A still, a hooker and a Dodo bird. Paris and Oberkirch.
 

Two farm kid high school sweethearts celebrate 35 years of marriage in Europe. 3 days in The Black Forest and 9 days in Paris. I planned the whole trip from Fodor's forums, Trip Advisor forums and a couple of guide books. My mantra is 'attitude is everything', so I tried to travel with nukesafe's class, kerouac's experience, LucieV's sense of humor, santamonica's wisdom, St.Cirq's intellegence,OB1's wine free days,maitaitoms trip report humor, and most importantly like Cold_up_here, I don't add up the cost of the trip. Ever.((I)) I am a bad speller and worse at grammer so if that bothers you drive on by. I type like I talk, whatever I think comes out.
We still live in rural USA. The county in which we reside is about 180 square miles. There are less than 14,000 residents in the whole county. Paris proves to be a little more crowded than that.

I'm the trip planner. Always have been, probably always will be. My vacation does not start until I set my luggage on the hotel bed. I have a plan A, plan B, and a credit card plan C. I know I should enjoy the journey but I enjoy the execution of plan A more than the journey itself. I know it is a stupid thing to enjoy, especially when I am at the mercy of airlines and on this trip, European train and bus lines.

Plan A.
Fly Delta from MSP directly to Paris CDG landing at 8:30, hop onto the TGV at 12:30 to Strasbourg, take a bus into Oberkirch and a cab to the hotel, about 1 1/2 miles from the bus station, up the mountain in the Black Forest region of Germany.

Hunkee doree, land early, fly through immigration, pick up our bag and could have made the 8:30 train to Strasbourg. That O.K., there's one at 10:30. They want $140. Euros for two tickets on the 10:30 train. I'll wait. Get to the Strasbourg station around 3:00 and my Andrews chip and pin credit card will not work in the machine to purchase bus passes. Miss the bus. The next bus is in 90 minutes. After that there is a 60 minute wait to catch the following bus into Oberkirch. It will be too dark to see by the time we arrive, not in the plan.

Plan B.
The train. Neither I nor the agent in Strasbourg can purchase train tickets to Oberkirch. WTF. I have never been to Oberkirch and I want to get to the hotel before dark. We can get tickets to every surrounding town but not to Oberkirch.

Plan C.
Avis. Visa. Where is the light switch? Wipers? What kind of fuel did he say? The Renault was great, a SUV type of vehicle. Strasbourg is busy, and crowded. I am from the farm, these people are in a hurry. They like to blow their horns. There is road construction everywhere. I wish the iPhone had a bigger screen. Much bigger, damn, missed the freeway exit and there is no place to turn around, or pull over the get my bearings and new directions. Head east is all I know, and we get to Oberkirch. There is road construction in Oberkirch, and the train tracks are tore up. That is why we could not buy tickets in France to the town. We see the castle ruins on the mountain and I remember that the hotel is a little south of the ruins. So north we go. I should mention that I brought along my compass(thanks Kerouac)and used it every day on this trip. We find the hotel before dark(yea, just like I planned:) )and I throw my luggage onto the bed, 21 hours after leaving home. It took my great,great grandfather Friedrich, the immigrant ziggypop, weeks to make that journey.

Guten Tag, I'm your American cousin, what's for dinner?

Great start!
As a fellow trip planner I await the rest of the report.

Looks like this is going to be a great read!

Along for the ride!

ttt

I'm jumping along for the ride too! Great start and I'm looking forward to reading more!

Thanks for the support, I will get back to the report asap. I see I already made a mistake. The county where we live is about 1,800 square miles, not 180. Still only 13,500 residents though.

I await the rest with baited breath!

Do you have fish hooks in your mouth, nuke? Generally, if you are holding your breath, it has abated, so it becomes bated breath. (No, I am not picking on you, because I know that you know this -- but I think that a lot of people do not, so it's always good to have a grammatical reminder from time to time.)

You are correct, Kerouac. I did spell it wrong but, in my (weak) defense, here is a bit I found on Google:

"The correct spelling is actually bated breath but it’s so common these days to see it written as baited breath that there’s every chance that it will soon become the usual form, to the disgust of conservative speakers and the confusion of dictionary writers. Examples in newspapers and magazines are legion; this one appeared in the Daily Mirror on 12 April 2003: “She hasn’t responded yet but Michael is waiting with baited breath”.

