Flying to Europe for Free, Great Art, and Taking the Night Train to Paris

By: Matt & Laurel Talley

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I was given the opportunity to travel to Germany this summer for work and bring Laurel along so she could experience the land of her forefathers. She was all-in! Traveling on the company dollar is NEVER a bad thing. As our planned departure neared my company, Panasonic, changed the date on us three times: once the day before we were to leave. All the changed plans and slipping dates were frustrating for us both, but we finally got a concrete travel date near the end of July.

I have flown to Europe for my job something like thirteen times in the last three years and have tried every conceivable airline and every gateway city. I usually fly Air France because I can use the miles gained on Delta Airlines flights to see my kids. I love the service and the food even in cattle-class on Air France flights, but I despise Charles de Gaulle Airport. I have come to think of it as a necessary evil when I travel. The terminal layouts are confusing and getting from one gate to another can involve going out of one terminal down to the parking structure and up to another terminal. Gates change with no announcement, there is almost no seating at the gates – long layovers suck – and the French/any traveler at CDG does not have the ability to queue. Standing in an orderly formed line is as foreign to them as Christmas trees are to the Martian landscape. I just deal with it, but I didn’t want the start of Laurel’s first trip to the continent to be tainted by CDG. Instead, I booked our flights through British Airways and Heathrow, which is usually a much more civilized airport. The best laid plans of mice and men…

Our flight from LAX to Heathrow wasn’t too bad: The movies were good, we had a middle section of four seats to ourselves so we could spread out stretch our legs properly, the food was tasty (not a small feat for anything even mentioning the term “British”), and the wine flowed freely. Laurel says: I decided that since this was my first international flight as a legal drinker, and the start of my summer vacation, I would buy a glass of wine when the flight attendant came by with the beverage cart. I was surprised when she not didn’t charge me AND handed me two small bottles instead of one. Matt made jokes about how I was sure to get drunk and I made him promise to help me drink them. When dinner came, we were given more wine – three more small bottles. Matt did help some but he also egged me on quite a bit and I know I finished at least three myself. There were five empties in the pouch in front of my seat and the flight attendant asked in her British accent if she could take them for me “so I wouldn’t be embarrassed.” Matt cracked up and I was mortified as I tried to put the bottles on her tray and they all fell over.

We took some Benadryl to help us fall asleep early and when Matt woke me up for “breakfast” (at 1:00 am our time) I had one of the worst hangovers ever. It’s not every day I get super drunk, take sleeping aids, and then wake up at 1:00 am ready to start the day! I did feel better after we landed at Heathrow and had some real breakfast. We had a nine-hour layover and had planned on taking the tube into the city, but discovered that we weren’t allowed to leave the airport. We found some nice big red leather chairs and took a nap. The flight to Hamburg was short and uneventful. I had a window seat for once (I usually prefer an aisle seat if I can get it) and got to take in the scenery as we flew over the ocean, the Netherlands and into Germany.

We arrived in the Hamburg a few hours before dusk and after checking into our hotel, explored a little before having a bite to eat. Laurel says: We checked in the Radisson SAS and took a cab down to the Reeperbaun/St. Pauli district for dinner at a good Chinese place Matt really liked from previous trips. The food was yummy and we had to eat until our bellies hung over our belts because we didn’t have a way to take home leftovers. After dinner we walked around St. Pauli, visited “novelty” shops and pretended we weren’t looking at the prostitutes lined up outside Burger King. We saw an interesting/disturbing display of erotic photos in the basement “museum” in one of the sex shops, as well as a glass case full of S & M Barbie and Ken dolls for sale, complete with leather clothes, whips, toys and a Barbie-sized torture rack. Weird…

The weather in Germany and all of Europe that summer had been uncharacteristically hot and we arrived at just the tail end of the heat wave. As we walked around our first night there, I couldn’t imagine us finding better weather and took it as a sign of a great trip to come.

