Days 1-3: Paris & Strasbourg

Day 1 Paris (Wednesday 2 February 2011)

My journey gets off to an inauspicious start at the Hotel Buttes Chaumont where upon arrival I am told there is no room available for me and my poor grasp of French means I have no clue why. They do have a record of my name from the online booking, but still no room. Thankfully an old guy who has been sat around the lobby appears by my side and the girl on reception gesticulates for me to follow him. He leads me out of the Buttes Chaumont along the street, around the corner and into a second hotel. Inside the lobby I stand by smiling, trying to look like model clientèle, while the old guy and the patron seem to be hammering out a deal. Eventually they turn to me and it seems tonight I will now be a guest at the Hotel de la Comete.

I am already one step ahead for tomorrow, as before leaving Gare Du Nord I have reserved my seat aboard the 0654 to Strasbourg. Something to be aware of, should you ever embark on a inter rail journey, is that the rail companies in the majority of western Europe require you to purchase a seat reservation on top of the fee already spent on your pass. Seat reservations are fairly inexpensive but this is slightly annoying in that a reservation then restricts you to a specific train, taking away any flexibility and inhibiting spontaneity, which, you are led to believe, is what inter railing is all about.

Aggrieved at giving 10 Euros to a girl who claims to be deaf and dumb; I know it is a scam but as I sign what I think is a petition to help her in some way (although I am not entirely sure how) I realise that I am actually pledging my support with a cash donation! First day and already I have succumbed to the con but on the bright side I live and learn - this has left me in no mood to be had again.

Having visited Notre Dame I make my way to the Pompidou Centre and join the back of the ticket queue. There is a long queue when I arrive and this at least triples while I wait. I keep staring at the eight closed kiosks half expecting a few more to open and get people through but, instead, one of the two open kiosks closes. All this time there are half a dozen staff sat idle behind the information desk or in the shop, cafe etc... I am not sure if anyone else around me sees the absurdity of the situation and I am resigned to thinking that perhaps a day spent being harassed by beggars, ignored, and shunted between hotels hasn't left me in the most relaxed of holiday moods. Will the whole of the next month be like this? Or, as I suspect, is it just that Paris and I don't really get along.



Pompidou Centre, Paris

Now, with my ticket in hand I feel the wait has been worth it - quite possibly for the building alone. A Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers design, the building's infrastructure systems are consigned to its exterior, each encased in different coloured tubing: blue for air, green for water, yellow for electricity and red for the escalators. As these climb up and down the exterior of the 6 stories, taking the escalators is an attraction in itself. As I climb, looking out over Place Georges Pompidou, with its buskers, jugglers, crowds (con artists), the view extends farther and farther until, reaching the top, I am greeted with a panorama of the Paris skyline – spectacular even on a misty, smoggy day like today. My eye can pick out the Eiffel Tower with much greater success than my camera lens. Inside the museum the exhibitions on 2 February 2011 are many and varied and I don't intend to describe them here, other than to say they feature a wide range of works from Picasso to Le Corbusier. Leaving the Pompidou behind I take a stroll and by pure chance end up walking along Rue-St-Denis which offers an array of XXX shows, DVD shops and other such entertainment. I instead head for the sanctity of McBrides Irish Pub where my very best French is met with: “will that be a pint love?”; what do I expect in an Irish pub? 7 Euros for a pint makes my eyes water. And apparently it's happy hour! Still, Grimbergen is a good beer served in a cool glass and apart from the landlord no-one is trying to con me in here. Sipping my pint and writing these notes I begin to contemplate this evening and a trip to the Musee du Louvre...

Arriving at the Louvre after dark, the area around the pyramid is an impressive sight. Beams of blue light bounce off the modern glass structures, water pools and fountains, creating a great contrast with the seventeenth century buildings of the Palais du Louvre that enclose them. Having loitered for a while taking photographs I feel that I have seen and done enough for today and, satisfied, I wander back to my room. Can someone please remind me of the name of that hotel again?