Be that as it may, I still want to read the rest of Ziggy's trip report.

Oberkirch.

"Black Forest and Vines. Enjoy and Live"

The town motto. It is fitting. A town of about 20,000 not centered in tourism, just a working mans town. Tractors running up and down the one lane mountain streets(one lane, not one way) I feel at home. The town is full of half timbered homes and none of them are in sad shape. The mountain(Mooskopf) has an altitude of 871 meters. Every inch of it seems to have a fruit tree or a vine growing on it. It also has a castle ruins, the Schaeunburg ruin, which I think dates to the year 1050. There is a hiking trail circling the castle and a hiker passes by as we are there. The Black Forest portion of this trip was about walking on the homestead of my great-great-great grandfathers' farm. It is still in the family. They grow grapes for some of the best wine in the Ortenau region of Germany. They also have a permit for a distillery, and make apple schnapps and cherry schnapps. The permit and the recipe have been handed down for all of these generations as well. I am an alcoholic in recovery so I know I insulted the hosts by not drinking any of their wine or schnapps. I did help myself to extra pieces of Black Forest cake though :). This part of the trip went as well as it could have, expecially with the language barrier. Christoph, their 23 year old son spoke pretty good English so he was kind enough to translate for us. Thankyou iPhone app i-translate.

We also visited a 1400's gothic Catholic church in Lautenbach and went to mass in Oberkirch in a church that has been attended by my family since the 1600's. I can't explain why but a very spiritual experience for me.

Gengenbach.
The old town(tourist area) is walled and has a Saturday market. I had the best bratwurst I have ever eaten at this market. The lady selling the brats has a daughter going to college in Chicago, so she has experienced 'midwestern nice". The midwest has nothing on these German towns. Even with my limited language skills I encountered nothing but very nice people on my whole vacation.

Hotel: The Gasbacher Hof

The Gaisbacher Hof is exactly the kind of hotel you hope to find when you travel to a small town. Clean, on site restaurant with a motivated chef doing the cooking,very friendly staff, and many types of beer on tap and wine.(even nonalcoholic beer!) and free breakfast. As far as a home base and a Black Forest Hotel, it is going to be hard to beat the Gaisbacher Hof. Easy to find and cheap also.
www.gaisbacherhof.de.

Damn, missed the freeway exit again.

It is always an extraordinary experience to return to one's ancestral roots.

On the French side of the Rhine as well, people have ancestral distilling permits, fewer and fewer as the years go by. Just about all of them are in the grandfather's name, even though the grandfather died 20 or 30 years ago.

ziggypop, this is great! I hope it's a long trip.

Now I'll go check to see if you've done any previous trip reports.

this is going to be fun!

I'm also checking for previous trip reports. This is already sooo good. We were in Oberkirch 5 years's ago.

Thanks for the encouragement.

Micheline, I thought Oberkirch was a very busy town. We saw two houses that need a little work, otherwise every house looked just painted.

Kerouac, they told me that one family member is allowed to keep the distilling permit. It gets passed down from one generation to the next.

A couple of things about Karl and Rosa, the cousins that own the homestead. They are both 82 years old and still walk up the mountain to help with the grape vines. We brought a picture book of Minnesota as a gift for them and they were enthralled with water towers. Looking back I don't recall seeing one in Germany. They also were wondering about the USA's reported spying agency NSA, and how much I knew about it. After I told them that I wished the NSA would help me with my computer passwords they laughed it off and changed the subject.
It was apple harvest time and there were unattended fruit stands set up all over town with a price list and a can or box to deposit your money on the honor system. It reminded me of my home town.

Ziggy Hits Paris.

That would make a great movie.

Strasbourg.