We went to bed early the first night and were up early the next morning and off to see the Hamburg Fish Market. It happens every Sunday morning and has for hundreds of years. Laurel and I walked from stall to stall, buying small stuff and sampling local food before walking around the neighborhood on the inland side of the Market. At some point Laurel had to use the bathroom and we found a public restroom built into an arch of a bridge that was constructed in 1850-something. Laurel went in and came right back out with an odd look on her face: “I have to pay thirty cents to use the bathroom?!” I nodded; that is just the way it is in Germany. She went back and after a time came back with an even stranger look on her face. It had cost her thirty cents to use the restroom AND an additional twenty cents to wash her hands. The odd expression was because it was not mandatory to pay the second fee and some didn’t, leaving the place without washing up. The experience was her first taste of German culture. I think that she expected hand washing to be mandatory with a prescribed amount of time spent lathering up and detailed social rules for how long a good German should hold their hands under the water. Wile the Germans DO like to have order in their lives, not every German stereotype is applicable all of the time…

Laurel standing in front of a butcher's wagon as we started our Fish Market tour.

Laurel says: Matt had been to the “Fischmarkt” early one Sunday morning the year before and said it was where the St. Pauli girls went to relax at the end of their long night. We got there too late to see the girls, but there were still plenty of odd people to people-watch. There were also stalls selling fresh fish, as well as fried fish and raw onion sandwiches, fresh fruit and veggies, plants, tourist crap, and general swap meet stuff. It was very crowded with tourists and we left after awhile to see the original Fish Market building and wander around. We ate fresh croissants, warm candied nuts and fruit, and then took some photos.

Hamburg Rathaus Platz.

Another site Matt wanted to see was the St. Nikolai church. It was bombed during WWII and left standing as a reminder of the horrors of war. It’s beautiful in its own terrible way. We took an elevator to the top of the tower and saw a lovely view of the city. There is a WWII museum in the basement of what was the old church. To get to it one must walk across the courtyard and climb down through a small glass pyramid that was built over the entrance to the basement.

I worked the next week while Laurel went to shops, museums, and for walks around the city to get her bearings. Laurel says: I took two different bus tours of Hamburg right at first to get my bearings in the city. The first one was supposed to be in both German and English, but it ended up being mostly German with just a sentence or two in English almost as an afterthought. The second time I spoke with the driver to make sure there would be an English translation. He assured me that he spoke four languages – German, English, Spanish and Portuguese – and would do “much better than the red bus.” When I still wasn’t convinced, he did one better and asked a young man who was training as a guide to sit with me. He name was Daniel and he had recently moved to the city with his girlfriend from a tiny town between Hamburg and Berlin. Daniel was funny – he told me he’d stayed out partying until 5 am the night before – but his English was good and he translated everything knew the English words for. The tour buses are double-decker convertible-style, so we sat up top outside in the sunshine. The tour took us around the old city, St. Pauli, and around both “alsters” (lakes.) Hamburg is a shipping town situated between a few rivers and two lakes, the Binnenalster and the Aussenalster. The rest of the week I visited museums and generally explored the city. Our hotel was right next to a gorgeous green space called Planten und Blomen. It’s a large park with a botanical garden, Japanese garden, waterways covered in water lilies, and lots of paths to walk and chairs and benches everywhere so people can enjoy the scenery and bask in the sunshine.

On one of my walks through the park I took a wrong turn and ended up in a cool neighborhood full of shops, apartments, pubs, and graffiti art. I went into a store called “Old Dogs” which looked like a used clothing store. People keep telling me how expensive clothing is in Germany so I checked some prices to see for myself. They had a pair of used Chuck Taylors for 30 euros (around $50!) and an old pair of Adidas for 90 euros (over $130 at the current exchange rate)! I was shocked, and only partially appeased after I spoke with the owner. The shop only sells vintage clothing (hence the high prices) and also specializes in brand new vintage stuff – items that were backordered and left over from the 1970s. Pretty cool. I bought a few used books at a book sale in the Schladhthof passage and actually managed to use a little German during the transaction. I was very proud of myself! I walked by a store called “Druck Dealer” which I thought was odd, and when I went home later I looked it up and “Druck” means “pressure.” Perhaps just a play on words? Crazy Germans… I also saw a bubble gum pink vintage Mercedes parked along the curb and wished I had brought the camera!

