Tuesday 10:00 p.m.

After 22 hours of trains and planes, I am home.

Tuesday 2:00 p.m.

My train got into Munich with an extra hour before I had to take the subway for my flight. I could either publish a blog, or explore. So I ventured out into town for a sausage and a beer in the middle of the main square of Munich. Definite bonus that I had not been planning on. That also means that I only bought one Coke and no water while I was in Europe. That proves that one can live off of pretzels and beer (bretzels und bier). I even had time to snap a picture of the Church in Munich.

Sidebar. Another difference between France and Germany which I am sure that I am not the first to notice is how anal/lax they are about crossing streets. French people ( and Americans, I suppose) cross whenever there is no traffic. Germans sit there and wiat for the cross signal even if there is nothing coming for a quarter mile. Interesting about the people's mindsets.

Tuesday 9 a.m.

Spent one last night in Strasbourg. I actually even found a local bar. I know it was local because nobody said a word of English to me. I did manage to get a bunch of American songs to get played in the jukebox though.

Well, on the train to Munich. I must have gotten first class somehow on my trip from Paris to Strasbourg because this isn't the same at all. From Paris I was in my own separate compartment of only six seats, only one of which was used part of the way. I could lie down and everything. This one today is your typical train. It was almost completely empty until we got to Karlsruhe and Stuttgart. Standing room only (is that legal?) I feel a bit more comfortable now that we are in Germany. The language is at least somewhat familiar.

I will see everyone when I get home.

Monday 5:00 pm

Everything is closed on Mondays. I wish somebody would have told me this before I booked a train to the small town where my ancestors were from. I got there, just to wander about past 5 restaurants that were all closed, two churches -closed, the library - closed. So here I am struck in a small town, (picture something between Malvern and Glenwood-sized) with the next train not coming for 4 hours. Oh, did I mention that it was sleeting, as it has every day since I've been here. That's especially a problem considering my shoes have cracks in the bottom of them and don't hold out water. My feet haven't been dry for days.

Anyway, I used this as an opportunity to test my Amazing Race skills. I approached four women outside the elementary school. They didn't speak English, but I somehow found myself being driven to the only open restaurant in town, a Doner Kebab shop. I wasn't about to spend four hours waiting for a train there. Instead, one of the women invited me to her house and warmed me up (stop what you're think, Chad) with some coffee and X-mas cookies. Anyway, she called up her friends who are Schupps, the name of my ancestors from this town. I know that we were related, but they didn't seem to catch on (remember, language barrier here). They kept looking at the other names on my list and shaking their heads no. I didn't know how to tell them that Smith, Seyler, and the other names on my sheet were all names that came into my family AFTER the Schupps arrived in America in 1730.

This brings me to another topic. Am I French or German? When my ancestors left the Alsace region for American, they spoke German and thus married other Germans in America. As we all know, Alsace has changed hands three times between then and now, and currently lies in France. The people speak French. Here is what I was not expecting though. They hate the Germans. Understandably they are still upset about WWII when Germany attacked France and Alsace. However, it goes further. When the Germans took over Alsace in the 1880's they imposed the German language on everybody and forbade French. Interestingly, the French did the same thing after World War I. At the end of the day, many people don't consider themselves French or German. I therefore, claim myself as an Alsatian.

Anyway, I was able to track down a bus that went to a nearby town. From there I was able to get a train back to Strasbourg and civilization.

My train leaves tomorrow for Munch. Then a direct flight to Chicago.

Sunday 11:00 p.m.

In my hotel room in Strasbourg. I had hoped to be in the little town of Mertwiller tonight, but the B&B was all booked up. It is the beginning of X-mas season over here and apparently Strasbourg is the focal point. Tonight was one of those moments where everything seems surreal. Attached is a really bad picture of one of the sight streets by my hotel. The only thing that I can think of is the end of the movie “Catch Me If You Can” when they catch Leonardo in a French village Mont Richard. It has the feel around here with all of the X-mas lights, vendors. It even started to snow (It should more probably be called sleet, but it’s writer’s privilege) as I was going around chewing my Bretzel and looking for X-mas presents. Just then, I realized that the song in the background was “I saw Mother kissing Santa”; oh well.
There is an amazing Cathedral here. More impressive on the outside than Notre Dame de Paris. (this one is Notre Dame de Strasbourg)

Went to a couple of museums today as well. One was the archeological museum. The had bones and such, but what I was really interested in was the Roman founding of the city. Strasbourg was originally a Roman fort on the Rhine. This museum and tons and tons of Roman stuff, like 5 foot tombstones of general of Augustus’ 2nd legion in 100 A.D. It made me think of Bob and I get excited about finding a railroad spike from a hundred years ago. Here, farmers dig up Roman ruins. Crazy.

