg when you've only got half a day...

In the middle of Luxembourg City, there's a beautiful valley with a narrow river, walking paths, bridges, and lots of trees and greenery. No shops or anything. It's a proper valley, bordered by cliffs or steep slopes on both sides, and at the top of those is the usual bustling city centre scene! It's a fantastic idea and very scenic and peaceful. A couple of massive old bridges carry traffic over the top of the valley. So, we mostly spent our time wandering through this valley, taking photos and just enjoying the lovely morning.

Later, we had a quick look through some nearby shops (found some amazing-looking bakery treats and some awesome Tintin ornaments but could not justify getting either!) and then set off for France for our last night of the trip.

I actually thought I was going to finish writing about the whole trip in this entry tonight, but it has taken a fair while and uploading the photos will keep me occupied for quite a while longer, so I think I'll leave you hanging for the final installment! Goodnight, and please vote on our latest poll if you haven't already!