Finding my way around the city was one thing on foot, and quite another when I tried to use the subway. We were one stop up from the Haupbahnhof (main station) which is the second busiest station in all of Germany. I found it difficult to find the correct train home one day and ended up getting so frustrated that I took a taxi. The driver was an older Rastafarian guy who was a bit too friendly. He said he was “so excited to meet me because has always wanted to go to Los Angeles and had never met anyone from there.” During the ride he asked me to sit up front, wanted to send me a post card to LA, asked for my phone number and when I declined he later asked if I would like to go to Africa with him! Um, no. This was just one of the many crazy Germans I met on my stay.

The Germans love food just as much as I do, but sometimes our tastes differ a bit. Everywhere I went I saw stands hawking cold fish fillet (skin still on) sandwiches with raw onions and lots of mayonnaise. I ate lunch at one of the museums and had a buffet of traditional German fare: potatoes in oil, potatoes in mayonnaise, cold pickled fish, arugula salad dripping with oil, and crusty bread. One night Matt and I went walking in search of a restaurant for dinner and stumbled upon a Southern German food festival in one of the passages near the Rathaus. It was literally impossible for me to find something “Laurel friendly” for dinner as the German’s main staple is pork, and things covered in cheese. I did manage to find a plate of stewed mushrooms and a tasty apple strudel. One can locate good food if one knows where to look. Japanese, Chinese and Italian all seemed safe enough. Trader Vic’s restaurant and Mai Thai Bar (in our hotel) served amazing food and drinks (although the service was atrocious.) Matt ordered steak and I had fried halibut over bok choy in a miso glaze, followed by coconut “Kama’aina” cocktails and a coffee flavored crème Brule covered in raspberries. (This is where I got caught red-handed trying to steal a menu… I have a growing menu collection and I usually just take to-go menus, unless I really, really liked a place. Don’t worry, I went back later and got one when nobody was looking.) And please let’s not forget the ubiquitous Donner Kebab stands. There is one (or two or three) on every corner and they serve up lots of yummy treats. Their main offering is grilled meat that comes in a huge kabob and is shaved off with a huge knife or small kitchen saw when you order. The second time we were in St. Pauli I ordered a chicken Donner and sat in gastronomic bliss washing it down with a beer right on the street while watching the St. Pauli girls hawk their “wares.”

The Hamburger Dom is an impressive carnival that comes to Hamburg a couple of times a year. Its set in a large empty field about a square block or so big, with the fair in a large circle and the carnies’ trailers enclosed within an inner ring. The DOM was situated so that we were able to walk to it from our hotel and on our first visit (We visited the Dom a few times, once just to get corn on the cob on a stick while passing by - my idea.)I chattered happily about my plans for a giant beer and some greasy-fried-goodness all the way from our room. Immediately upon walking into the fairgrounds I noticed the swinging chair ride (plastic seats dangling from chains that spin you around in a circle 20+ feet off the ground), which I had never ridden before. As a child, I was once strapped in and ready to go, but I got scared and got off before the ride started. I watched wistfully from the ground as my dad and his friend made their chairs swing back and forth trying to hit each other. I always said I would ride it someday and this is the story I used to convince Matt to get on it with me. His rule is “no spinny rides” which I discovered was an amazing carnival rule after about 30 seconds of the ride. I wandered around for the next hour trying to calm my stomach, which was a bit difficult considering all the bright flashing lights, loud noises, and smells of cigarettes and fried foods. Matt played a number of games where he shot at things. I discovered that this makes him happy. He won me a bunch of prizes including some plastic roses and a stuffed pink pig that I had my eye on. I named him “swine” (pronounced “svine-ah,” which means pig in German.)

