Bern, The Bernese Oberland, and The End

Two or three times during our trip a city, mountain, lake or meadow got under our skin (in the Frank Sinatra way, not a Washington politician way), and Bern, Switzerland was one of those places.  Maybe it was because our trip was fast approaching the end, or maybe it's because Bern is a world-class city in its own right, but at the end of the day it doesn't matter, because for whatever reason Bern makes everyone--even the boy--smile whenever we mention it.

Bern:

When we arrived in Bern on August, 21st we had less than 24 hours left in Europe and that was probably alright since a person can run out of money faster in Switzerland than just about any other place on the planet. The truth is that Switzerland is idyllic and it can even be affordable if you trade houses with a resident (our next plan); you're lucky enough to have friends living there (the case for us in Basel in 2007);  you're camping with a tent that doesn't fly as easily as ours (http://wirthsummer2012.blogspot.com/2012/06/insomnia-and-flying-tents.html), or you don't mind staying in a youth hostel.  

You may wonder why non-youths would stay in a youth hostel, and the strange truth is that most hostels in Europe accept people of all ages and, as far as we know, your presence won't give the youths a creepy vibe the way single middle-aged men do at Disney World.  In some cases, hostels provide private bathrooms and/or private rooms for single people, couples and families.  Our family room in a converted convent inside the historic walls of Lucca, Italy provided a lockable room with six beds and a private bathroom for 100 Euro per night (our thanks to Rick Steves for this suggestion), and our hostel in Bern (Bern Backpacker's Glocke) provided a lockable room with four beds and a sink.  The bathroom was just across the hall, and this never presented a problem for us or the kids.  The hostel was also perfectly located in the historic center of Bern (see below), though it cost 180 of our last 200 Euros.

View from our room in the Backpacker's Glocke Bern





One-hundred and eighty Euro seems like a lot of money, and it is, but it is much cheaper than the 400 Euros charged for the average Bernese hotel.  I just did a search on Booking.com (where we found the hostel) to see if the rates for two adults and two children are any cheaper in April, 2013, but they're not if you have less than a week's notice (like we did) and you want to stay near the historic center of Bern (which we strongly suggest you do).

There's a large vehicle restricted area around the historical center of Bern which we know firsthand because we took the tour of its boundaries while attempting to find the underground parking area nearest our hostel.  I know we've mentioned packing light before and I'll devote a blog entry to what we packed and what we should have packed, but when you're walking five to ten blocks, you'll be glad to have one or two backpacks containing everything your family needs for the night.  Additionally, when you discover that there's no early check-in and you need to carry all of your things to a restaurant with you, you'll be even more grateful for packing light.

Eating a late lunch outside in the historic section of Bern, Switzerland at the end of a two month trip can seem other-worldly.  By this time, you can order a pitcher of water in a rapid succession of German while pulling out your chair, stowing your bag, and preparing to answer just about any question the waiter asks.  You will also look at your children strangely when they order with a similar confidence, happily returning to the language of June.  However, when they correct your German or tell you you said "thank you" in French, then roll their eyes, they've gone too far.  I've often said that it's hard for a Midwesterner to raise East Coast kids.  As someone whose childhood vacations consisted of getting lost in Toledo, Ohio at 2 AM, it's also hard to raise kids who are snobby in Switzerland on your dime.

After our expensive lunch (which we charged for lack of available cash), we ran to Einstein's apartment which sits on a street of green-tinted buildings over covered sidewalks, fronting businesses on the first floor (see below). 

My husband has been anxious to see Einstein's house since the seventh grade (he swears this is true), so touring Einstein's home dictated the time of our arrival in Bern and visiting Bern at all.  Therefore, it was with great displeasure that we found the following sign upon darting up the stairs in Einstein's building:

Sorry, I meant this sign:

So, the apartment was closed for water repairs, though the ice cream store on the first floor was open (see below), and may have provided some restorative properties had some people in our party not felt too upset to stop.

If you find yourself in Bern with a husband who's too disappointed to eat ice cream, or talk to anyone, or reflect on the clock at the end of the street which inspired Einstein to think of time as relative (I looked at the clock and thought of it as beautiful and--with less than 24 hours left in Europe--time as our enemy, but I never purported to have a mind as powerful as Einstein's... publicly.), there are a few options...





...You can distract him by walking down the street, rather than the protected sidewalk, and dodging the extremely quiet trains...

...or you can walk to the Cathedral and figure out what everyone's talking about...

...Or walk to the Swiss Parliament and enjoy the fountains...

...You cross the bridge and visit the bears which gave the city its name...



  

 ...and threaten to throw him in. Or you can walk to the river where you hear yelling and jumping from a nearby bridge (see teenagers standing on the far bridge pre-plunge)...

 ...You'll see older people swim past you from this position and if you follow the trail upriver, you'll see their place of origin near the dam....

...and if all of that doesn't fix his attitude, you really just need a new husband.

