Épinal , France

The German train company, DB considers a few minutes to be plenty of time to change trains which can be a bit stressful, especially when the trains are located on opposite sides of a large station. To travel from Frankfurt, Germany to Épinal, France I had to change trains three times. In the German city of Offenburg, my ICE train from Frankfurt arrived at one end of the station and I only had three minutes to get to my connection which of course was on a track at the opposite end of the large, outdoor station. I scurried downstairs to cross under the tracks and then ran with my bags to reach the train in time. My knees are not as forgiving as they used to be and so I would not like to have to do that too often with heavy bags, but at least I made it.

I got onto a very small and very crowded train that would take me from Offenburg to Strasbourg, a city on the other side of the French-German border. The train only had a few cars and was more of a tram than an intercity train. There were middle school students with bicycles and lots of mothers with big trams and lots of children in tow going to spend the day in France. I found a spot to sit near the door so that my bags could sit out of the way at my feet which worked well. Once I arrived in Strasbourg, I had to wait for an hour until my next train to Nancy was ready for boarding. During that time, I got to see several of the high speed, TVG trains. The TVG holds the record for the fastest wheeled train, having reached 574.8 km/h (357 mph) on 3 April 2007 and also holds the world's highest average speed for a regular passenger service.

I was going to Épinal to visit my friends Renee, Mark and their children. I know Renee from when I

was a student at Washington University in St. Louis and both she and Mark have been mentioned in my travel emails in the past. I stopped to visit them in Los Angeles during my first trip to New Zealand in 2004. Renee has had a huge influence on my life over the years and in keeping with that tradition, she introduced me to her friend, Ruth who showed to me that it was possible for someone to successfully sell their photographs. Mark works for a large company and he was offered the chance for an overseas assignment in France. Renee and Mark have been living in Épinal for about 20 months when I visited them. Their daughter Helena was born in France and has dual citizenship.

Renee met me in the train station in Nancy and we then drove the 45 minutes to Épinal which is a is a small city nestled in the French Vosges. Épinal has a population of only 36,000 (according to the 1999 census) but there is a lot going on in the city. It is the main city in the department of the Vosges, so many of the neighboring towns go to Épinal for shopping or for fun. The city also sports four Olympic-sized pools, an ice-skating rink, a public gymnasium (basketball, handball, fencing, archery, judo, and ping-pong dedicated rooms), and the town sponsors walking, rollerblading, biking and running events during the year. The Moselle river is channeled through canals in the city center and the city created a series of gates and obstacles for kayakers. One can stand on the sidewalk over the canal and watch the plethora of kayakers practicing going through the gates.

Épinal is the terminus of the Canal des Vosges and the town has a harbor where barges can be docked. There are well maintained walking trains along the canal which are a nice place to spend a few hours. Across the street from Renee and Mark’s flat is a large park with flower beds that are constantly being rotated during the year. Renee told me that French cities are given ratings for their gardens and Épinal makes a concerted effort to be highly rated each year.

Through conversations with Renee, Mark and their friends, I learned a bit about what it is like to adjust to living in France. Renee mentioned a book called Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong by Jean-Benoit Nadeau which describes the French from the perspective of someone who is originally from Canada. The author notes that although the French look like people from North America, it would be a mistake to assume that our cultures are identical.

A French trait which takes some getting used to is the constant kissing of cheeks. Renee told me that when Mark goes to work each day, he must meet each woman who he sees at work with kisses on each cheek and he must shake hands with each man. It is very important to remember whose cheek you have kisses and whose hand you have shaken. If you see someone at the end of the day who you have not yet kissed, it is expected that you will do so. However, to kiss someone’s cheek or to shake someone’s hand after you have already done so that day is frowned upon. It must take some effort to follow this custom when working in a large company as Mark was doing.

Renee’s friend, Kris told me that the custom of kisses even extend to the gym. While people are working out, if someone they know enters the gym, they are expected stop whatever they are doing to bestow kisses because it would be rude not to do so. As you can imagine, at larger gyms the kisses could be a big distraction from a workout because you would have to constantly stop what you are doing. Kris told me that when she goes, she puts in her earbuds and just gets in her workout because everyone knows that she is a foreigner and she plays that card so that she can get her workout completed in a reasonable amount of time and without interruption.