Day 2 Strasbourg

Once on board the 0654 I have found a flaw in my idea to spend the journey looking through my Strasbourg guidebook. I carried it with me in Paris because it contained a 'Useful Phases' section that came in handy, but I can only assume I have left it in my hotel room. No going back there, so first job on arrival will be to locate a new guidebook, followed by somewhere to sit and sip a coffee. During the final hour of the journey the train passes by a number of quaint little Alsace towns stuffed with traditional half-timbered, red tile-roofed houses, all painted pastel pinks, blues or yellows. A layer of frost covers the countryside on this chilly morning but, stepping off the train, I am not prepared for just how cold it is. Without the wind it would be almost pleasant but today Strasbourg is besieged by a biting gale. Hurrying inside the station building I find the staff at the tourist information desk very welcoming and within a couple of minutes they have supplied me with a map, a new guide and a list of accommodation from which I choose to stay at Hostel Ciarus. As they have been so helpful I am persuaded to purchase the Strasbourg Pass from them, which, I am assured, is good value at 12.40 Euros. For this I get various free admissions including one entry into any museum of my choice; this seems slightly less impressive once I have actually studied the list of museums to be found in Strasbourg. In the end I plump for the Museum of Modern Art (again) a whisker ahead of the intriguingly named Museum of Seismology and Terrestrial Magnetism, about which my new guidebook can only offer the explanation that the museum 'features instruments which give insight into seismology and terrestrial magnetism'.

Far more exciting than seismic terrestrialism is the news that Sherlock Holmes Two is being filmed on location just around the corner in Place de la Cathedrale. Unfortunately I find this to mean the area around the Cathedral is cordoned off which makes a visit inside rather more difficult than I had imagined. Hopefully, tomorrow, worshippers and we tourists will be allowed back in. Not least because my Strasbourg Pass, now looking less good value by the minute, grants me free admission to the top of the tower which, I now know was, until the nineteenth century, the highest edifice of Christendom. By noon I think its probably going to be fine to check in at Hostel Ciarus which will be my first hostel experience of the trip. It is more like one o'clock by the time I get into my dormitory to claim a bed for the next two nights. I will be staying in a four-bed dormitory which, being a newcomer to backpacker hostels outside of Britain, is far nicer than I had anticipated. In one of the beds a guy appears to be still sleeping off his hangover, so I leave him to it.



The morning headlines

Strasbourg has a compact city centre and is easily covered on foot. Its maze of streets, squares and alleys offers a fantastic afternoon exploring, after which I take a boat trip around the River L'Ill, courtesy of my Pass whose value is now climbing again. Having circumnavigated the island that contains the core of the city, the boat heads north to the area where the EU Parliament buildings and the European Court of Human Rights are located. One can, I assume, get here just as easily by tram but by riverboat is an altogether more stylish way to travel and I am now really starting to relax into my holiday.

Back ashore I decide to head back to the hostel when I realise I cannot find my room card. After a thorough search of my many pockets I assume I must have dropped it somewhere along the way. I start retracing my steps: the boat house, where I think it most likely I will find it, is now closed, and there is no joy either at the crepe place where I ate lunch earlier. Whilst tramping back to the hostel I tell myself it won't be a problem as guests are probably forever losing their keys.

If they are then the hostel makes a tidy sum, because once I have explained what has happened I am told that, if I do not return it when checking out, I will be charged an extra 60 Euros! This they say is because all four beds in the dorm are now taken and there is no spare key card. To get back in the room I have to go and knock and hope someone inside will let me back in. It is still possible I have left it here but I search to no avail. It is now roughly five hours since I checked in and the same guy is still asleep in bed and snoring away. Luckily for me another room mate has let me in: Bill, an American, who is in Strasbourg because of a fledgeling romance with a local girl he met while she was on holiday in the USA. Bill has a great job; he is a pilot who flies tourists over the Grand Canyon which may, I suspect, have had something to do with meeting his French girl. Bill feels sorry for me and buys me a pint to help soften the 60 Euro fine. He is a good guy and has been backpacking in Europe himself, he is envious of my journey ahead and has some good advice and plenty of funny stories to tell form his own travels. Bill's date arrives and they leave and I go down to the locker room in the basement of the hostel to retrieve my backpack, where sat on top of my locker, where I left it six hours ago, is my key card. Oh yes! Back in my dorm its about Seven o'clock in the evening now and sleeping beauty has finally got himself out of bed. Still buzzing at escaping my 60 Euro fine I tell him my good news. He must be impressed as he is all for going out to celebrate. His name is Paul and we are out late, until about 4am; at 2am we were heading home when Paul accosted a group of French guys demanding they tell him where might still be open. To my surprise there is a place not too far from here which they say will close when the last person leaves. It turns out to be a cool, really laid back place and the locals we chat with are all lovely people.