What's interesting about the men who are stripping off their clothes and jumping into the river upstream is that these are some of the same people you saw earlier wearing dark dress pants, ties and short-sleeved white business shirts. You'll remember them because you dodged them like trolleys while mentally preparing all the reasons you'd list if approached and asked to convert to their religion.  After passing a couple-dozen similarly clad men, we determined that they were not, in fact, Mormons (or at least Mormons who were good at their jobs), rather, just businessmen who didn't get the 1983 memo downgrading short-sleeve dress shirts from the "good fashion sense" list. You may be thinking that long-sleeve shirts make no sense on a hot August day and that's just as true as stilettos make no sense on cobblestone streets... or any streets at all really... well, maybe some streets, but I don't walk those streets... at least not after midnight. Anyway, my point is that fashion doesn't usually make sense, but you still have to follow the rules or be mocked by sassy American tourists who incidentally wear flats.

After sitting near the dam for a while, we convinced ourselves that downstream was the place to be. So we walked toward the bridge jumpers until the street lights switched on and the swimmers disappeared against the water with only their laughter giving away their position. 

Later, we walked the streets of Bern until everyone was exhausted and a shower and bed seemed our only future.  Cafe goers below kept us company until rain chased them away at 2am.  Then, the street cleaners arrived, removing all traces of the party in which the famously conservative Swiss engaged on a "school" night.

  

The Bernese Oberland:

The next morning, we regrettably left Bern and took the long route to Zurich Airport through the Bernese Oberland.  There was only time to stop once or twice and shoot pictures like the below, but we comforted ourselves--and each other--by promising this was only a reconnaissance drive, and we'd be back.

This may not be true of everyone, but Switzerland just feels like home to me. I've mentioned my fondness for Heidi before (http://wirthsummer2012.blogspot.com/2012/06/places-we-were-too-grumpy-tired-or-cold.html) and I must admit that I watched that movie young enough to think I was her in a previous life.  Yes, I know that you can't be a fictional person in a previous life. It makes no sense at all!  But that does nothing to remove the idea that if I hike up the right mountain fast enough, I may still find my grandfather at the top. 

 

So, it's fitting that Zurich brought us into Europe and then it brought us back home http://wirthsummer2012.blogspot.com/2012/08/arriving-home.html

The End Aside:

I know I promised to finish this blog before Thanksgiving, then again before Easter, but I found procrastination appealing in that it prolonged our connection with this trip.  I was also sometimes lazy... and after January I was watching Downton Abbey... and how could I say goodbye to Sybil, Matthew, and our trip at the same time?  I just have two more posts to add to this blog before I call it quits and those are "Culture Shock" and "Packing: What to Bring and What to Leave."  I have no idea when I will finish these and am resisting the urge to say "before summer for sure." 

© 2013 Nicole Wirth
Author of:  Letters to Salthill 

Strasbourg, Colmar, and The French

After racing past Paris and Rouen, and giving up forever the idea of seeing Joan of Arc's place of execution on the 500th anniversary of her birth--strangely not a huge sacrifice for the kids....at least not as big as Joan's--we arrived at a tall, stone, townhouse-style hotel across the green from the Strasbourg train station.

Lodging Aside:
We found this hotel via Booking.com which had a better selection than Expedia in Northern Europe and included Youth Hostels which is a blessing if your free youth hostel app was worth every penny you paid for it.  If you use Booking.com, you'll want to note that it is different from Expedia in that you only give your credit card to hold the room, but you pay during checkout.  So, you won't want to question the staff too thoroughly like I did when the clerk wanted to charge our credit card in person.  Luckily, my daughter had charmed the desk clerk by saying "hello", "thank you", and "goodbye" in German, French, and English every time she saw him, and the clerk had charmed my daughter by telling her her accent was perfect in all three languages.  (I can't confirm that anything other than her English is quite good.)  In any event, if you pay your bill at the end of your stay without giving the clerk a "you're trying to swindle me" look, you'll leave a better impression than I did.

If you can trace your heritage back to the Alsace Region and you are confused as to whether this makes you French or German, take heart.  The region seems to suffer from a similar confusion which is evident in streets named "Rue Kuhn" or "Quai Jacques Sturm".  I know this is rich coming from a person with a French first name and a German last name, but I just didn't expect to meet so many people with the exact same problem.  A nice side-effect is that the region doesn't take language or culture with a seriousness that can make other regions seem closed or inaccessible.

Language Aside:
I might have mentioned this before, but if foreign languages scare you, we suggest you visit an area which borders another language or is a crossroads for many cultures such as Vienna, Slovenia, and Croatia.  In these areas, English appears to be the lingua franca...which is both ironic and advantageous.  In Alsace, it was nothing to hear Italian, French, German and English within a block or two, but the sound you'll notice the most is the bells tolling for 15 minute intervals.

As beautiful and distracting as this sounds, the scenery in cities like Strasbourg is more compelling, especially after dark.  Below are a few pictures as proof.

My husband ventured out after all of us went to bed, and was rewarded by finding the Strasbourg Cathedral light show with accompanying live music. So drunk on beauty was he, that he didn't find his way back to the hotel easily, but the proximity to the train station helped....even if his propensity to turn a map to suit his direction did not.

We stayed in Strasbourg for one night, but this was far from enough.  We stayed in Colmar for two nights and--as far as I'm concerned--this was far too much.  My husband won't agree with this (at all!) which is why I probably won't let him proof read this post before I publish it.