As I felt better, I managed to sample the foods available in the different stalls. I have never seen so much candy and chocolate in my life! We had corn on the cob, candy covered peanuts, strawberries on a stick covered in dark chocolate, a paper cone filled with “pomme frites” (French fries) and a few icy fruit drinks. We couldn’t read the flavors in German and the booth vendors spoke no English, so we tasted a few of the flavors and tried to guess what they were. Mine tasted awful until I realized it was peach. Funny how the brain works like that.

After working all week as Laurel enjoyed the sights of Hamburg, I had the next weekend off and thought it would be nice to take Laurel to Paris since we were relatively close. As luck would have it, there was a direct night train from the Hamburg Dammtor station straight to the Paris Gare Du Nord. The night train to Paris: it sounds so romantic and conjures up images of wine, soft lighting, laughter, kissing, cuddling, the gentle swaying on the cars, and the whoosh of air as one passes by platforms on the outskirts of small hamlets… Such an experience might seem unforgettably exotic and amazing, huh? Nothing could have been further from the truth… We were sardined into a 1985-décor, six-seat second-class cabin: three seats on each side facing each other. Our first roommate was an older German man who said absolutely nothing for the entire eleven-hour journey. His one contribution to the shared space was smelly feet. During the early evening, he slipped his loafers off and a foul stench flooded the cabin that was inescapable, no matter how you turned your head or what you pressed up to your face. There was a family of three that shared the cabin for a couple of hours and got off before the Belgian border – hopping off the train to flee foot odor no doubt… That left Laurel, Herr Sewer-Socks and I to stretch our legs out to the seat in front of us and sleep semi-comfortably. Around two or three in the morning, a skinny Frenchman in very short running shorts comes through the door like he weighed four-hundred pounds: grunting, thrashing his bags around, and trying to make as much noise as possible. We all moved our feet so that he could get his stuff situated and he took this as an invitation to throw one bag on the floor, one overhead, slip off his shoes, and stretch across all three seats on the other bench like a seal basking in the Pacific sun. He was the only motherfucker that slept for the rest of the night. By the time we pulled into the Paris Nord train station, I was having fantasies about kicking the snoring little bastard square in the nuts. I wanted a pound of flesh in trade for his comfy sleep that night, but I couldn’t feel my butt and my spine felt like it had been reshaped into a question mark.

The train station was a labyrinth and as we ascended from its bowels – limping a shuffling from our contorted stiffness and looking for a bathroom, we saw everyone from beggars to the chicest of ladies holding their terriers in one hand and a cigarette with the other. There were backpackers, whole families, musicians, couples in love, soldiers with serious firepower strapped to their chests, and school groups running in the lower halls like mice in a maze. After what seemed like hours, we emerged into the light of day and went directly to a café to stretch our tired bodies in the sun and to have coffee and crepes – as any civilized person would do.

It was at this part of our journey that my job as cultural envoy, interpreter, and tour guide began. It had been almost three years since I was in France for more than a day and my French had become terrible. I was so scared that I would wonder around asking “Parlez-vous l'anglais?” I took me an hour or so to get my brain into gear, but after that words and meanings flooded back in. I can honestly say that not one time during the whole weekend did I have to resort to English with someone because I couldn’t understand them and while I am sure that my rough and plain French offended their Parisian sensibilities, no one seemed to notice or make a big deal out of it.