Day 3 Strasbourg (Friday 4 February 2011)

Given that I was up before 5am in Paris the previous morning, and that Paul and I were not back at the hostel until 4am, after just four or five hours sleep I am feeling more than a bit sluggish today. Having missed breakfast at the hostel, we have dragged ourselves out by about noon. By a happy accident we discover a fantastic food market in Place Broglie not far from the hostel. I eat fruit, a gorgeous soft cheese and a fresh baguette and at once I feel much better. As we stand scoffing from our paper bags Paul is reminded of a scene he has read in Down and Out in Paris and London in which George Orwell describes being 'too hungry to care about how disagreeable it is to eat out of newspaper in public, especially in places generally full of pretty girls'. Whether we are too hungry or too hungover is debatable, but what is true is that the food is so good that neither of us care how we look. We plan to go up the Cathedral tower and happily Holmes and Watson are off filming elsewhere so the Cathedral is open, however, the tower is closed and as I plan to leave the city early tomorrow morning I am going to miss out. Dealing with the disappointment I head towards the Museum of Modern Art to claim my free admission. It is good; my appreciation is somewhat inhibited by my hangover but a few pieces crack me up - like the full scale wooden carving of the Village People. It is possible that two modern art galleries in three days is more than I can take in and I resolve to leave it a while longer before the next.



Strasbourg Cathedral



I feel that I am starting to appreciate what others have told me about backpacking and how at times you are travelling alone but frequently you meet people along the way and sometimes become travel buddies for a day or so. Paul decides he likes my plan to head to Munich via Stuttgart and I am pleased he has decided to come with me tomorrow. Bill even suggests he will fly out to Budapest in a couple of weeks to meet up with me when I am due there, but somehow I think that a little ambitious even for a pilot.

Tired out, I take to bed pretty early hoping for a quiet night of restful sleep. Bill flew home earlier today and Paul and I have two new room mates: a young lad from Croydon who is here visiting a friend who studies at Strasbourg University, and an older oriental guy who I have not seen leave the the room since he arrived and who seems to think I am German. He has a portable kitchen with him, like those Keith Floyd used to use, and has cooked in the dorm room this evening which now smells of his dinner. An hour or so after going to bed I am half asleep when he starts shaking me awake. Earlier he had been complaining about the hostel facilities and I had just shrugged and nodded to placate him without having to go too deeply into his grievances. Now he is standing over my bed thrusting a guide book at me in which he had circled a host of other low budget accommodation in Strasbourg. He comes close to catching one on the nose before I notice the telephone numbers have all been underlined and I figure as his English/French is fairly non-existant, he wants me to phone around and enquire if they have vacancies for him. And I start gesticulating that now is not perhaps the best time for me but to my surprise he then starts pointing first at the list of hostels in the book and then towards me! I am not sure what his motivation is; maybe he is concerned about my welfare at having to stay in a place he deems to be unworthy, or perhaps he has taken an enormous dislike to me and is attempting to rid himself of me for good. I guess I will never know. Had I thought the night could not get any more bizarre I'd have been mistaken when at three o'clock in the morning our other roommate from Croydon rolls in and after five noisy minutes crashing around the room he falls into bed where he begins, not to snore, but more accurately to roar as loud as is possible. Worse still our heads are only separated by an inch-thick foot-high wooden head board. I plug-in my ear phones and switch on my iPod - there are only two and a half hours until my 0545 alarm and any sleep would be a blessing.

(c) Robert Beardsworth