Now, you're probably thinking that all the guide books say Colmar is prettier than Strasbourg, and they do.  You may also be thinking that Auguste Bartholdi is from Colmar and his/the French Government's gift of The Statue of Liberty is pretty great, and it is.  However, I prefer Strasbourg, and I say this with full knowledge that I may be blinded with anger at a Colmar resident who ran onto the sidewalk and launched French insults at my family and myself for sitting at an outdoor table when we ordered our food "to go".  My husband said he knew there was one price for take away and another price for eating at the tables, but he didn't mention it and I swear I didn't know.  Also, in our defense, we were planning to take the food away, but the cook/cashier/yeller took so long to make it on the other side of the window that we sat down to wait, then decided the chairs were comfortable enough to stay once the food arrived.  So, it was with a good deal of surprise that I saw the dirty bib-wearing cook/cashier run around the corner and launch an avalanche of angry French at me for ripping him off.

Now, I see how it should take more than one angry Frenchman to ruin an entire city, but I'm just not that forgiving, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone.  In fact, I have a theory that the reason many Americans describe the French as unfriendly is because we tend to visit Paris, and Parisians tend to be rude.  In fact, they're especially rude to people who speak English, although one can understand this if you're trying to force them to speak English too.

In any event, the irony of experiencing the worst foreign relations episode of our trip in the city where the Statue of Liberty creator lived is not lost on me.....and it makes one wonder what went wrong with French/US relations on a larger scale.  Now, I'm not a foreign policy expert, but that's never stopped me from speculating on this.  Apart from high points like French Navy backing us up in the Revolutionary War and the US aiding the French in two world wars, Americans and French display a remarkable tendency to turn our noses at each other and drift apart.

When the average American thinks of the British, they feel a sibling level of closeness.  The kind of relationship where you jump into a fight if you see the other one take a hit whether or not you agree with why they're fighting.  When the average American thinks of the French, they feel a distant cousin feeling--the kind of cousin that out-dresses you at weddings and won't let you cut through their yard on the way to school.  (Yes, I'm referencing the French unwillingness to let us fly through their airspace when we attacked Libya after the Pan Am flight 103 bombing.  I will let this go before I die, but I'm still annoyed, and it's only been 24 years.) 

It also annoys Americans that although the French government denies paying ransoms, somehow their citizens are freed from folks who generally require full payment.  In the mind of an American, if you can't develop an effective SEAL-type military force, don't let your citizens out of the country. 

But, this is the French government and most people don't like their own government much less someone else's, so there has to be another reason for the visceral dislike between the French and the Americans.  You can say it's because the French government never backs us up and that feels more true than it is since the French sent troops to Afghanistan and they did do us a "solid" by taking a major role in removing Quadaffi.

You hear people say that the French are rude, but only 19% of Americans have their passports.  So, unless we're basing this on the French people who make it to the States, we're trusting a small minority of Americans to decide how we feel about the largest country in Europe.  At the risk of sounding like a traitor, in our two months of traveling, more Americans were rude to us than French (imagine Paris Hilton wanna-bes and Wall Street tycoons) and we actually found ten reasons to like the French:

1) They will never give you a compliment you don't deserve.  On a related note, if you really want to know if you look fat in that dress, now is the time to find out.

2) If you at least try to speak French, they're some of the nicest people you'll meet in mainland Europe.  The toll takers, the cashiers (well, most cashiers), and the people on the street are extremely grateful if you just put in the smallest amount of effort into speaking their language.

3) They're highly principled.  They buy French cars (mostly Renault) and French tires (Michelin), and they will stand in line at the grocery store or at a toll plaza to save the job of the cashier instead of running through the self-checkout or credit card only lanes.  As an Economics major, I find this ridiculous, but as a human being, I find it admirable.

4) If the Gendarme/police are running radar on the road, you'll know about it ahead of time when the oncoming traffic flashes their lights at you.  This is a 100% certainty.

5) After 9/11, the Le Monde newspaper headline read, “We Are All Americans".

6) The French have the best roads and signs in the world. 

7) Even the gas station food is fresh.

8) They sell Cherry Coke and ice.  It seems few other places do.

9) There are more American flags in Normandie on the average day than in DC on the Fourth of July.

10) There are more streets, buildings and hospitals named after Presidents Wilson, Roosevelt, Eisenhower and Kennedy than in the average US land area of a similar size (another unscientific study on our part).

If you're still not convinced that you want to bury the hatchet with the French and you want to go out of your way to annoy them, let's agree not to walk up to a Paris kiosk and demand to pay in dollars while yelling in English that you want a cup of coffee (we actually saw someone do this once).  Aside from giving the French more reasons to feel superior, it's unimaginative.  If you really want to tick off a French person, you should consider one the following:

1) Pass them from the right lane.  This makes them nuts!

2) Tell the Pharmacist that you want to buy one type of toothpaste for you and your children.  They have toothpaste formulated for every age group and tooth sensitivity and they will be horrified to know you don't and you don't care.

3) Let your kids go outside without scarves on in temperatures colder than 50 degrees Fahrenheit.  Better yet, let them play in the sea.  My French friend nearly needed a sedative when we let our son jump into the waters off the coast of Nova Scotia in mid-April a few years back.  She invoked the Saints and warnings of pneumonia while yelling at me for laughing.  In her defense though, the boy did get sick enough to moan all the way down the East Coast.  In fact, just the other day he said, "Mom, remember that trip to Canada when I got leukemia from jumping into the cold water?"  Yes, he was so sick that he remembers it as leukemia.  So, in this limited case, the French may be right.

