Detour

I’m currently riding in a TGV, going to Avignon; listening to the Talking Heads:

And you may find yourself in another part of the world,
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile,
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife.
And you may ask yourself, “Well, how did I get here?”

With all my planning, there was one thing I neglected: making train reservations for the overnight train from Paris to Florence. (This is where all my friends from Europe gasp. Yes, I know, I should have done this weeks before. Yes, I guess I am crazy.) So like hopeful (and naïve) fans trying to get tickets to a concert that was sold out months ago, we head to the train station. The very kind man behind the counter did indeed try to get us on that train in any possible manner (first-class, second-class, cargo…). No luck. How about Milan? Ok, we would just continue on to Florence in the morning. Nope, that one’s full too.

We then started with the creative solutions. We could go to Frankfurt, and then down to Milan on the overnight train. No, our Euro-rail Pass doesn’t cover Germany. What about Switzerland? Nope, only the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Italy are covered with our pass. Maybe we could get into Turin…An hour of searching and nothing was coming up available.

Then came the desperate solutions. Well, let’s try for the south of France tonight, and then carry on to Florence in the morning. After more vigorous searching by the ticket agent, a solution slowly became to materialize.

June 12 (today)
Leave Arrive
Bruges 1234 Kortrijk 1312
Kortrijk 1322 Lille (Flanders Station) 1354
Lille (Europe Station) 1557 Avignon 2011

Hotel in Avignon, to be determined.

June 13 (tomorrow)
Avignon (743) Nice (1101)*
Nice (1339) Ventimiglia (1418)
Ventimiglia (1458) Genova (1706)
Genova (1748) Pisa (2012)
Pisa (2029) Florence (2133)
*We tried to get on a later train, but it was booked.

I was doing ok with the whole thing, trying not to get overwhelmed and keep the “glass is half-full” mentality. David is reading “Angels and Demons” and I bought along knitting (plus this blog) so it won’t be like we have nothing to do on the train. It’ll be a break from all the sightseeing.

Since we had time in Lille, I went to the information booth, for, well, information. (Out came the rusty French.)

“I need a hotel in Avignon. Can you help me?”

“Ahhhh….”

“Do you have a phone number for their tourist information?”

He types on the computer, “Here is their phone number.”

“Thank you. Is there an internet café here?”

“No.”

“Do you have wireless here?”

“No.”

Ok, stay positive. There was a big, beautiful mall right near the station; they must have to have an internet café. Oh no, they don’t. (But people are allowed to bring in their dogs who can crap anywhere they choose. That was odd.) So then I get a phone card, wrestle with the public phone, call the tourist information and got their *$%& voicemail – twice. Alright, let’s call the hotel in Florence so that they do not give out our room since we’ll be coming in so late. I asked a very kind French woman what the international dialing code was since it was no where to be found on that phone. (She looked too, so I know it was not just me being dense.) She went to the information office and got the number for me. (00 – remember that, you too may one day need to know that.) So I call the number I have for the hotel in Florence and explained the situation. Reservation – what reservation? Evidently two hotels worked together for their reservations, but have now decided to take separate reservations; and I was calling the wrong hotel. So he gave me the number to our hotel. It was their fax number.

And you may ask yourself, where does that highway go to?
And you may ask yourself, am I right or am I wrong?
And you may say to yourself, “My God, what have I done?”

And that’s when I started crying in the train station.

DH feels my pain, but is unfazed by this situation. He claims his favorite trip to Europe is when we went to England for two weeks without one hotel reservation. (We stayed at a friend’s house the first part and the very last part of our trip, but other than that, we flew by the seat of our pants. It drove me nuts.) He asked me if I had ever been to Avignon before, and I said no. “Well, guess what? You’re going there today. Surprise!”

The one of the positive in all this craziness is that our Euro-rail pass is first-class. Though we will be on an ungodly amount of trains, most will be first-class with a little more leg room and overall a nicer experience. (In the TGV, DH and I are facing each other with a small table between us, there’s even an outlet on the side of the seat, so my laptop can charge as I type.)

Before I left the US, I had lunch with a dear colleague who was telling me about a road trip she was planning this summer with her four-year old daughter to Iowa. I told her about the times we took road trips to visit family in Wisconsin; Nebraska is a pain to drive though, but Iowa is so pretty. I love looking at the farms on the rolling hills; it can be a very picturesque drive. While we were talking about I was almost jealous – I want to go on a road trip. Listening to music, looking out the window, eating Twizzlers – such good times. She looked at me as if I was crazy, “You’re going to Europe and Egypt and you’re jealous of me going to Iowa?” Yes, in some ways I was. And now what am I doing? Sitting, listening to music, looking out the window at the picturesque countryside, and eating Haribo cola gummies, because they don’t have Twizzlers here. So maybe, just maybe, in some weird, twisted way, this is what I wanted all along.