We went directly from breakfast to the Louvre (only the English pronounce the damn 'r') in an attempt to beat the crowds. We both packed really light for the weekend and the museum has a bag check area, so we were free to walk its halls and galleries unencumbered. One can’t imagine all the works of art that we saw in just four hours. There were marble sculptures that seemed alive, bronze that spoke to both the soul and loin, Impressionist, Renaissance, Modern, Baroque paintings that almost spoke. Contrary to popular opinion, I didn’t feel that the Mona Lisa was either too small or too dark. We did beat the crowds somewhat, but even with our early start, people were everywhere and we had to almost push our way to see some of the more popular and famous works of art. It may sound odd since the upper floors and three wings of the Louvre are filled with masterworks, but one of our favorite parts of the tour was visiting the ruins of the fortress that the Louvre was built upon. There is an excavation of the medieval central tower and moat walls that have been uncovered under the museum and for now you can walk through the shadows and see the foundations.

Laurel says: Matt may cringe, but I’ve been wanting to visit the Louvre ever since I read The da Vinci Code three years ago. (I have a da Vinci Code traveling diary which is meant to be a companion to the novel. There is information about each of the places visited and room to write your own thoughts and impressions. I was told that under no uncertain terms was I to “whip that out” in the museum or in front of any French people.) As for the Louvre, I had no idea it was so impressive! It had been, in some form or another, a palace for many French kings, including Napoleon I, before being turned into an art museum. I’ve heard that there has been some love it/hate it debate if France over the glass pyramid entrance in the courtyard. It’s beautiful, and I love pyramids, but I will have to agree that it doesn’t really go with the building. However, the way that the two pyramids meet below ground level in the entrance gallery was very cool.

Laurel standing in front of the entrance pyramid. Click on the picture for another shot of her after touring the museum.

Matt touching the space between the two internal pyramids.

We did the “Louvre Lite Tour” (seeing the whole thing could take a week or more) and saw the Mona Lisa, Winged Victory, etc, and also toured the royal jewels (wow!). There was an exhibition detailing the many renovations the palace has undergone and the history that goes along with such changes. As Matt said, we liked seeing the Louvre itself almost better than the treasures within. It was humbling to walk down those huge, gilded hallways and imagine kings and their mistresses in full court dress tracing the same steps centuries ago.

One of the many fine marble sculptures in the Grecco-Roman gallery.

The beautiful Winged Victory.

After getting our room we walked down a side street to a recommended boulangerie and had some amazing little quiches for lunch. We took them with us and ate them at the edge of the Tuileries Gardens. They were the absolute best quiches that I have ever had. The crust was flakey and warm, the inside was not overpowered by any one ingredient and they each were just the right size to be filling. After lunch we walked down to the River Seine and along its banks toward Point Neuf. We walked across the bridge there to the Ile De La Cite, a large Island in the middle in the Seine, and on to the Notre Dame Cathedral. The church is impressive. The twin bell towers are massive and covered with the most ornate of carvings. The pedestrian square in the front was filled with people, gawking, snapping pictures, and lining up to get inside the structure. We both wanted to see the interior, but it would have meant standing in line for over an hour – that just wasn’t going to happen. Instead, we agreed to return and visit when the weather was cooler and when the crowds had thinned, then took a walk around the outside – taking in the relief carvings, gargoyles, stained glass, sculptures, iron work, and stone buttresses that are so famous.

Spires of Notre Dame. Click on the picture for a frontal view.

 

Views of both the flying butresses holding up the massive internal archway and carvings. Click on photo for a more famous view of the entire cathedral.

After our circumnavigation of Notre Dame, we walked over a short bridge to my favorite bookstore in the entire world: Shakespeare & Co., which has been at the same location since 1951; a Mecca for writers and artists from the very start. The shop is crammed full of the most wonderful smelling old volumes. Every conceivable space was stuffed and stacked with books from fiction to physics. It has nooks, crannies, a writer’s hostel, book closets, warm overstuffed chairs, old wood, and more than half a century of history just barely contained within its walls. The shop is an amazing place to spend an afternoon or even a weekend for a true bibliophile. Laurel says: What was once Matt’s favorite bookstore is now our favorite bookstore. Shakespeare and Co. is everything a bookstore should be.