4) Butter your bread.  The French don't do this, ever, and they'll be watching your table to see if you do because if you're trying to annoy them by not talking, this is one of the only ways they can determine if you're an English speaker.

5) Drink Coca Cola with your meal instead of water.  In fact, drink a Coca Cola with your dessert too.  To the French, Coke is dessert.  So, they would never eat dessert with dinner and dessert with dessert.  Watching someone else do this may blow their mind.

6) Send back your vegetables and tell the waiter they weren't fresh.  Better yet, tell the waiter that you prefer food which is genetically altered.  I have no idea what the response will be, but I believe the staff will need oxygen, and/or inhalers.

7) Tell a French person you agree with the death penalty, you own a gun, and you taught your children to use it when they were in diapers.

8) Give a grocery teller exactly €20 for a bill which costs €10.05. (This actually works for every country we visited except Austria.)  We don't believe there is an actual change shortage in Europe, but they act like there is, and asking for €9.95 cents in change will be greeted as an act of war.....especially if you jingle the change in your pocket.  

9) Switch lanes across a solid white line.  The French will never do this, and they won't appreciate you doing this either.  In fact, the French won't even turn left over a solid dividing line to enter a driveway on the opposite side of the street.  So, street parking like the below in DC would be out of reach for the average French driver.  In fact, if you parked a French car in a spot like this, I'm pretty sure the owner could never get it out.

 

10) Do what my husband did and bring the French a gift of cheese in a can.  Before you ask, there is no French translation for "cheese in a can", but we saw three generations of French people poke the contents with a fork while discussing its likely properties.

Just so you know, the rest of my family loved Colmar even though the second day was spent in an unairconditioned hotel room sorting and repacking our luggage so we would only need to remove one bag from the car for our last night in Bern, Switzerland.  Well, Brian and I were packing, the girl made friends with the front desk clerk in the hotel and, when not bothering her, she spent the day reading a book on the grass below our balcony.  The boy walked around the hotel too, but he was high on visions of the Lamborghini he met the night before and he couldn't stop commenting on how Colmar was the best city in Europe because of it.  So, if you work for a European tourist bureau, you are wasting your time and money with friendly staff and exciting attractions.  If you really want the 11 year old American boy vote for best place to visit, you need only park a Lamborghini on a prominant street and let him take his picture beside it. 

© 2013 Nicole Wirth
Author of:  Letters to Salthill 

Driving With The Dutch and The TomTom Lady

On Sunday, August 19th, 2012 we woke up in Bayeux, France a day later than planned, having fought and lost the battle the day before to continue onward since we found our current place idyllic.  This day, we did not have the option to remain in Bayeux since we held tickets leaving Zurich in three days, and our itinerary read "Rouen, Strasbourg, Colmar, Bern and Interlaken," while our map said Zurich Airport laid over eight hours to the east...with no sign of moving west any time soon.

Although our initial approach to the summer was heavily structured and organized, by August 19th any sense of order was gone.  We had written into our itinerary, then removed major cities such as Verona, Split, Rome, Dubrovnik, Barcelona, and Paris, (the plan being to visit as many regions which required a car as possible, assuming we could fly back to major cities easily in the future), but three days before our departure, the end of the summer loomed like a funeral, and deep down we feared that we may never make it back, or have this much time together again.

I mentioned before that we didn't hit our "travel groove" until a month into our trip, and after that we fought the urge to stop and stay in any town where we felt at home.  But that Sunday marked exactly two months since we left The States, and it was making less and less sense to leave beautiful places when we assumed we had already seen the best of Europe.  Luckily, there was a lot more beauty to see.

So, against our best judgement, we left our room filled with light, fresh air and the sound of bells tolling periodically from the nearby cathedral, and we walked to our car parked on the main street, trying not to make eye contact with the children who had silently decided that this two month anniversary would mark the official limit to their nomadic spirit.

Child Aside:
Strangely enough, children are not as portable as they appear.  I can't remember if I have mentioned this before, but it was poignant to see how eagerly the children sought friends and attempted to establish roots in most of the places we stopped whether for a day or a few hours.  The girl introduced herself to children easily, even when there was no common language.  She also longed to wear local clothing and buy local toys to more easily fit in and establish a link with each new place.  The boy didn't try to fit in at all, but he did reach out to pet most passing dogs--with and without their owners' approval and appreciation--and we found that his positive feelings toward any location tracked a line parallel to his access to kind animals and tolerant owners.

However, by the second month, the children made fewer and fewer attempts to hold on to the places we visited.  The girl's "Can I buy..." questions, as well as the boy's "That looks like my dog!" declarations became fewer and fewer which saddened their parents even while it made their behavior more tolerable. 

Now, I don't want to go on the record as saying the kids no longer wanted to experience Europe.  The truth is I believe they would have been happy to stay until we ran out of money, but this was the moment where we needed to settle down, find an apartment, and meet the neighbors because, at 8 and 11 years old, the kids were either too old or too young to walk to the car and leave a perfectly good town without resembling an inmate on death row.