We left Oberkirch on the 18th of November with the intention of taking the TGV to Paris. There was road construction everywhere we drove and we were delayed for a while on the road.(just like Minnesota)I had the route memorized but between Kiln and Strasbourg there was a little detour and I missed the entrance for the freeway(ring road?) for the fast lane to the train station. Damn. We drove through the center of a very busy, very crowded Strasbourg and I could not get to the train station from the streets that we were on. My wife is a sweetheart, but she can not navigate to save her soul. Not one little bit can she navigate. She also does not like to drive in tense situations. Long story short, it took about two hours longer than it should have taken to drop off the rental car at the train station and make our way to see the beautiful cathedral. They close for lunch so we did not get to go inside. A camera does not do the exterior justice.

The museum also is closed on Mondays. We walked in with a private tour of Asian tourists but were politely escorted to the door, and out the door, by the staff who then shut the door immediatly behind us. Honestly, she almost hit me in the a$$ with the door.
The TGV was uneventful, until we got to Gare Le Est.

Irresistable title. Great report. Waiting for more, but breathing.

Hey Zig, we're reading here but where is the hot stuff, you know, the hooker?

In the 1990's when the tramway system was built, the grid of Strasbourg streets was redesigned on purpose to turn a lot of it into "you-can't-get-there-from-here" by motor vehicle. This was to dissuade people from taking their cars to the center when perfectly fine public transportation is available. I have learned the alternate routes to get places over the years since then, but it's kind of a shame for clueless tourists, who were not the people being targeted by this situation. Basically you have to systematically choose to go "around" the center rather than attempting to go through it -- the streets make you turn when you are pointed at the center and send you right back out in the direction you were coming from. :-) It's almost like being repelled by a force field.

"We brought a picture book of Minnesota as a gift for them and they were enthralled with water towers. Looking back I don't recall seeing one in Germany."

In Europe we are having pumps. ;-)

So the hooker wasn't the "baited" breath. Waiting with same.

A cat who eats cheese has baited breath.

Groan, Caliban -----

Quite fun, zig. This reminds me why I don't drive in Europe! I spend enough time home in the US screaming at "Greta Garmin" and calling her an incompetent bee-yatch....it's much funnier when you are missing your exit.

Waiting....waiting.....waiting!!!

Thanks kerouac, now I don't feel like a complete idiot. I actually had to drive a few kilometers to a suburb and turn around in order to get on an artery so I could get to the station. I loved their tram system getting into town but what a pain in the a$$ driving in the town. Road construction did not help what so ever. Did I mention that the 18th was our anniversary date? My honey was no help at all navigating but I knew that I had to bite my tongue because I had plans for later that night. ((F)) ((d)) ((6))
Minnesota is getting a blast of below zero air on top of the snow we recieved today so I will be staying indoors and finish the report this weekend.

Ziggy, I'm so glad you're snowed in. I can't wait to read more! You've got a great writing style. I'll be following along. So..... hurry up, get the walk & drive shoveled & please get back to this report!

Paris

Monday was a travel day, not a vacation day for me until I got to set my suitcase on the hotel bed. After the joy of driving in downtown Strasbourg I just wanted to relax. We rode the TGV into Gare Le Est, a manageable train depot. This is where I developed my strategy for the petition girls. There were hordes of them at CDG and a few but more persistent petition bearers at Gare Le Est. The ones pretending to be deaf would go away with a hand wave and a NO! The ones asking “do you speak English?” were more persistent with the “but sir it’s for charity” routine. I am positive that it was for their charity but I wasn’t donating. After their ‘do you speak English?” line I would say “no, ich spreche ein wenig Duetsch”. Usually they continued in English so I would copy Kevin Costner lingo in the movie Dances with Wolves and say “to maunie to tonka to way a low” with a hand wave. They would walk away. Only one time did one of them touch me and that was at the Eiffel Tower. On more than one occasion I saw people giving them money so you can’t blame them for trying.

From Gare Le Est I had decided to take a cab so I made sure to get a licensed cab driver even though there were drivers willing to carry our luggage from inside the Depot. We only had one suitcase and each of us had a backpack thankfully. Now I have mentioned that were are from a county of 13,500 people. I think there were that many people on the street leaving Gare Le Est. I have driven on Las Vegas Boulevard on a Friday night before but that was like an organized funeral procession compared to the jam of humanity on the streets of Paris. Holy Cow motorcycles and bicycles darting in between the cars, down the center lane, horns honking and our driver just wades into the mess and I don’t know how but drove us to the hotel without incident. Thanks to the tip of writing the hotel name and address on a post card we were there in about 20 minutes. It was about 4-5 kilometers to the hotel and the charge was $18 E so I am skeptical of the estimate people get of $50-60E from CDG to inner Paris.