An activity which was an option during my stay was to go to one of the swimming pools in town. However, Mark pointed out that I did not have a state sanctioned swimsuit to wear and that I would not be allowed to wear my swimming trunks. Men are only allowed to wear small Speedos in the pool because they are seen as being more hygienic than shorts. If shorts were allowed, someone might wear a pair of short in which they had been working out and therefore they might be sweaty. People have pointed out that the concern for the cleanliness of the shorts is rather funny considering that the cleanliness of the person wearing them might be a bigger issue. However, others who have gone to pools in France and who have had to rent a pair of Speedos reported that they had to enter a series of showers before getting to the pool area.

A visit to a local market introduced me to another custom which is to prepare meat with the head still on the animal. In one butcher’s display case were rabbits which had been skinned but which still had their heads and most importantly, they still had their eyes. It was explained to me that people feel that they can gauge the health of the animal (the health prior to the visit to the butcher) by looking into the eye. Therefore, the head is kept on the animal when it is served.

Mark and Renee have a really nice, spacious flat in the downtown area with a large park just across the street. One day while Renee and I were sitting on a bench in the park, talking and watching Luke ride his bicycle, I was startled to hear the sound of running water behind us. I turned to see a little boy standing with his pants down, peeing on a tree while pedestrians walked by as if nothing was going on. Renee explained that it is common for little boys to open use trees in the park as bathrooms and therefore no one gives it much mind.

A related point that gets a lot of press from time to time are the dog droppings which can litter the walkways. I had read a story in the New York Times a few years ago that the dog droppings are a problem in the big cities like Paris where there can be a lot of dogs out for a walk.

On Tuesday, Renee planned an outing in the countryside while her son was in school and we were joined by her friend Kris who is from the US, but has lived in France for a number of years. The plan was to drive out into the mountains and maybe do a bit of walking if the weather cooperated. We visited some stores along the way and Renee told me that it is expected that the store keeper and customers will exchange “bonjour” when the customer enters the store. This custom goes back to when shopkeepers often lived above the shops and therefore, when someone entered the shop they were entering an extension of the shopkeeper’s house and so it was expected that the visitor be greeted.

While driving along a road that was originally built during World War I, we saw signs for fondue and so decided to give it a go for lunch. We turned at the sign and drove down a dirt road to a wooden building perched on the side of a hill that was a restaurant. After some half-hearted joking about Hansel and Gretel, we wandered inside. We met at the door by German hikers who were also coming in for lunch as the restaurant was located along the hiking trails. The restaurant was nice, but they just had a set menu and no fondue. After extracting ourselves, we found the actual fondue restaurant which was a farm building and we walked past stables for the cows on the way in. We ordered cheese fondue with meat and cheese as well as salad. We got a basket with cubes of bread and a platter with a few strips of meat. The fondue came in a pot which was set down on a sterno heater. The cheese in the fondue was muster cheese which is a specialty of the region and quite rich and decadent.

That evening, Renee, Mark and I continued a tradition that we unknowingly have been following every time we have been together for the past decade, we ate pie, homemade apple in this case. We knew that we had a pie obsession extending back to when I had visited them in California, but upon discussing it further, we discovered every time that the three of us have gotten together, pie has been eaten even though we didn’t realize that we were following tradition at first.

On Wednesday, Renee and I walked down to a museum in the city center called cite de l'image. The museum is dedicated to the popular prints created by a local company, the Imagerie d'Épinal, formerly known as the Imagerie Pellerin. The stencil-colored woodcuts of military subjects, Napoleonic history, storybook characters and other folk themes were widely distributed throughout the 19th century. The images include Le Chat Botté, or Puss in Boots who recently appeared in the Shrek movies. Part of the museum is the musee de l'image where you can have guided tours of the old machines used to make the prints. There was also the imagerie d'Épinal where there was a permanent display of prints as well as a temporary display of prints from the 50’s era. Amongst the displays in the temporary exhibit were Martine books. Martine is the title character in a series of books for children written in French by the belgians Marcel Marlier and Gilbert Delahaye. and edited by Casterman. The first one, Martine à la ferme (Martine at the farm), was published in 1954, followed by over 50 other books, which have been translated into many different languages. There was a store as well and one of the prints that was offered was a sketch of what Épinal looked like many years ago when the chateau was intact and the city walls enclosed much of the city.