Driving to Strasbourg:
From the moment Americans receive our drivers licenses (10 minutes after our 16th birthday) to the moment we die, most travel conversations center around how many hours (or states) we can drive without stopping for gas, food, sleep, or bathroom breaks.  So, most Americans would openly scoff at any complaint of a six hour trip from Bayeux to Strasbourg.  In my defense, in North America I can drive 6-8 hours straight if I don't begin consuming liquids before the gas tank is half empty.  (This is very important since stopping to use the bathroom before the gas tank is under a quarter full is in bad form....especially when driving 14 hours from the East Coast to the Midwest.)  Now, I used to think eight hours was a pretty good record until my coworker declared that Wisconsin is where he stops for gas since it's half way to Colorado....which he can reach before sleeping.  So, luckily, I didn't consider my driving record a competitive one when our friend Rob--who is from Baltimore--told us that his driving record to college--which is in Alaska--is seven days.  Yes, seven days.  We know this because my husband and I yelled versions of "What?" and "Seven days?!" before he replied, "Yeah, I was speeding."

So, my humiliation aside, my personal driving record is still good enough to reach Strasbourg without a bathroom break, however, European roads are not the same as North American ones.  They look the same, but they have force fields and worm holes that zap the energy from its drivers....or maybe it's the foreign language signs, radio broadcasts, and highway paint that do this.  For whatever reason, don't expect to drive longer than five hours without stopping the car, jumping in place, slapping your face, and drinking a Coca-Cola. 

If you're North American, you're probably skeptical, so I'll give you a few fatigue-inducing examples:

1) North Americans identify yellow lines as those separating opposing traffic while white lines separate lanes moving in the same direction.  In much of Europe, white lines denote both types of traffic with periodic signs indicating on which type of road you are traveling.  This system is fine when you are in an urban area with Jersey barriers between opposing traffic, or when you are in a rural area and you're not tired.  However, when you are both tired and traveling in a rural area, and you cannot see the lanes of opposing traffic, you can easily convince yourself that you are in the opposing lane and you must jump to the right before reaching the top of the hill. 

2) Signs such as "Do Not Enter" are not absolute...at least not in France.  For example, you may exit the road only to see what you believe to be a "Do Not Enter" sign (either a red circle with a white horizontal line, or a white circle with a red outline), however, this sign only means you can't enter the road IF the word "Sauf" (except) is not under it or you do not meet the exceptions listed after "Sauf".  So, you'll have to park the car and think hard before you continue.  For example, our hotel in the Loire Valley seemed completely unreachable at the end of lane marked with a "Do Not Enter" sign until we translated "Sauf Riverains" which means "except residents".  Now, we have exceptions to "Do Not Enter" signs in the US too, denoting time of day or day of week, but the reasons are generally obvious and they're always written in English.  By the way, we didn't see any exceptions to German-speaking "Do Not Enter" signs, but one wouldn't expect them.

3) Endless corn fields in Iowa don't compete for your attention in the same way traveling through mountains, or past castles and quaint villages on distant hills do.  In addition, there are areas of France--especially in Brittany and Normandy--where it looks as if the sky is a concave bowl that ends five miles away.  It's a strange perspective and none of our pictures captured it, but I swear it's true...and very distracting.

4) You generally can't listen to the radio in Continental Europe.  Period.  Let me start by saying we had every intention of fully immersing ourselves in the culture of each country by listening to polka in the Alps, Mozart as we entered Salzburg and Vienna, and opera as we drove into Florence.  In between, we imagined listening to each country's top hits list even though Techno didn't die a dignified death there in the 80s like it rightfully should have.  But we found no Mozart on the radio in Austria and no opera in Italy. There was polka in Switzerland, but we also heard painful song mixes like a polka/country English/German version of "Jambalaya (On the Bayou)".  I'm completely serious...and nothing says Swiss Alps like songs about Cajun cooking and Southern Louisiana topography.  But the real reason you can't listen to the radio in Europe is because your kids speak English and there are no edited versions of any English songs anywhere, and even the songs you recognize as completely sweet and innocuous back home have a dark side in Europe which we didn't realize until we heard the boy yell, "Oh, yeah!" from the back seat during a sweet ballad that repeatedly dropped the "f" bomb.

Now, music isn't completely out of reach if your car has a USB connection like ours did, but make sure you like the songs on your IPOD well enough to listen to each one nearly 100 times. This fact would be far less painful if everyone liked the same music...and those who didn't like the music didn't mock the songs they didn't like while the rest of the car yelled for the mocker to be quiet.  So, the girl yelled during Green Day and Eminem while the boy yelled during Adele and Lady Gaga.  The only music everyone could agree on was U2, Weird Al, and the Black Eyed Peas.  Disclaimer: when I say "everyone" I don't include my husband because he only likes the Beatles and Mozart, and he used both to punish bad behavior.

5) The TomTom lady either doesn't know the rules of the road or she doesn't care.  For example, in Austria and Italy, she screamed at us to slow down even though the reduction in speed was required for trucks and RVs only.  You may say that she might not know we were a car and not a truck except that the navigation system was built into the car.  So, someone missed a setting somewhere and the system blinking a camera icon to tell you you just passed a highway speed camera while speeding, and therefore qualify for a ticket, is distracting and annoying.