Our hotel was the Grand Hotel Français on boulevard Voltaire.
http://www.grand-hotel-francais.fr/
It is in the 11th arr. and a perfect area to for a home base. Even though it was our first time in Paris and we were tourists I just couldn’t stay in a major tourist area near the river like is so often recommended, I wanted a ‘real’ area, if that makes sense. After settling in and a bite to eat it was planning time. I did the FMT trick of laying out our very large Paris map onto the bed and deciding what we were going to do tomorrow. There was only one ‘have to do’ on my wife’s list for the 9 days we were to be in Paris and that was the Eiffel Tower so that was happening on Tuesday with lunch reservations at Le Jules Verne. Every night we made our next days plan, written in sand so we could be spontaneous.

On the way to the Eiffel Tower was the Opera Garnier, there wasn’t a performance playing in the time we were spending in Paris but after seeing Denise’s pictures I had to see it so we got the $10 tour tickets and spent a couple of hours inside. WOW. That’s my impression of the inside. We had our only 'gold ring scam' while circling the building for the ticket office. I loudly laughed at her and kept walking, she moved on.

Le Jules Verne’ The food was meh. My wife did not get what she ordered. She had ordered a salmon starter, and sole for a main. The waiter questioned her choices but she assured him that she was fine with two different fish choices. It did not get served and the way the server disappeared I’m sure the chef decided that she could not eat two fish dishes. I expected better food, I expected to be wowed, and the only wow dish for me was their home made marsh mellows. I feel bad for not loving the restaurant because they gave us the best table with a great view, much to the chagrin of our neighboring table. I thought people in France were quiet when they dined. This guy was loud, drunk? and rude. I won't mention the accent he sported but I almost had to tell him that the cold war is over. Well, except for that NSA spying thing....

Still enjoying your report.

I don't understand why you question the taxi fare from the airport into Paris based on the taxi fare from the Gare de l'Est to the blvd Voltaire. Did you think the estimate of 50 to 60 euros was too low or too high? From my own experience, it sounds right, that is what I have paid on several occasions.

Sacre’ Coeur.
A place of prayer. We walked up from the back side to avoid the hawkers. We had a sunny morning for a great view of Paris and the inside is underrated, in my opinion. We wandered the streets of Montmartre window shopping while making our way to the Erotica Museum. www.musee-erotisme.com

It is not for the prudish but we enjoyed the displays. If you are wondering what aroused genetalia looks like you will have no questions after visiting this small venue. It took about two hours to cover the collection. Nothing like going from a house of prayer to a sex shop for variety. The museum is pretty close to the Moulin Rouge and there are several sex shops nearby. In this area there are quite a few small alleys and doorways to little courtyards. While we were walking around this area I heard a click/clack sound coming from inside a small alley. There standing with a smile on her face and a very provocative outfit was a lady looking for a ‘conversation’ I think. At least she had on a fur coat as it was cold outside . I was not in the market for what she was selling but if I was in the market I certainly would have had to do an Adams apple check. Her hands were as large as mine are and the makeup was very thickly applied. I think sexual preference is an individual choice but if there is ever a time where I don’t want any big surprises it would be when I am in a compromised position.

Paris By Mouth tour. Christine was a great tour guide in the Marais. She gave us a little history of the shops we toured, as well as some of the origins of the food. I am currently trying not to eat the wonderfully delicious chocolates from Jacques Genin. 133 rue de Turenne. These have to be the best chocolates in Paris. We had a cup of hot chocolate in the café area and it is so thick you can barely pour it out of the individual pots that you are given. Heavenly.