That afternoon, I met up with Isabelle who I knew from DTU where we both were studying for our masters degrees. She has been mentioned in many of my emails from Denmark because we travelled together in Denmark and we often we at dinner parties together. Isabelle (who is French) now lives in Paris where she is working for the French government. Her job is to monitor the pollution of the environment caused by explosives or explosive chemicals. She visits factories that use the explosives to ensure that they are containing the pollution properly. In my opinion, that she is an explosives expert is pretty neat, but what is even neater is that her work will be taking her to French Guiana in a few months. French Guiana (which is located in South America), is is an overseas region of France and therefore falls under Isabelle’s jurisdiction. As an integral part of France, French Guiana is part of the European Union's territory, and its currency is the euro. French Guiana is home to the Guiana Space Centre (in French: Centre Spatial Guyanais or CSG) which is a French spaceport for launching satellites. Of course, the spaceport uses explosive materials to launch the space vehicles which is why Isabelle must visit. She will be going at the same time that a launch is scheduled and so will be able to see it.

Isabelle and I had lunch at a crêperie. Isabelle was a bit put off with crêpes because Épinal is not the crepe region (Brittany is the correct region), but I thought that they were good. We each started with a savory crepe that we chose from the extensive menu of crêpes fillings. We also drank cider which is a popular drink to accompany crêpes. For dessert, we had crêpes smothered in chocolate sauce. It was really decadent and almost too much chocolate, if you can believe that possible. Unfortunately, right after lunch we went to a bakery to pick up dessert for dinner that night. I say unfortunately, because after the chocolate crepe, I didn’t want to think about more sugar. While in the bakery, the baker explained about a few of the loaves of bread that he had set to one side. He told us that he used wet yeast for the special loaves instead of dry yeast. Many artisan bakers produce their own yeast by preparing a 'growth culture' which they then use in the making of bread. In any case, the bread was delicious.

We also needed to stop in a grocery store and it was the first time that Isabelle had been into a grocery store in years. In Paris, she is part of a group of people who pay an organic farmer months in advance for his produce. Each week, he brings a shipment of fruits and vegetables into the city for the group members and periodically, the group will go out to his farm to work.

Afterwards, we went for a walk along the Canal des Vosges and I was surprised to see that the canal did not necessarily follow the river. In fact, at one point, the canal actually went over the river and was carried by a large, stone viaduct. I was surprised at this because although the boats which we saw in Épinal were not gigantic, they were large enough that I did not expect them to be able to go over the bridge.

That night, Renee outdid herself by preparing a multi-course dinner which was really good. We had a lovely, organic wine that Isabelle had purchased. After dinner, Isabelle left to continue her holiday and I set about the task of packing which is a task that I hate. However, it had to be done since I would be leaving early the next morning from Épinal by train to go to visit my friend, Gerke in Hamburg.














For more information about Épinal
http://www.ville-Épinal .fr/

A website about Imagerie d'Épinal
www.imagerie-Épinal.com

Frankfurt

At the conclusion of my conference in Istanbul, I flew to Frankfurt, Germany where I saw all sorts of crazy happenings at the airport. When we landed, the plane taxied to a place where we would have to exit the plane directly onto the tarmac rather than into the gate. We were told that immigration would be meeting us at the exits of the plane and we were asked to have our passports at the ready. It turned out that they were looking for one person and he knew it because he was the last to get off. As the rest of us were taken by bus to the terminal, he was escorted to a waiting police car. At the immigration desk which permitted people out of the airport and into Germany, I saw a man being refused entry which is the first time that I saw that. Once through immigration, I found a man yelling at a customs official, claiming that the official was tricking him to go through the wrong customs line so that he would be taxed. Fortunately, I just walked through it all and found my friend Steff on the other side of baggage claim. It is always nice to be met in the airport when you are flying to another country.

Steff and I know each other from when she was a law student at the University of Canterbury. There are a good number of Germans in the masters program at the law school and in fact, this year the program is 100% German students. I have met or have lived with a number of the law students and none of them expected to find so many other Germans in the program. They each thought that they were taking a great opportunity to spend a year in New Zealand, primarily to improve their English skills since they don’t really need the masters degree to practice law in Germany. The university likes the Germans to come because although the students pay domestic tuition rates (currently NZ $4664 per year), the German government subsidizes their studies by paying the university the difference between the international (currently NZ $24700 per year) and domestic tuition rates which is substantial.