When you think the TomTom lady couldn't be more annoying, hold on because she doesn't know where the French installed their speed cameras.  So, concentrating on looking for the radar signs  (see http://wirthsummer2012.blogspot.com/2012/09/driving-to-france-and-tollways.html) while making sure you're not in a lane designated for oncoming traffic, and your kids are fighting over music can be taxing. 

Similar to the US, you also have toll plazas, traffic putting on their hazards and stopping suddenly for no apparent reason and sometimes all of the chaos seems a bit much.  However, there is help on the roads and it comes in the form of the Dutch.  Yes, the Dutch. 

If you are in mainland Europe and you're confused about the speed limit, the location of speed cameras, or in which lane to travel, follow a car whose license plate includes an "NL" in the blue area.  Now, we saw very skilled Swiss, Austrian, Slovenian, Croatian, German and French drivers while driving through those coutries, but they were not as consistently smart, yet daring, as the Dutch.  We stayed a couple of car lengths behind any Dutch car going in our direction; we sped when the Dutch did; we slowed when the Dutch did; and we never received a ticket or came close to an accident.  I don't know if safely pushing the envelope is a genetic trait or a product of training, but either way, we need to clone it.

In addition to pointing-out speed traps, the Dutch do their part to translate French culture.  For example, at several French toll plazas we were perplexed by long lines for one or two open toll lanes while the lines for the automated lines were completely empty.  We were afraid there was a problem with the empty lanes, so we stayed with the French until we saw a Dutch car escape the long lines and dart to an empty one.  Soon after, we realized that the French were protesting the removal of manned booths by waiting only in the lines with a human being at the end.  I must say we were moved by the French devotion to the employment of their people, which we noted as we followed the Dutch to the empty credit card pay lanes. 

If you're afraid there won't be a Dutch car in front of you when you travel through Europe, fear not. The Dutch are everywhere! In fact, we are pretty sure there is no one left in the Netherlands between the middle of June and the end of August. 

I don't have any pictures of Dutch drivers to share, but I'm pretty sure we are following a Dutch car below.  We took this picture as a silent protest to our schedule not allowing us to stop as we raced past Paris at 135km per hour.

© 2013 Nicole Wirth
Author of:  Letters to Salthill 

Bayeux, France and the Pledge of Allegiance

After arriving in Cherbourg safe and sick on the ferry, it was all we could do not to return to the British-run B&B, throw our bags on the bed and declare we'd stay there until our trip ended six days later.  But there was the cemetery at Omaha Beach to see as well as Bayeux, Alsace, Bern and Interlaken. So, with time at a premium, we pushed our sickness down and our car southeast. 

You may wonder why I've already posted entries for the return ferry ride as well as Omaha Beach, but this is because--to my husband's silent chagrin (I can read his mind)--I switch back and forth between a chronological and thematic organization of events. So, it didn't make sense to write about Utah Beach (which we saw before Ireland) without writing about Omaha Beach (which we saw afterwards).  In honor of my husband though, from now on I will stick to chronology. 

As with most of the trip, we drove well into the afternoon before pulling into a wayside to make reservations at a hotel farther along, and to be honest, living the nomadic life was getting a bit old.  But this time we were lucky enough to find lodging in a hotel recommended by our Rick Steves' guide which was within a short walking distance to the main cathedral, the Bayeux Tapestry, and the British WWII Cemetery (also referenced in http://wirthsummer2012.blogspot.com/2012/10/normandy-part-ii-beaches.html). 

If you're rolling your eyes right now because you can't imagine why anyone would stop in the north of France to see a famous rug, you sound exactly like me.  In fact, my husband received no end of abuse in Ireland when I repeatedly asked when we expected to see "the rug." To be completely honest, the abuse was in no small part because the kids and I didn't want to leave Ireland.  In fact, we were upset that divine intervention hadn't provided high enough seas to cancel our return ferry (though it got close).  We even fantasized about changing our return ticket to leave from Dublin Airport, instead of Zurich, and sending the car back to France on the ferry alone or with my husband as its only occupant.

So, we were in a bad mood, and I refused to make the call to Bayeux to book the hotel. I said I was tired of being the family's only French-speaking (though barely) spokesperson, but in retrospect, I was just pouting. Worse than that, my eyes shot daggers at Brian when he did his best to make the arrangements himself.  So, it wasn't a proud moment for me, though I didn't realize it until we arrived at the hotel in the middle of a charming town which displayed signs of welcome in English. There were American and British flags everywhere, and a lovely creek running through the middle.

As I've said in previous posts, the difference between loving and hating a city is often your proximity to its historical center.  This is especially the case when two children and their mother want to lie on a bed and stare at the ceiling until it stops spinning while their father grabs a camera and sees the sites himself.  So, this was the case in Bayeux the first afternoon. But by 10 pm, we had given up pouting, and ventured across the street from the hotel to find the city had come alive with light-painted buildings.



