Immediately after our Christmas vacation and the transportation problems I’d had (which, yes, I know I have yet to chronicle; bad, bad Becky), Verity insisted that we begin planning our Winter Vacation immediately so as to avoid any such problems, as well as get the best prices and hostels available. After travelling mostly alone for the previous vacation, I was simply happy to have a travel partner for most of this one, so I was willing to go almost anywhere, and when Verity and I compared destination lists, and we had basically the same cities, I happy-danced. (She consequently questioned her decision.)
Prague and Budapest, which I’ve mentioned before, immediately came to both of our minds. See, contrary to my previous vacations which resembled marathon sprinting more than not, I wanted a bit of a slower pace this time without sacrificing seeing the sites. With the amount of things to do in both Prague and Budapest, we knew we could check off our lists and take breathers at the same time. (Well, as much of a breather as possible when trying to see many cities in one vacation.) But still, those would only take three days each with a day each for travel. What to do for the remainder of the time? Verity wanted to visit a former French assistant who lives in Lyon as well as to arrive back in La Flèche a couple days before the end of break (the vacation from the vacation), but that still left a couple days to play with. Where to go?
Amsterdam topped both of our lists, but after extensive hostel researching, as well as a frank look at how much we could do in the little time remaining, we nixed that idea. Hostels in Amsterdam take advantage of its reputation for attracting ‘experimenting’ youngsters in possession of Mommy and Daddy’s credit cards by jacking up the prices for everything; while in other cities, one can find a dorm bed for around €10, the average dorm bed in Amsterdam costs upwards of €25. (Paris is worse: the average dorm bed would set me back around €30 per night.) I could deal with the prices — Fourth Rule of France coupled with an understanding that, yes, Amsterdam is in fact popular — but with the amount of sight-seeing I would want to do, blitzkrieg-ing the city in two days would either strain even my speed walking skills or kill me. Probably the latter. And I didn’t want to experience Amsterdam under such stressful conditions.
So when Verity suggested saving even more money by going to Bratislava, Slovakia, I agreed even though I never really had any desire to visit or, honestly, any knowledge of the place. But I point again to the title of the blog: Pourquoi Pas?!
But what to do while Verity visited her friend in Lyon? I drummed my fingers. La Flèche did not sound appealing, especially if we were to spend our last couple days of break toutes seules at the school. Again, a weekend is not enough time to do anything major, so that pretty much limited me to France and anywhere near an airport that flies to Budapest.
Strasbourg! Since the beginning of my academic French career, my grandfather has delighted in telling me that we have family that still live in the Alsace region of France close to the city of Strasbourg famous for its cathedral (duh, it’s France) and its annual Christmas market. In order to prepare for meeting long-lost family members, I emailed my grandfather for specifics: who this man was, where I could find him, if he spoke French or just Alsatian. Surprisingly, he gave me great directions on what to look for but nothing on how to communicate with him. André Klein is his name, and he’s Grandpa’s second cousin on his father’s side. He lives in Sessenheim with about a thousand copies of the family tree, and I could find him at the restaurant/hotel À Croix d’Or: just ask for the owner’s wife who speaks English, ask her to call André Klein, and everything should be set. The graveyard next to the Catholic church houses my great-great-grandfather, even though the headstone only says ‘Famille Wolff’ (actually, headstones like that are very common, as families rarely move enough to be buried far away from their family, though sometimes they’re buried with their husbands’ families). Also, André speaks Alsatian, that was for sure, but did he speak French? My grandfather didn’t think so. I had a hard time believing such a thing, as to be born in France and to live in France means to speak in French, even if one lives in an area of heavily-concentrated accents and culture. But I didn’t take the chance: I refrained from emailing André and put all my eggs in the showing-up-on-his-doorstep basket.
We’ll see how that goes. And whether or not I follow through.
Finding lodging for the vacation was easier than it’s ever been, and in fact, we suffered from too many choices that appealed to us. We settled on MaverickHostel for Budapest, HostelOne Prague for, well, Prague, and Hostel Blues for Bratislava. As there are no hostels in Strasbourg — a fact that I had trouble wrapping my head around — I had to spring for a single room in a budget hotel which cost about as much as all the hostels combined. We discovered that flying to Budapest would be the cheapest option, so that would obviously come first, and flying back to Paris out of Bratislava via RyanAir (grr) was the cheapest for our return, so we sandwiched Prague in the middle, adding train rides like mayo on either side. After establishing our trajet/itinerary, I discovered that I would need to spend the night in Stuttgart in order to keep with the “cheapest option possible” gospel. That meant a call to my German friend Jenny, whom I met while studying abroad in Angers in 2007 and who worked an internship in Chicago over the summer of 2011. She agreed to lodge me with her signature amount of enthusiasm (“YES, of course you can stay with me! You should try and book a ticket that brings you into Stuttgart around dinner time. I'd love to take you to a German restaurant so you can try our German mac and cheese!”), and I finalized my plans.
Even though planning this vacation seemed like the most arduous out of the three I’ve had so far, it seemed like the most solidly-planned as well. We’ll see if any little speed bumps decide to through themselves in my path.
It's about time you posted! I was going through withdrawl.
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