Laurel was exhausted after our full day, so we skipped walking back to the hotel and took a cab back to our room and napped for an hour or so. Laurel went out like a light and I went to the lobby and asked for a recommendation for dinner. The concierge made a couple of suggestions, made the reservation for us, and promised to have a cab waiting at the appointed time. That done I went back to the room, took some Tylenol, and laid down with Laurel. My head had been pounding for the previous two hours. I attributed it to having to think, speak and interact in French after so much time away and then translate it all for Laurel into English. The nap helped as did the shower after that. By the time we walked downstairs, I was much better. We had decided to visit the Eiffel Tower at dusk and Laurel, as usual, was a stunner with a turquoise silk top, her hair up, in a black skirt, and wearing wonderfully sexy shoes.

Dinner that night was amazing! We had a house rose wine that was delectable and the crème brulee we had for desert was absolutely the best that I have ever eaten. Laurel says: The wine was truly delicious and I have never eaten yummier mashed potatoes. (As Matt’s mom says, ‘the child loves mashed potatoes…’) Dinner that evening was everything I hoped for: scrumptious food as only the French can do, tasty wine, a secluded corner in a cozy café, all one could want for a romantic night in Paris. After dinner, we had a talk at the hotel about how disappointing our one trip to the Eiffel was and agreed that instead of wallowing in disappointment, we would change clothes, go back, and make a better memory there. It worked like a charm! We arrived at the tower while it was going through its once hourly strobe display, which everyone should see from the balcony of the Tracadero. On the upper balcony was a large drum circle or what looked to be East African men and people dancing to the drums as we hugged, kissed, and split our attention between the tower and the drums. It afforded us post-card views of the landmark and made for a really nice cap to our first day in Paris.

The next morning we slept in a little later than we meant to – big surprise… It was the first Sunday of the month and most of the major museums are free that day. Free admission + the middle of summer = mass hysteria. If one wants to visit any of the city’s museums on that day they should arrive an hour before it opens or just a couple of hours before it closes to have any hope of avoiding long lines and pushy crowds. We headed to the Musee d’Orsay to spend our morning among the Impressionists. Laurel and I have different tastes in music, but we both like and love the same Impressionist and Post-Impressionists artists, so we had really looked forward to the Orsay. We were greeted by a line that snaked back and forth twenty times in front of the museum and all the way to the street in front. We stood in that sea of different colors and languages for almost an hour before we finally got in the front door. It was well worth the wait!! There were breathtaking bronzes, masterpiece marble sculptures, wall after wall in room after room of paintings (printed poster copies of which can be seen littering homes and dorms all over the world). Van Gogh, Seurat, Signac, Manet, Monet, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Cezanne, Courbet (we had seen an exhibition of his landscape work at the Getty this year and the Orsay had one piece that bordered on pornographic – who knew…), Rodin, Boudin, and Gauguin were all represented there. We walked and walked looking at the accumulated works until after two that afternoon and left just as the crowds in the chambers were getting really thick, taking a fine memory of the place with us.

From left to right: Le Bucheron by F. Hodler, a self portrait by van Gogh (click for a larger view), a marble and bronze bust entitled Negre du Soudan by C. Cordier, and one of Klimt's many lovely trees.

A few more of the treasures housed within the Orsay. A stunning marble sculpture and a famous van Gogh. Click on the van Gogh to see another of his paintings completed in Arles.

We thought about having a light snack before hopping on a tour bus that took us around the cities highlights but decided we would eat somewhere on the tour. Laurel was in dire need of some lip balm as we neared the Arc de Triomphe, so we stepped off the bus and strolled along the Avenue de Champs Elysees, where we found $10 Chapstick, $7 Coke-Cola, and $35 crepes. NEVER, EVER eat on the Champs Elysees! Pick a side street and you will find amazing food two or three blocks over for sometimes a quarter of the price that is charged for crappier tourist food on the famous boulevard.

Laurel says: The tour bus was a good idea that we should have taken a little earlier in the trip. It was set up so the buses made a loop of all the must-see spots in Paris, and you could get off and back on all throughout the day, making it the perfect way to sightsee. That would have been nice to know the day before, when we walked over 20 blocks just to see the beautiful Notre Dame. Next time, we’ll remember the tour.