Below:  The Bayeux Cathedral after dark

 

In the summer, beginning at 10:30 PM on certain evenings (if memory serves, it was Tuesdays and Thursdays) the courtyard opposite the Bayeux Cathedral hosts a light show against the canvas of the Hôtel du Doyen.  The narration is in French, but it gives visitors a historical overview of the city using imagery and sound which transcend language.  Here's a video someone else taped:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvPVKU0-eko  and below are still pictures from our visit:

The Tapestry plays an important role in the light show (see above picture) (one of my favorite parts is 9 minutes and 15 seconds into the video [referenced above] when the Beatles play "All You Need Is Love" while the Norman invaders and the English defenders slaughter one another), but no greater than that of WWII (this starts 3 minutes and 7 seconds into the video referenced above) and the soldiers and countries who liberated its residents (see picture below) because this is the town where you will see pictures of American servicemen on buildings and a "Welcome to our Liberators" sign outside the restaurant closest to our hotel.  

You will also see American and British flags inside the Cathedral alongside plaques commemorating Allied soldiers (see below).

One thing I didn't know about the Bayeux Tapestry before we visited was that it's not a square rug on a wall, and it's not really a tapestry at all.  It's a 1.5 foot by 70 yard embroidered cloth which is long enough to wrap around a large portion of the Bayeux Cathedral's nave (pictured below).  It's also not your grandma's embroidery since there are pretty graphic depictions of decapitations, loss of limbs, and arrows through throats, chests and heads.   



  

The Tapestry does a pretty good job of stating the Norman case for invading England--and you'd expect that since it's sitting in Normandy--but it was created in England by--one assumes--either nervous English women or women who hadn't lost their French accents yet. (Spoiler Alert!)  It says that Harold swore allegiance to William the Conqueror during a trip to Normandy, yet Harold usurped the English throne once King Edward the Confessor died. I'd like to take this time to call BS on this story.  

According to the Tapestry (and one or two books), Harold was sent to Normandy with the sole purpose of telling William that the King had chosen him as his successor.  But why King Edward sent Harold to deliver this news instead of someone who didn't have designs on the throne stretches credulity.  After all, I'd like to think I could be trusted with telling my sister that she's my mom's favorite and will, therefore, inherit Great-Grandma's platinum wedding ring, but I might not bank on it.

My suspicion (with very little evidence except what I know of human nature) is that Harold was visiting only to secure the release of his brother or his nephew (there are conflicting accounts) who was held captive by William at the time.  What's not in question is that Harold was captured upon hitting Norman shores (not a very nice welcome if his only mission was to say, "You've won a kindgom!") and was made to swear allegiance to William before going home. After the ceremony, the trunk on which Harold held his hand was revealed to contain a Bible and a relic which would've caused no end of cursing by Harold if he didn't have his heart in his pledge of allegiance.  In any event, William was so sure that Harold would honor his oath that he did some cursing of his own when news of Harold's ascension to the English throne found him. (Again, I have no evidence, but I know people.)

Once the boats were made and the wind was right, William and his entourage headed across the English Channel and Harold didn't see the year 1067. 

So, whether or not you buy the details of the story (Don't! It's ridiculous!), you have to appreciate the artistry and work involved in the Tapestry's creation, and the pure dumb luck involved in keeping nearly 1,000-year-old fabric in pretty amazing condition. 

We couldn't take our own pictures of the Tapestry, but here's a picture taken by the French Tourist Bureau:

So, if I had my way, we would've skipped Bayeux and gone to Paris instead, but that would've been a huge mistake because the Tapestry wasn't just a rug and we liked the town well enough to extend our stay by two nights, leaving only three nights to visit Alsace and Bern, and make it to Zurich Airport in time for our flight.  That said, we have no regrets.  As Brian says, we came to Bayeux for the tapestry, but we stayed for the town.

 © 2013 Nicole Wirth

Author of:  Letters to Salthill 

Ireland vs. Disney World

We learned five things while visiting Ireland this summer:
1) In August, you can get a sunburn after 4pm (see picture below of people getting sunburned on a beach in Cork [you'll have to trust me on this one]) so don't laugh at your friends when they suggest you put on sun block late into the afternoon.

2) Professional photographers don't really earn their pay in Ireland since it's not that hard to find a lovely cow in a lush green pasture with a humble white cottage in the distance...

.....or a misty sailboat-filled harbor....



....or a lonely boat inside that harbor.

  

3) There's no reason for signs like the below, because everyone knows that death is always just a few feet away....





....which the kids proved in Baltimore, County Cork....

.....but my husband didn't (see risky picture he took below):



4) Ireland was a net exporter of food during the Famine (rich land owners apparently didn't feel a desire to share their crop with the starving people outside their gates).  So, living in the halls of Kilmainham Prison (below) was a viable alternative for the famished....until prison administrators decided that the problem was the hungry and the solution was a reduction in rations.  So, it is no wonder that the first half of the 19th Century saw over two million Irish leave their country--1.2 million of which landed in the US. 



5) EU austerity measures have both strangled the Irish economy and created a general nation-wide malaise.

So, given the large number of Americans of Irish ancestry and the historical and current examples of Europe not actually helping Ireland, I believe now might be the time for the United States to woo Ireland away from the EU.  Designating them as the 51st state would be nice, but that's probably too possessive. "Commonwealth" seems cold and isn't much better.  Establishing a "North Atlantic Union" might be nice--although the acronym would be "NAU", making the vote on its adoption confusing.  However, if we do vote "NAU" instead of "NAY", we should probably invite the Canadians to come aboard so they can stop paying an extra dollar for the same book, and we can stop jamming US vending machines with their coins.  I'd also say Mexico deserves an invitation except they provide us with too many drugs and we provide them with too many weapons to be a healthy union.....it's more like a Hollywood marriage, in fact...kind of like Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston. 

