Hello from Somewhere?
Draft started: Thursday morning/afternoon – June 2, 2016 (eleventh post of this travelogue)
Posted: Friday afternoon – June 3,2016
Why that title? Well it seems that there is a train strike in France and we have no idea where we will end up. Our train from Nimes to Lyon was delayed 2.5 hours and that, of course, caused us to miss our connection to Karlsruhe. We are trying to make as much progress towards Karlsruhe as the trains will allow. It is possible that we will be able to get a train from Lyon to Strasburg. If we are able to do that, Irina and Matthias will drive down and pick us up there. I will update our situation towards the end of this post.
BTW, I am drafting this post on two different trains.
As the day progressed, I decided to convert part of this blog into a diary format to capture our “unique” day.
6:30 Catch taxi to train station.
7:00 Arrive at train station and verify that our train is running (because of the strike). Then go to have coffee at the street café across the street.
8:00 Get ready to go the train platform only to learn that it is 20 minutes late. That means we will miss the connecting train to Karlsruhe. Scurry to the ticket office with a ton of other folks only to find there is not much they can do. They gave me a possible schedule on three additional trains that might work. No way for they to assign us seats.
8:30 Go to platform only to learn that the train was going to be an hour late.
11:00 Depart Nimes 2.5 hours late.
12:20 Arrive Lyon France and try to set up a reserved seat for a train to Strasbourg, France. Basically they said to get on the train and do the best you can. BTW, the strike cancelled the 14:32 train (most things are in military time in Europe) and the only remaining direct train was the 16:08 train. However, they could not book seat reservations for us.
16:08 Get to platform and find the train is 5 minutes late. No big deal – except there are a ton of people all trying to get on the same train (one train cancelled caused twice the passengers for this train). We got on the first class car and all the seats were either full or reserved. A nice couple crowded together and a smaller lady joined them (3 people in two seats) so that Pat could have a seat. For the first hour and a half Pat and I “shared” a seat.
17:40 The train stops at a small town and several people get off. Now we have our own seats –but not together.
18:11 Another stop and we are forced to change seats again, but at least we have seats.
20:00 Train arrives in Strasbourg about 20 minutes late. We meet Irina, Matthias and Viktor on the train platform.
21:30 (9:30 PM) arrive at Irina and Matthias’ apartment in Karlsruhe, Germany . Wow, what a day!
As soon as we knew that our first train was delayed and we would miss our connection, we began emailing Irina to let her know that we had a problem. After several emails we worked it out to where She and maybe Matthias will drive down to Strasbourg to meet us and drive us back to their place (about an hour each way).
Apparently train strikes are common in parts of Europe. They last for a few days. The train strike today involved the French railroad. It appears that some trains are cancelled today (buses show on the screen) and others are delayed by quite a bit (like ours). I guess in the states we would call it a work slow down/stoppage. I think we heard that the aircraft controllers in Paris will be going on a strike this week. Hope that gets over, as that is where we fly out of on 6/14.
Now to catch up on few things.
In the last post we mentioned visiting three fantastic structures in Nimes. I should have pointed out that each was within a relatively short walking distance from our apartment. The greatest distance was perhaps 0.4 miles – again emphasizing our location in the middle of the historic area.
As you can tell, I do quite a bit of internet research for these blogs. It is fun for me to learn more about our travels and establish links that we can refer to later on. The interesting/frustrating situation is that we are using local internet connections (mostly Wifi in the apartments) and that directs the Google searches to sites that are in the language of the country we are in. For example, most of the links I use are to Wikipedia pages. They come up in Spanish in Spain, French in France, etc. There are settings that attempt to funnel you to English sites, but it works poorly. Many sites have a translate option, but that option has to be exercised on each page of the site – a pain. For the most part, I have been able to work around the situation with special search strings, or going deep in the Google list.
When we arrived in Nimes, we were a few hours early from being able to check into the apartment. The Nimes train station was the old fashion style station with the train on the second floor, and stairs or elevator to the ground level. When we got to the ground level, we found that we were on a large, tree laden walking mall that led to the Arena. Just outside the train station there were a couple of sidewalk restaurants. We chose one and had lunch (see photos). It was so beautiful and relaxing – until- a huge rain storm came in. We were under umbrellas (in picture), but it was raining so hard that the water was coming through the umbrella fabric. We were able to go inside the restaurant and dry out a bit.
It is a relatively short walk from the train station to the apartment (perhaps a mile) but Pat’s knees are very bad and we chose to take a Taxi. For our return to the train station our Airbnb host was kind enough to arrange a taxi for 6:30 this morning at a location that not too far from the apartment – recall that cars were not permitted in our area. Our train was scheduled to leave at 8:30 but left late as noted above.
Tuesday I walked to the Train station to get our seat reservations for this trip – little value now {frown}. It was a nice walk, but I pushed the distance limit for my knee as it was a mess when I got back. I have been testing not using the brace, wondering if it contributed to my knee issues after perhaps a mile or two of walking. It turns out that the crappy old knee has developed a distance tolerance and when I exceed that limit, I am in trouble – brace or no brace. The brace feels so good that I am back to using it – especially when I know I have to do stairs and luggage at the same time {grin}. The brace is a double hinge unit that gives great side to side stability.
I have attached another bread/cheese/meat meal picture from our apartment, as it has been a frequent occurrence. I think Pat has had her fill, but I really enjoy the meal and it brings back fond memories of long ago trips to Europe. The past two nights we did eat dinner at the restaurant just below our apartment. I think it is kind of a fancy place, but we enjoyed both meals (we think we know what we were eating {big grin}).
Dinner at the resturant below our aoartment
I have discussed the wonderful bakeries that have been close to each of our locations. This time the bakery was outstanding and had the best chocolate éclairs (photo).
Choclate Eclairs (Note bag with old style over)
Several times I have touched on the fact that this trip is at a much slower pace and quite different from our previous trips. The slower pace has been dictated by our knees (and a few years under our belt {grin}). That has turned out to be a good thing. We have had lots of time to relax and soak in the character of locations where we stayed. The other major difference has been the Internet. It has allowed us to research trains, Airbnbs, commercial city tours, as well as information about our locations. We set up our phones to be able to get unlimited texts (except on the ship) and calling rates that are acceptable for urgent calls. Obviously, we have email with the Wifi connections. Overall, we are not nearly as concerned about communicating with our family back in the USA.
That is all for this post.