My thoughts on France for the day: 1. I take back what I said about Europe not having any fat people. This is the land of Handsel and Gretal and there are some German speaking people who sure were chowing their food at lunch, and you could tell it wasn’t the first time.

Saturday 4:04 pm

I am writing on board of a train waiting to go to Strasbourg. We’re still in the station, so I thought that I would get a few thoughts down.

Not much has happened since I last wrote. Hit a few more touristy spots, and wandered the area around my hotel quite a bit. Then I slept, and slept, and slept. It was the worst hotel that you can imagine. Thus, I loved it. I was on the sixth floor, with no stairs. The nearest toilet was a floor down. I don’t even know where the shower was. I somehow found electricity and bought a DVD at a little record store so I was able to watch a movie as I fell asleep.

Woke up to snow. Took the subway to the Eiffel Tower. Sidebar about the Paris subways. They are great. You can literally get anywhere from anywhere in no time at all. The walk that took me three hours from Arc de Triumph down Champs de Elysses was covered in 10 minutes from hotel to Arc by the subway. When I got the Eiffel Tower there were no tours going up. I suppose it was because of the snow. My in my brilliance, knew of a skyscraper a few miles away that also had viewdeck. I thought that would be a good way to full the day. Problem is that by the time I get there, the snow had stopped and Paris just looked like a wet, damp, mess; not the beautiful snow-covered place it was just a few hours before. And I am sure that the Eiffel Tower was open again by then. I was running short on time, so I took the subway to the train station and now I am pulling out of the station on my way to Strasbourg.

A few more thoughts on Parisians: First, as with everywhere in Paris, no fat people. That makes it very hard for me to figure out who to look down on. That also makes it difficult to figure out who the poor people are. Second: Everyone is darker here than I pictured. There is a large Middle-Eastern population here which explains quite a bit of that. It’s not the Paris I pictured though when I eat dinner at a place run by two people from Turkey.

Point at which I knew I was going to get no work done while here: When it was 6 a.m. and I chose to watch Far and Away for a second time rather than break out the work I brought with me.

Friday 12:15

Bonjour. Made it to Paris successfully. My flight from Omaha to Chicago was only 1/6 full and there was no security line at all which means that I could have had Thanksgiving dinner and still made it with plenty of time. Darn it.

By the way, Charles De Gualle airport is a dump. Then took some bus that took forever to dump me off at the Arc de Triumphe (see pic below) It's kind of chilly here, but tolerable. I was told to expect snow which should make things pretty. Hey, and a couple of people have already stopped me and started talking French, so maybe I don't look like that big of a toursit. As usual, you can spot most Americans a mile away. After walking about for a couple of hours passed the Louvre and such I found a cafe with pizza and Wi-Fi. Score! From my window right now I am looking out at the Cathedral of Notre Dame. That is my next stop before I try to find this dump of a hotel that I have for tonight. I want to go out to a bar, but my book says that there are a lot of gays in the area I'm staying in. (Personally, I don't know how you tell a gay French gay apart from any other French guy.)

First impressions of Paris: I think it is hard to capture the feel of a country/region in a city this big. It reminds of D.C./Chicago, etc;. Can't wait to see all of the sights and then move to a smaller place.

Thursday 1:45

Sitting in Pauli’s at the airport. Arrived here about 1:15 expecting at least some minor delay in boarding. Not a single person in line to check-in. I used to Easy Check-In which took all of 3 minutes. Checked the security check and there was nobody in line. I guess its true that everybody travels the day before Thanksgiving, and nobody travels on Thanksgiving itself. I therefore had time to buy a $4 Godfather’s pizza (I know, get used to spending lots of money going to Paris) and have a “bon voyage” Bud Light.

Itenerary

Here is my scheduled itenerary:

Thursday - Leave Omaha
Friday morning - Arrive Paris
Saturday afternoon - Train to Strasbourg
Sunday-Monday - Explore Strasbourg and surrounding towns
Tuesday - Train to Munich. Flight to Omaha