Most of my friends, including Steff have just recently departed from New Zealand and are in various points in the process of becoming a lawyer. The process of becoming a lawyer in Germany includes four to five years of study followed by an internship and tests. The geographic location of the internship depends on where your parents live, not where you want to live. The availability of internships is limited. If there aren’t enough spots for all of the people who want one, those who don’t get a spot must sit and wait until internships are offered again in a few months.

Generally, after about 21 months of internship, the would be lawyer takes a written test followed by another few months of internship and then an oral test. Once the school, internship and tests are completed, the process of finding a job begins. Even at this early stage, the lawyer can apply to become a judge. Being a judge, especially a female judge is seen as being advantageous because you are a state employee. In the rare event that a German woman wants to have a baby (the state is currently paying women to have children to stop the negative population growth), she can take advantage of the long maternity leave for state employees and she knows that her job is secure.

My former flatmate, Sebastian is also from the Frankfurt region and he wanted to meet up with us, but we were unsure about how to get in touch with him. As we were discussing it, Sebastian called. He had managed to track down Steff’s new mobile number by contacting mutual friends in StudiVZ, the German equivalent of Facebook. While we waited for Sebastian to get to the airport to meet us, Steff patiently waited with me in line at the Deutch Bahn (DB) office in the terminal. There is a very convenient train station right in the airport, but there was a not very convenient long queue to speak with a clerk.

I would be using a Eurail pass for my travels in Europe. While living in Europe, I had not been allowed to use of the passes which was fine because flying is usually less expensive and can be less time consuming that taking the train. But for this trip, I would be visiting a lot of people and the pass worked out to be very convenient. There are several different types of Eurail passes available, depending on how many countries you want to travel through and for how many days. I had chosen a Select Pass which allowed travel in five countries for five days over a period of two months. Each time that I used the pass, I was required to write the day and month in the assigned space on my pass. The exception to this was if I was taking a night train that departed after 7PM for which I was allowed to enter the next day’s date. Therefore, it required some strategic planning to take full advantage of the pass. Once aboard the train, I would need to show my pass and my passport to the conductor who would then stamp over the date that I had written to prevent fraud. Unfortunately, Select Passes are only offered to individual travelers (as opposed to groups) if they are willing to travel first class, so I had to suffer through that. The pass cost €393 which was equivalent of only two of my five days of travel and so was very worth the cost.

However, simply having the pass does not guarantee you a seat. Seat reservations can be purchased for Inter City Express (ICE) trains in Germany and equivalent fast trains in other countries. Reservations are compulsory on all trains in Denmark and are required for night trains if you want to book a sleeper. I later found out that seat reservations are €3.50 for most trains and are more for sleeper cars. I paid €65 for a bunk in a two person sleeper between Frankfurt and Milan. I would discover that seat reservations were not actually necessary for many of the 1st class cars because there could be a lot of seats. However, there were some trains such as those that passed through Frankfurt that were full and so I was very glad that I had seat reservations. I think that it just takes experience to know when a reservation is needed which I didn’t have and I didn’t want to risk not getting a seat, so the cost was worth it to me. However, my friend Gerke usually opts not to get a reservation. If she cant find a seat, she goes to the café car to buy a coffee for less than €3.50 and then spends the duration of her travel nursing her coffee in one of the café car seats.

I had fortunately, printed out a detailed list of all the trains that I wanted to take including the date, the number and the destinations thanks to the fantastic website, www.db.de. I say fortunately, because the man behind the counter at the DB office where I was buying my seat reservations was a bit frazzled and was even more so when his printer ran out of paper. His disorganization would later be a problem for me, but when I finally got my tickets and got over the sticker shock, I was pleased to leave the DB office after only an hour of waiting.

Steff and I sat in a café to wait for Sebastian who for some reason had trouble finding us in Europe’s largest airport. Sebastian was one of my flat mates in Flat 54 which was a really good flat. Unfortunately, the term ended last June and Sebastian and Gerke went back to Germany. Sebastian was only in New Zealand for six months as part of his studies and was now back in the Frankfurt area, waiting to resume his studies.