You might be wondering how NAU can help the Irish and this is what I have so far:

1. Free Vanity Plates
2. Cheap name brand clothing
3. Great St. Patty's Day parades (no offense, but theirs aren't so great).
4. A strip of land in Florida to thaw out during the winter.
5. They don't have to run back to Ireland when their visa runs out.

What's in it for us:

1. Everyone can wear "Kiss Me I'm Irish" shirts on St. Patrick's Day without lying.
2. Access to a highly educated, highly mobile populace.
3. Someone always has your back in a bar fight.
4. Zero percent tax if you win the lottery, or buy a book (we're more likely to do one than the other).
5. You can honestly call W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, Bram Stoker, Oscar Wilde, Jonathan Swift and Bono your countrymen.
6. We don't have to run back to the US when our visas run out.

If you're thinking that I have Irish blood and this is the reason behind my enthusiasm, you may be right, I don't know.  The only way to know for sure is to take that blood test I've been avoiding.   See, my great grandmother's first husband was a Native American and her second was an Irishman. Two of her children looked Native, and one looked Irish (my grandfather) and although everyone claimed my grandpa was the youngest child and the product of the second marriage, I learned in high school that he was actually a middle child.  So, clearly something scandalous was going on in Duck County, Tennessee in 1914 or maybe it was 1915. Truth was, Grandpa didn't know what year he was born which either points to his lying to join the Army or to a grandmother who was a tart.

Back to Ireland:  My husband says his next wife will be Italian, and if we're allowed to make requests, I'd like to put in for a husband from Killarney.  We didn't visit Killarney this time, but we visit Ireland pretty often and Killarney accents haven't left my head since 2001.  Now, I know throwing out previous trips to Ireland sounds pretty snobby, but visiting Ireland is really no more expensive than taking your family to Disney World--no matter what the commercials say--because at the end of the day, the only thing magical about the Magic Kingdom is that someone coerced you to spend far too much money to wait in far too many long lines for rides that are far too short to justify either the airfare, hotel, $75 tickets, $15 parking fee, or the fighting when no one can agree in which long line to stand.

Also, let's be honest and admit that half the reason anyone goes anywhere is for bragging rights (people who blog about their travels are especially tiresome) and there are 87% more bragging rights for an American who visits Ireland than an American who visits Disney World.  It's a scientific fact.  So, the next time that perfectly-put-together mom of the school's most annoying kid sings, "Well, hello there!  How nice you let your son dress so casually.  My son hates that I make him wear his nice clothes to school events," you can say, "Yeah, I haven't been able to wrestle those jeans from him since we returned from Ireland."  Then, for the first time, you can look at her with feigned sympathy as you push past with an, "Excuse me."  This has actually never happened to me, but I imagine it could if I took an interest in my children's education. 

In any event, here's the off-the-top-of-my-head breakdown of what you can expect to spend for a week in Ireland:
You can frequently buy a ticket from the East Coast to Dublin for $650, and you can stay in a B&B for between 35 and 120 Euro a day, depending on the location. 

Camping Aside:
Although we camped a lot in Europe, camping in Ireland is a bad idea unless you want to see your tent fly like ours did in the Alps (http://www.wirthsummer2012.blogspot.com/2012/06/insomnia-and-flying-tents.html), and/or you don't mind feeling damp and cold before you go to sleep; dreaming about being damp and cold; then, waking up to a cloud of visible breath and no desire to shower or brush your teeth because you're too damp and cold.

It costs $120/week to rent a car (brush up on your manual transmission skills or you'll pay about double for an automatic) and $175/week to rent a minivan.

The only thing that really costs money in Ireland is eating/drinking out, but when you compare it to the cost of the bottled water and hamburger you bought the last time you were at Universal Studios, Ireland is cheaper.  Now, my Dublin friends say nothing is free in Ireland, but you're not going to spend $75/ticket for anything you see (even the Guiness factory costs about $60 for a family ticket), and the best parts of the country are the walks along cliffs and the seaside which are absolutely free....as long as you don't slip.  If you're worried your kids will be bored, I promise they won't.  After all, who needs a roller coaster when you can back down a narrow cliffside road looking into the grill of a tour bus while your kids yell, "watch out for the sheep!"....Well, that was a previous trip when we saw the Ring of Kerry and I was the one yelling about the sheep because we didn't have kids yet. I did, however, have a husband hanging outside the passenger-side window taking pictures of the sheep with child-like enthusiasm while we left the dangerous driving to our Irish friends.

So, in summary, Ireland beats Disney World hands down and I say this with full expectation of either being sued or killed by DW thugs.  Additionally, Ireland holds just as many "wows" as any other country we visited this summer and adds a dash of  "holy cow!" (see pictures below of Mizen Head Signal Station in County Cork).  In fact, the boy declared Ireland to be his favorite part of the summer, and just for the record, after two trips to Orlando, he has never said anything positive about Disney World.  Ever.



View from Mizen Head Signal Station, County Cork

© 2013 Nicole Wirth
Author of:  Letters to Salthill