Bikes and Boats: Part One of the Eurotrip Story

Jenni is back, back again - will she write? Write again? What to write what to writee what to write write :) 

How to pack all that we saw and experienced into a blog post that one does not grow bored while reading?

I decided to divided this trip post to three parts. Starting with Copenhagen and Germany, part two about France and part three of Italy.

Me and Salla had utterly, the most fantastic and problem free trip. We didn't lose anything that we didn't want to leave behind nor did we have to call any embassy's or to pay a visit to any hospitals. 

I think I'm going to quote Salla mostly on this blog post as she made her sarcastic commentaries about each of the place and country we visited.

I left Finland three weeks ago, 5am. I was impatiently waiting for Sallas flight to arrive from London Heathrow.  And yes, there she was - my beautiful freckled face best friend, carrying her backpack and was ready to go. 


"Let's do this, here we gooo!"

I admit that we were VERY tired in Copenhagen. Both of us had been working till the very last day and now we were supposed to travel three weeks. But, excited we were and with a map of Copenhagen and bags put into bag keep we were off.

"Jenni, no wonder Danish bike around this place is rather --- flat. There isn't really any hills or mountains, it's just, flat. These bikes are just everywhere, it's not the cars we need to be scared of but these wild bikes". 

That was Copenhagen. Beautiful, construction and tourist filled town with expensive food and really hot men. We saw the Mermaid (link The Little Mermaid) the main tourist attraction and had a drink at the Hard Rock Cafe.

It was time to move on. 


Our next stop was in Koblenz. When we were planning our trip, neither one of us REALLY wanted to go to Germany, but when you travel around Europe, one shouldn't really skip Germany. 


To save money we wished to do something else and Salla geeking her tourist books found a travel route by boat on the Rhine river. We hopped into our first (and last) nigh train in Copenhagen and set off to Germany. We didn't take a sleeper cabin but shared to booth with two Yankees and a Dutch woman and a large man. Yankees turned out to be good company to travel with and time went on rather fast in the night train. It was rather ironic that out of these two sisters one was studying in the University of Michigan and other in Scotland. Oh life, how you can be ironic, (I studied in Michigan and Salla lives in Scotland) Unfortunately the large man in a tight booth didn't seem to fit in and his desire to be hammered and party didn't make me a happy camper. He was kind enough to offer us sum of his rum and coke but we kindly said no and tried to sleep. 


Sometime at night we passed to the Germany side and woke up in Köln to switch trains to Koblenz. We knew that the cruise should be leaving at 9am and was a short walk away. Of course we just missed it but set our eyes on the 11am cruise instead. We went for AMAZING breakfast at Koblenz and because we haven't been eating for 12 ours .. it wasn't pretty. I just ate and ate and ate. Then we took off our trip to Mainz only to discover that we wouldn't be there early enough to make it to our night train to Paris. Tour guide said we should take off in the town of Bararach to catch the Mainz train.

The Rhine River tour was .... slow. It was amazing for sure, this huge cruise ship and sailing down the river, yea .. doesn't sound too bad but once you realized that the castles we were viewing were almost hour apart things get a bit slow. If the sun was shining it wouldn't mattered but when it started to rain and thunder. It was slow.



 

The Famous Lorelei

Salla was deteminded to capture every landmark and castle with her camera, so when I gave up and went inside to enjoy some ice cream, she remained outside to catch the famous Lorelei with her camera. ( Link to The Famous Lorelei) Wellllll, the Lorelei was supposed to be mermaid shaped rock, turned out to be just a rock and Salla also had had enough and we left the boat to enter the town of Bararach (which I of course started calling the town of Barack Obama). The town was very very small and quiet and all we could do was wait for the train to arrive. I was approached by many Germans asking questions in german and I just said "Soooorrry, English" and they walked away. 

We made it to Mainz. We hurried to buy tickets to the night train in Paris but then we got our first BIG setback:

"I'm sorry to tell you but all trains to Paris from Sunday to next Friday are all booked out. Every root and way is booked out. There is no way of you to get to Paris anytime soon, I'm sorry" - Ticket Officer for Deutsche Bahn

 The fuck we do now, Salla said. We had a hotel room waiting for us in Paris but no means to get there. I told Salla to chill out, there is no fucking way that all roads to Paris are closed. "Let's go to a bigger town and make some new plans". We took a train to Frankfurt and Salla got us a last minute hotel. Neither of us had no battery on our phone and no idea where the hotel was. Last info was that it was somewhere in Financial District and we started walking that way - and OH BOY did we walk the wrong way - straight into Red light District. There were needles and addicts everywhere and whores in every corner. This is were I started panicking, two lonesome women with passports and credit cards wondering around the place for the sinners. I hailed a cab and asked to take us to the hotel straight away. 

At the hotel, we made a decision to travel to Strasbourg. I was certain there had to be trains in France going to Paris. This meant that we had to leave 3.30am and it was 11pm. Oh joy. 

Early morning, (or very late a night) we continued our journey to Strasbourg and fair enough - there was a train to Paris and Paris we went.


.. To be continued

Part 2: Paris and Marseille


Jenni