Sunday, December 5, 2010

Trip to/from Colmar

ohhhhh where to begin? As you can tell from the title, the Colmar adventure was not just in getting and being there, but also in getting back. But I'll back up a few days before I dive into that part of the story.

Friday night, after going shopping for a few things at Porte des Alpes and watching Elf (to get ourselves in the Christmas spirit), Hannah and I went to bed early to get up early early for our train to Colmar. Catching our train was fine, we both grabbed a pastry and coffee, we chatted it up with Caroline and Lindsey on the train, and took a cat nap or 2 in between. Helen and her boyfriend, visiting from England, got on the train at the Bourg-en Bresse stop.

We arrived in Colmar about 11:30am.... excited to be there, but also pretty hungry. We decided to get the lay of the land first and walk around a few markets before finding a place to eat.... which should have been fine had there not been a million people there. These markets were smaller, very cute, and way more crowded than the ones I went to last weekend in Strasbourg. Of course, by the time our hands and feet were frozen through and we were starting to get cranky from hunger, every restaurant we found was full. They had signs saying complet, reopen at 2. So we tried to hold off and walk around more, stopping in a store once to thaw out. We kept our eye out for an open restaurant with no such luck. I was getting to the point of feeling sick from not eating for such a long time, so I went into a restaurant, asked how long, and we waited until we got a table. Thankfully, we only had to wait about 15 minutes to be sat. However, we had to wait about 30 minutes for our food to come out once we had ordered.... we were feeling pressed for more time at the markets, so we ate insanely fast and paid as quickly as we could. (Side note- our waitress was probably really fed up with all the foreign tourists so she was super rude to us the entire time. This was my first experience with a very obviously rude French waitress.... she rolled her eyes at us anytime we asked for something.... slammed things down on the table...ignored us when we tried to get her attention. I guess it's a good thing for her tip is always included in the bill in France!)

After inhaling our food, we were able to enjoy the markets a little more.... even though it was ridiculously crowded. The markets sold different things than in Strasbourg, but still had the vin chaud and other Alsatian delights (pain d'epices or spice bread, gingerbread, pretzels, hot drinks, etc.) We shopped, took pictures, got lost occasionally from one another (it was hard keeping up with 6 people in a large crowd). We found petite Venise (little Venice), a quarter of the town that had cute little bridges over canals and gondolas (snow covered and not in use at this time of year). After buying some pretzels for the ride home and seeing the lights come on, we headed back to the train station.

When we got to the station, the timetable showed that our train was 15 minutes late. We huddled in the book store.... and eventually got on the train about 20 minutes late. On the trip home, everything went fine... we had a great time talking about our favorite topic, the differences between England and America. Helen and Rob got off in Bourg.... and then about 20 minutes later, the train stopped in the middle of nowhere. About this same time, the train became unbearably hot. I guess they wanted to make sure we didn't freeze, but it was so hot and dry, that we often got up to go stand in the little area between the cars where it was cooler. They came on to announce that the tracks were frozen (or something like that) and that we would be waiting here a while. If in 45 minutes, we couldn't continue on, they would send for coach buses to come pick us up. Well, of course, 45 minutes went by, and they came on to say that we'd be rolling our way back to a smaller station to be picked up by the buses. The train ride was supposed to take about 4.5 hours. We sat on the train for a good 7 hours. We didn't get onto the buses (which smelled of body odor and alcohol from some of our fellow passengers) until about 1:40am.... we didn't get off the bus until about 3am... and we didn't get home until about 4am. We had been up since 5:20... so we were working on being up for almost 24 hours. It was a mess. Thankfully, SNCF (the train company) provided us with free taxi rides from the train station to home, as the metro system wasn't running that late. They also gave us little boxed meals with water. And they also gave us reimbursement cards, which we can send in and receive a whole 50% of our ticket price (24 euros.... so 12 euros). But- that's 12 euros I didn't have before.... and an experience I've never had before. I would like to not have this experience again.... but at least I know I can live through it if need be:)

This morning, I made myself get up at 11:30 so I had time to eat, shower, and see Hannah off before going to tutor Julien. We mostly had a conversation in English today, which I think he thought was fun. He doesn't ever get to speak English... so he enjoyed being able to take a second to think through how to formulate a response and have me correct his pronunciation. I also got to learn a little bit more about him and his family (I got to ask lots of questions...and I figured it wasn't considered being nosy if I was providing a language experience hehe). Afterwards, Corinne drove me and my big bags of laundry to the laundromat... hesitantly letting me out....asking if I'd be walking home in the rain and if I'd be ok. I told her I'd take a bus home, which I didn't end up doing (sometimes it's just faster to walk than wait). I'm exhausted still, but I'm very glad to have some laundry done in a real washing machine and dryer done for this week.

Anyway, pictures will be posted tomorrow. I have a few snowy ones from Lyon and lots from yesterday. Hope you enjoyed hearing about my crazy adventure!

Reste cool:)

2 comments:

  1. Ha, I'm worn out just reading your adventures:-} You are all getting to be "pros" on their rail systems.

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  2. So weird...the post I just did was at 3:33 p.m. not 12:32 p.m.

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