After lunch we boarded the Metro and took it to Pére Lachase Cemetery. It sounds ghoulish to walk through a cemetery on vacation, but PLC is such a beautiful place. Narrow paths wind their way around and through marble, granite, and cement tombs that have stood for hundreds of years and even the most decrepit and fallen in among them has a certain beauty. Many of the tombs have altars and stained glass windows that allow light into their interiors. In addition to the ornate stone carvings, the grounds are littered with bronze figures coated in a protective patina of green and black. The coloring only dramatized the grief, cast into the faces of the statues a century or more ago, for the dead whom they stand guard above. I had wanted to visit Pére Lachase since I discovered The Doors music at fourteen. A poster of Jim Morrison’s original headstone hung in my room during high school and in my barracks in the Army. I am by no means a Morrison fanatic, but to see that famed spot was on my list of places to experience for this trip. I found that the tombstone shown in my poster was stolen long ago and the graffiti covering the walls of the tombs around his has all been cleaned up. There is now a simpler headstone and a guard was posted there during our visit. The bottles of wine, candles, mementos of fan worship, and flowers remain. We toured the grounds for another hour until we were ushered out at closing time, seeing all manor of elaborate and fanciful crypts during our brief time there.

Some of the many views from our walk in Pére Lachase.

Someone else's picture from the 1980's of what Jim Morrison’s origional headstone and the surroounding graves looked like (right) before it was stolen and my shot of his grave in 2006 (left). The bottles of wine, candles, mementos of fan worship, and flowers remain, but the graffiti covering the walls of the tombs around his have all been cleaned up.

We rode back to Hamburg that evening on the “romantic” night train. Our company this time consisted of three backpackers going home to Denmark and a girl traveling to Amsterdam. We slept somewhat better on the ride back than we had on the ride to Paris.

Monday was the start of a week’s vacation which we used to familiarize ourselves with the city and do some apartment hunting (Panasonic doesn’t send an employee and their spouse to Europe just for the sheer joy of it). I am being posted there for two years starting in January 2007 and the trip was so that Laurel could see if she would like the city and for us to get an idea concerning apartments, neighborhood locations, and prices. We looked at a bunch of places, neighborhoods, and outlying towns during that week. There was one apartment that we fell in love with, some with promise, and a couple that were almost soviet era industrial housing.

Laurel really liked the city and we decided on a couple of neighborhoods that we would like to live in. Each is close to the city center, has shops and restaurants on the ground floors of each building, and a funky East Village New York sort of vibe. More than Hamburg, we are looking forward to the opportunity that this relocation will afford us to travel. There are so many cheap flights within Europe. All of France is so close, as is Eastern Europe. There is family in London that we can see whenever the mood strikes, not having to worry about long flights or customs/immigration lines and I am getting a very liberal vacation package with my contract – 7 weeks a year plus 13 holidays. We can spend a weekend in Dubrovnik or Valencia, three days in Rome, an evening in Berlin, the day in Sweden, Holland, or Denmark without ever touching a single vacation day. Both of us are more than a little stoked at the prospect.

Laurel says: One of the ways Matt lured me to Hamburg was with talk of the Wingst Baby Zoo. We rented a car and drove north of Hamburg, stopping at a café on the edge of a lake to eat lunch outside on the deck. Matt shocked me by ordering a salad – apparently a diet of purely pork isn’t good for everyone… I was expecting to see a lot more babies at the zoo but had fun nonetheless. We saw a lot of baby monkeys, some baby guinea pigs and a gaggle of baby peacocks following their mother up the path. There were also plenty of animals not native to Germany – tigers, lions, baboons, feral cats, otters, and some very noisy but very cute little guys (pictured below) although we still can’t figure out exactly what they were. One of the highlights of the day was buying handfuls of farm feed and feeding the llamas and pigmy goats and sheep. A few took a liking to me and tried to crawl into my lap.