National History Museum, 57 rue Cuvier, Jardin des plantes. Several buildings devoted to the history of France. Botanical, Paleontology, mineralogy and geology, and my favorite, the gallery of evolution. All of the animals lined up looks like the march to get on Noah’s Ark. My favorite room was the extinct room, lots of birds and the mascot, the Dodo bird. No flash was allowed so most of my pictures stink but Kerouac has a very nice pictorial if you want to venture to any port in a storm. Many butterflies, insects and fish. A couple of whale skeletons, a few gorillas and big cats, it was my favorite museum. The garden, even though not in bloom, was worth the price of admission. The museum pass does not include these museums in the package.

nikki, I thought the estimate would be too low. We arrived on a Monday night, only went 25% as far as CDG would have been and the fare was $20E with a small tip.

Frankly, Inside Paris, I have rarely paid more than 10€ for a taxi ride.

I hope you won't mind, ziggypop, if I suggest a small photographic illustration of the Grande Galerie de l'Evolution: http://tinyurl.com/2ajvree

Frankly, inside Paris, I have rarely paid more than 10€ for a taxi ride.

I hope you won't mind, ziggypop, if I suggest a small photographic illustration of the Grande Galerie de l'Evolution: http://tinyurl.com/2ajvree

<i>Frankly, Inside Paris, I have rarely paid more than 10€ for a taxi ride.</i>

Same here and I find the 50-60 euro estimate from CDG to be right on.

You should dive right into the Genin chocolates. IME they have a fairly limited shelf life.

Loving your report.

Great report! Very impressed with a few things given it was your first time: not staying in the center; only having one major "must" over 9 days; being flexible; not running around from site to site like crazy people (related to above); and going to some places that first-timers often never see. Nice!

Sorry about Le Jules Verne - what a disappointment. But at least you had the great view.

Looking forward to more.

Gonna have to stop by Jacques Genin for that chocolat chaud-too good too miss out on that.

Hayseed mistakes

We went the wrong way on the metro, once. No big deal as we got off the next stop and walked to take the train correct direction.

On Tuesday the 19th, I ordered Opera tickets to the Bastille Opera for Thursday, the 20th. Well, I thought it was for Thursday but I guess the 20th was Wednesday. I donated 50E to the arts that night.

Instead of the Bastille Opera, I found out that St. Chappelle had a fundraiser concert with 6 fiddles and a bass. Or since it was classical music, 6 violins and a cello. St. Chappelle was on my want to see list so we went to the Saturday night concert. I don’t know if it was open air but it was cold inside, and breezy. It was the only time I felt a little sheepish for being American as the guy from Florida that sat behind us said in a loud voice ”they sure don’t waste any money on a heater in this country do they?” Being from a cold climate I had my underarmour as one of my 3 layers of clothing so I was toasty warm. The concert was 70 minutes, perfect for my attention span. A great second choice for a night of music.

Pere’ Lachaise cemetery. After stalking nukesafe on one of his threads to glean some information from him, I intended to explore the cemetery on Sunday. It is closed on Sundays. Monday and Tuesday we had plans so I missed out on that ‘want’. Thanks for the information nukesafe. You are a gentleman poster.

Not all stores are open on Tuesday. I know this is covered often. Check their websites if they have one for store times. I assumed that if they wanted a day off in the week they would take Monday off. We waited until Tuesday to stock up on things to bring back to the USA.

Mistaking distances. We walked a lot. It looked close on the map so why take a bus. Or the metro. After a while I picked up the Parisian pace of brisk walking. I forgot I was on vacation and they were off to work so my wife would have to remind me to SLOW down. I should have used the bus more, I think we would have gotten to more sites. On the other hand we would not have walked by the Harley Davidson store and gotten new shirts.:)

Andrews Visa. This is not my fault but I could not use my chip and pin visa anywhere that a chip was required. It would work wherever the magnetic strip could be used, or if the numbers could be hand entered, but not in a machine that only used the ship. I called Visa and was told “there have been instances in Europe of our chip not being compatible with European machines”.

I already mentioned mistakenly trusting a waiter to correctly charging us the correct amount for our meal. Lesson learned, but I am still a very trusting person.

D Day tour. We booked a 4 hour tour, I should have booked a whole day. Or a couple days. When planning this vacation it was either Germany or Normandy for a side trip, I chose Germany. Next vacation Normandy gets a few days of my vacation. I love the country side feeling of Normandy.