During the summer of 2006 I went to several countries in Europe starting with Ireland moving on to France and from their Belgium. Here Are those tales, and of course pics from my journeys can be found in
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So This Is France?

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My morning started in time to watch the sunrise off the coast of France. Followed a few hours later by the ferry docking in Cherbourg. Exiting the ferry I got separated from my friends when the police rushed on board to arrest a woman. I ended up on a different shuttle to the terminal than them. We shortly met back up and discovered that I was the only who managed to get an entry stamp in their passport. Luckily Tim already had a valid stamp because he was there a few days earlier, but we wanted to get Sean’s stamped so he wouldn’t have any issues when he tried to exit the country. We trekked around for a bit under the direction of several different officials for about four hours heading back and forth across town before we gave up and decided we all had
such quality titles at the new stand such as “assdivers 4″ It kinda made me wonder if there was even much point in visiting a sex shop while I was there. Needless to say I did find one and wander in, regrettably I think the news stand had a better selection.
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Done with Cheerbourgh onto Caen

Caen and parts east

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My goal was to make it to the edge of Cheerbough and hitchhike to Caen. I sat down on the curb and started making myself a sign. I had just gotten started coloring in the letter “A” when a man starts yelling to me from his car asking me if I was headed to Caen. It turned out he was a D.J. and commuted between the 2 cities several times a week, and he had broken down last week and someone had been nice enough to give him a ride, so he was sort of returning the favor. During the ride he coached my French along and I helped him with some basic english so he could pick up back packer chicks. He gave me an idea of the things I needed to see while in Caen. So on his advice I went to see a bunch of cathedrals and chalets around time, before calling him back and spending the night in his apartment. He offered his shower to me, but it was essentially a sink with a shower curtain around it. I wasn’t feeling so brave, so I just washed my face and passed on the rest. After I got done in Caen I caught a train to Le Mans. Unfortunately Le Mans is not worth visiting unless there is a race going on, the entire city was torn up for construction, and the track and museum are inaccessible when there is not a race. Since it was a sunday at this point almost everything was closed as well unfortunately. So i walked about 4 kilometers out side of Le Mans and prepared to hitch again. [thumb:95:l]

Outside of Le Mans I got picked up by a pleasant none English speaking gentleman, we did communicate much, but he took me to Orleans. Where I stopped in a local supermarket bought a tent and dinner. Found some bushes and crashed out for the night. The next day I started hitchhiking north towards Paris.

A short time later I got picked up by a very high spirited truck driver named Ousin. This man was awesome. he told me a lot about the European trucking industry, and he was the first person I have heard use “booko” in a sentence. We were talking and he asked me, “how will you flirt with the booko dammes in Paris if you don’t speak French?” That was so out of the blue I had nothing for him.
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He dropped me off right next to the subway station I needed to get to St. Lazare. Once I got there I walked along a really posh shopping district until I reached the Eiffel tour. En-route I made friends with a Finnish gIrl, ad we walked we talked about where we were from. I think I made what was possibly the smoothest move ever when I asked her “what language do they speak in Finland? German?” We split up once We reached the base of the tower, I was really unprepared for the sheer volume of people that would be there. There were so many bodies they seemed to make the tower seem a lot smaller than it is. I started to head away from thbe tower once the crowds got to be too much. [thumb:104:l]But I stopped and decided to people watch around the base for a few hours instead. The sheer of people milling around the tower amazed me more than anything else I had seen in Paris until that point.[thumb:99:l] There was a representative from ever single social and ethnic group present. From there I proceeded to take the long scenic route to the Norte Dame cathedral. On the way I met possibly one of the most beautiful women I have ever spoken to. Her name was Annika she was a French and English speaking German girl. She was out headed to one of the museums to see if the renovations were complete to the outside. Turns out she is a architecture buff like me, but we have slightly different feelings towards the art deco movement. She decided since I went out of my way to walk her to the museum that she would return that favor by walking me to the Norte Dame. [thumb:106:l]She had lived in Paris for a year
previously so she acted as a bit of an impromptu tour guide for me, pointing out the different districts and things I should see.

We grabbed lunch in a cafe in the cheaper part of town before I walked her across town near the spot we originally met. Then I walked back across town to find a youth hostel to stay in for the evening. After trying five different hostels it became apparent I would be sleeping outside for the evening. So I called Annika again and we met back up and went to a Indie rock concert and the Flecchete Dior (the golden arrow) and we talked for a few more hours before calling it a night.

One of the errands I managed to run while walking back and forth across Paris was picking up a new sleeping bag, the one i had had been ruined outside of Le Mans train hopping unfortunately. I really wanted one of the uber-nice ultralight bags I found in the sporting goods shop, but they were out of my price range and I ended up going with the store brand bag. ( yes the cheap store brand).

At this point it was getting to be pretty late. So I ended up pitching my tent in an abandoned lot with a high fence around it. There were a few surprised faces when i came over the fence the next day were my backpack. My goal for the day was to find a sun dappled beach, I had seen enough of the big city. [thumb:109:l]

Row row row your tent

[thumb:252:l]The next morning found me In the North paris train station or Le Nord Paris Gare. I caught the first train that morning to Abbeyville, France where I then proceeded to hike 6 kilometers from the train station to the edge of town where I found the most awesome public park I have ever seen. [thumb:116:l]No bus ran to it, And you pretty much had to walk there. I ate lunch there and watched the ducks for an hour or two before trekking on another 4 kilometers (2 of which were thru waist high winter wheat) before I hitched a ride with a family headed to Calais. Calais on the north coast of france and the main point of entry for Brits heading into france. So I assumed a few people there would speak English. Unfortunately I guessed wrong, so after and hour of hanging out in front of Le Abbatoir (sp?) or the slaughter house district, I decided to risk my bad French on the locals. So after a day of traveling, I had finally found my coastal city, I couldn’t wait to get to the beach. About half way on the route there it starts to rain. Now normally a little rain isn’t very much of an issue, but this was the kind of rain that would have made Noah panic, I mean biblical amounts of rain. But instead of doing the smart thing and finding a hostel I just found high ground on a sand dune and pitched my tent and called it a night. Unfortunately my night didn’t last long about 3 hours later I was busy bailing water out of my tent with my shoes.

The next morning I wandered over to a local lavomatic where I spent way to much money washing and drying my clothes. While there I met a great New Zealand Family who had been traveling around Europe for 5 months at that point and had planned to spend the entire year out. They were great to talk with. From there I snuck onto an Rv lot grabbed a shower before skipping town. My taste for ceaseless ran had been sufficiently filled for the year.

The train dropped my in Tourquai, Belgium, lucky 13 on my trip. The only reason I knew I was In belgium was the fact they had waffles in the snack machines.

On a side note, I didn’t meet any rude French people except one.
I walked into a bar in Le Mans to ask for directions, and addressed the bartender in English. She said no, and as I was turning to leave she says in French, “this is not Paris we have no use for your English here.” So of course I turned around and in French asked her if we could try in Japanese instead then. She only gave me a really dirty look and pointed to the door.