On our last full day in Germany, we went sightseeing in Berlin. Since we were so close to the capital city it would have been a shame not to go. It is only an hour by train, but we waited too long to get tickets and two round trip train rides would have sunk our budget. We opted to the bus. It took longer, but the bus was warm, comfortable, clean, and gave us a look at the cities and towns along the way. We toured the city on a double-decker green bus and hopped off here and there to see some of the sights close-up. I think that we were both tired and run down from all the travel, because we didn’t really enjoy the vibe that Berlin is renowned for. We did meet an Aussie who liked Berlin because, “you can be naughty and no one cares...” and also a German named Werner who was 60+, tattooed & pierced profusely, and very gay. He was resting in a platz on a bench and after talking to Laurel and I for a bit, posed for a picture. Laurel says: Werner was very cute and I really enjoyed one of his tattoos: he had a large treble cleft on his neck below one ear and tiny music notes inside the shell of his ear. I wouldn’t want a needle or the noise of a tattoo gun anywhere near my own ear, but the choice was both original and endearing.

Werner leaning away as Laurel snapped a picture of Matt in Berlin, and Werner's ear.

After the encounter with Werner, we had dinner on the top floor of a HUGE seven story department store (KaDeWe) that covered an entire city block. We were attracted by tales of chocolate covered honey ants, but we decided on Italian faire. Our evening was spiced up with a little intrigue and adventure after dinner. As we left our seats and headed to the confectionery area, a young blond German girl started ranting at a female employee. She then slapped a male employee before storming off. The female employee called security. We followed the girl and her pursuers from a distance all over the upper floor just to see what would happen. After a ten minute cat and mouse chase, the woman was hemmed in by plainclothes security and carried off very quickly and as discreetly as the screaming pissed off Teutonic blond would let them. It was like going to dinner and a show! With the excitement over we took the subway to the bus station and rode back to Hamburg in the dark – sleeping most of the way.

Going home should have been the easiest part of our journey – should have been. A day before we were to leave the authorities in London arrested 20 people involved in a terrorist plot to board a US-bound aircraft with gel explosives. Travel to the US stopped for 24 hours. After that, flights were delayed and cancelled all over the world. We called beforehand and our flights to Heathrow and on to LAX were still scheduled. We arrived at the Hamburg airport three hours early and only made our flight by minutes, boarding the plane with just our wallets and passports in small clear plastic bags. We had to go through security again twice in London and we saw people throwing away books, cell phones, CD players, gifts, purses, expensive perfume, wine, beer… all sorts of stuff. The Brits at security were very no-nonsense about it – you weren’t getting through with jack that wasn’t on the approved list: Wallet, passport, just enough of any prescription medicine to get through the flight, and that was it. Laurel says: Matt’s not kidding. The only way for me to have much needed Chapstick on a 9-hour flight was to smuggle it on in the band of my underwear! After being delayed for hours we finally got on a plane and after an hour plus of sitting on the runway we got to leave England.

The worst should have been over at that point, but nope – it was waiting for us at LAX. Our bags didn’t make it from London. Trying to find out where to make a claim with British Airlines was a treasure hunt. We were stranded at the airport with no cell phone, no way to call the ride home, no house keys or car keys – they were all tucked away in our bags as they made their way to a damp London storage hanger. It was not a happy time…

It took us twenty-odd phone calls, four faxes, web searches galore, and a week to get all four bags back - sans some of our stuff: Our bags were had been pilfered at some point in their journey back to us. As much as we both enjoyed the sights and tastes of our travels, it was amazing to crawl into our bed in our house that first night. We slept like rocks and I doubt if a cannon shot could have stirred us from our 400-thread count cotton shrouded nest.

Matt and Laurel standing in front of a Monet from the Water Lillies series housed in the Musee d'Orsay. If we look happy it's because we were!