Once we finally met, we set off for Sachsenhausen which is a neighborhood of Frankfurt, located on the south side of the Main River. We parked our car and instantly, I was aware that I was in Germany. It was around seven in the evening and the sun had already set. We walked along the sidewalk of cobble stoned streets, closely lined with four story buildings on each side. Trees lined the sidewalks and the occasional tram rumbled along the tracks on the street. We passed staircases to take us down to the subway below, connecting the neighborhoods with everything. There were cafes and stores on the first floors of the buildings and the clinking of cutlery and the laughter of the patrons sitting outside could be softly heard on the quiet streets. I was mesmerized by the neighborhoods and was certain that I would want to live there if I were to work in the area.

We found a very traditional looking café with seating outside on covered, wooden benches. Unfortunately, traditional food doesn’t offer much for a vegetarian like Steff, but I was in heaven with my brat and sauerkraut. There is nothing quite like the good sausages that are made in Germany. My former flat mate, Henrik had always complained about the sausages available in Christchurch and now I understood what he was talking about. Sebastian and I drank Apfelwein (apple wine) which is a traditional specialty of the area. The Apfelwein is served in a Bembel (jug) which is salt-glazed stoneware usually grey in color with blue detailing. After dinner, we wandered over to a Greek café so that Steff could eat as well.

I know that I was worn out when Sebastian brought Steff and I back to the airport and bid us farewell. Steff had offered me a place to stay at her family’s house in Manheim, I city about 70km south of Frankfurt. With 307,640 inhabitants, Manheim is the second largest city in the state of Baden-Württemberg after the capital Stuttgart. It was at his workshop in Mannheim that Carl Benz produced in 1886 a light weight three wheeled vehicle powered by a single cylinder petrol/gasoline fueled motor. Today, Daimler AG still assembles cars and trucks in Mannheim. Other industries in Manheim include BB, BASF, Roche, Freudenberg, John Deere and Siemens.

The downtown area is laid out in a grid, but there are no street names. Instead, the 143 square blocks of the downtown area take the form of a grid reference. Using the large castle which is located downtown as a reference, the first block to the left of the castle is A1 followed by A2, A3, etc and to the right of the castle is L1 then L2, L3, etc. The street numbers go around each block starting at the corner which is closest to the castle. The addresses include the block number and the house number. For example, a building could be L3, 21 which is the 21st building on block L3. Many of the streets have now received proper names, but the grid reference system is still used.

We arrived at Steff’s house to discover that her father had cleared out the parent’s room so that I could stay there and have my own bathroom which was really nice of him. The next morning, he went out early to get special rolls from the bakery for breakfast for us. Although I took German in high school and university, I did not appreciate at the time just how very important speaking another language would be at the time. I really wish that I had paid more attention and had not wasted so many years studying Latin so that I might have a much better base in German. I can guess at a lot of written words and if I know the topic and can catch a few words I know, I can guess at what is being said, but my spoken German is nonexistent. So, I could not speak with Steff’s father directly because he didn’t speak English. He had recently retired after forty years at Siemens where he had taught how to design telecommunications systems. It turned out that he had a collection of antique telephones dating back to the early 20th century. I think that the old phones are fantastic because the handsets have a heft to them that feels like quality. And, I am old enough that I still remember rotary phones and the joy of trying to dial a number quickly (and the inevitable sore dialing finger from trying to make the dial go around faster).

I hadn’t been sure what my quick visit to Frankfurt was going to look like when I arrived because we had made no plans and I had anticipated spending the night in a hotel. It turned out to be a really fantastic experience and it was really good to reconnect with Steff and Sebastian. From their end, it sounded like they were excited to meet with a connection from New Zealand because both were going through degrees of reverse culture shock. Especially since their time in Christchurch had been stressful at times, but overall really nice and a sort of holiday from the frantic pace that was about to overtake their education process now that they were back in Germany.

I would be catching a train from Frankfurt to the town of Epinal France that morning and had bought a seat reservation from the main train station. However, Steff was clever and discovered that the train passed through Manheim and so saved us a lot of driving because I could catch the train right there and almost an hour later than if I had caught it in Frankfurt. Steff’s father took us to the station where I discovered that seat reservations are canceled if you are not in your seat fifteen minutes after departure. Seat reservations are indicated on a digital display above each seat which turns off after fifteen minutes to free the seat for people without reservations if no one has yet sat down. I was worried about this since it was my first train of the trip, but fortunately, there were a lot of seats available and so I was able to quickly settle down for the first of four legs of my journey.