Things Get Wurz

(Wow, two posts in two days!)

When Katie, a Carleton friend of mine and former language assistant in France, heard that Annalise and I were applying for teaching positions there about 1.5 years ago, she advised against asking for the southern port town Toulon. She, like us, blogged her experiences, which involved lines like “The top ten reasons I hate Toulon,” and “I saw another homeless man masturbating on the sidewalk today while walking home from school, and for some reason this time it made me want to cry.”

Imagine her surprise when I Skyped her from a bar in Toulon! (Stop, what you’re doing right now and imagine it!)

This was unplanned. The original plan had been two nights in Wurzburg, in central Germany, to break-up the interminable journey ahead—from the south of France to Prague. We’d grab the bus back to Marseille, take the seven hour high-speed domestic train ride north (Strasbourg, about an hour away from Nancy), hit four more high-speeds in Germany to arrive in the center, in Wurzburg, at 23:45, fourteen hours after our departing Provence.

Unfortunately, the train to Strasbourg was completely booked. Not knowing what to do, we panicked and got on the next train to anywhere, figuring we could reassess while moving north or east, since time was of the essence.

That was a somewhat stupid idea, and ultimately of no consequence. Instead of drawing up a new game plan, we realized there was no game plan, nothing to do but to delete our first night in Wurzburg and figure out where to go on the way in the north or center of France. All hotels were booked everywhere desirable, including Strasbourg, since it was a) Friday and b) the time when fairy tale Christmas markets were popping out of the grounds of town centers throughout Europe, kinda like the alien tripods at the beginning of War of the Worlds but benevolent. Already knowing all this, we got off at the first town after Marseilles, Toulon, to get down to business.

(As I write this on a train in Germany, I wonder: why can’t European parents discipline their kids? This is getting ridiculous! Everywhere we go, if kids are on the train car, they are running and/or screaming. These German parents smiling. Unbelievable. Our first night in Provence, this Italian couple’s kids were pulling leaves off the plants and shrieking while Fleur-du-cap’s wonderful Harald pulled at his graying hair. Right now, there’s this kid who ran down the aisle to the empty seat behind me. He’s begun pushing the tray table and making all sorts of commotion. German noise is the worst type of noise. His sweatshirt, by the way, says Indiana University. His father is looking at either him or me, smiling like “what can you do?” Everything, asshole! He thinks the train is his kids’ personal playground/babysitter. The primary school kids in France were also misbehaved. I hate hate hate hate European parents.)

So we first had to call to cancel our first night in Wurzburg, which meant we had to find free wifi (why public phonebooth calls from France to Germany are next to impossible is fodder for another, more boring and even more hateful post). We found it here, in front of this abandoned internet café, which was comical even in the moment. Then, we went back to the train station, where we learned the only way up north would be via night-train to Strasbourg. So, instead of taking a seven hour high speed train ride in the day to Strasbourg from Marseille, we were taking a ten hour low-speed one from Toulon. Between now and then, we had 12 hours.

Although at first blush Toulon seemed nice, we don’t question Katie. There were lots of fashionable stores and cafes, and though we didn’t make it to the seashore, we did check out the crappy Christmas market. The palm trees were sloppily strewn with lights by someone who could almost give a shit, and there was an animated polar bear in a Santa hat that swayed its hips sideways while making masturbatory gestures. We went to a Chinese restaurant, and a bar with wifi called Shannons, at which I caught up with Katie, and then we went onto the sleeping car.

The sleeping car was a memorable experience. We had actually tried to get seats, because passengers in sleeping cars are very vulnerable to being robbed, but already all the seats on the night train had been reserved, so couchette it was.

Squishing the definition of the word “room,” a couchette consists of six spare bunks, three on each side, with room in the middle for someone not overweight to be able to turnaround. Each passenger gets a bottle of water, a piece of paper (blanket) and a bag (pillow). I kid, kind of. It’s actually worth the price: there’s nice little reading lights that illuminate only the area of the bed where your head should be placed, and the water bottle is an unexpected amenity. We each had second-level beds across from each other. We thought we were the first ones on the couchette.

“Oh my God! This is hilarious!” Annalise shouted, as she proceeded to take pictures of the “room,” blinding the compartment with flash.

“This is Awesome!” I shouted back. “Check out these lights for reading!!!!”

“I wonder if anyone else will even be in this car, or if we’ll have the whole room to ourselves!”

“I can’t even fit in the bed, ha ha ha!!! Here, eat the laptop so no one steals it!!!!”

“Oh my God, I just noticed the guy up there sleeping! Did you!!!”

“NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DO YOU THINK HE’S ASLEEP?????!!!!!!”

Then we realized that we should be quiet, that we were making fools of ourselves and should not really be talking at all. Which was weird, since it was only 10 p.m., and our plan had been to snack, chat, read and then try to sleep but not succeed.

At the next stop twenty minutes later (back in Marseille), the remaining beds filled. It was Annalise and five guys.

I read for a little bit; Annalise kinda stared off (or so she told me later, it was very dark in the room when the door was closed.) I never got a look at the guy above me because he had already arrived and laid down to sleep before our boisterous entry (see above). When not rolling around awake, he snored damply, like he was draining his sleeping fluids. And man, the guy below Annalise must have thought he had just re-entered the womb. He fell right to sleep and snored (and farted) the whole night.

The couchette was truly a miracle though. Prior to this Europe trip, anyone would tell you that I am a dainty sleeper. I always have earplugs, just in case, and sometimes a blindfold. In the couchette, however, there was no room for me to take off my shoes, and I slept without earplugs to stay alert for intruders, and in all my clothes, my arms around my jacket, which contained my wallet, our passports, and our train passes, and with my computer bag wrapped around my legs, and on top of the blanket. And I slept! Sure, I woke up every time the train braked into a station, almost throwing me out of bed. Otherwise, I was amazed. Annalise did fine too.

At five in the morning the train began hitting stations at which people would disembark. I woke at 5:30 to see a pasty man in a blue coat in our couchette who I didn’t recognize, and within an instant I had seized his arm and yelled “Who are you! Where are you going!”

To this he replied, “Monsieur! A la gare! Maintenant, j’arrive a la gare!” (Mister! At the train station! I arrive at the train station!) and he pointed up to the bed above me, to indicate he had been sleeping there and to pull down a trash bag of stuff. Turns out it was the man who we had no doubt woken upon our entry but had never actually seen.

At 7:30 I waited for Annalise to wake up. Our couchette was still black because the window and door were shut. At 7:58 everyone else disembarked, and Annalise woke up and asked “where are we?”

Within two minutes we were on our half-hour tour of Strasbourg, which pretty much involved free wifi at McDonald’s and a famous cathedral.

We pulled into Wurzburg at 2 in the afternoon, did laundry until 5, walked the town, did the Christmas Market, and hit a bar. I tried a “beer cocktail” called the blackout. You’re probably thinking that must be a really fruity drink with lots of rum and a hint of lager? You weren’t? Neither had I. So it goes.

The hostel was spacious and clean, and we got on six hours more train eight hours later, off to Prague to begin the rest of the trip, which, apparently, will involve only capital cities here on out.

Oh, I almost forgot: pictures.