"The craziest holiday ever" a Paris Travel Page by sabsi

Bigs, Bea, Pinne and Sabs want to go to Paris for New Year's Eve. Sabs convinced a rower called Matthias to let them stay in his flat while he is on holidays in Finland (what a nice coincidence! A flat in the middle of Paris... for free!).

A few days before christmas Bea's car collapses - and she was the only one with a car at that time. What shall we do? The train is too expensive and we don't want to cancel the holiday.... Suddenly Pinne brings the great news "WE HAVE A CAR, A POLO".... Great, we went to have a look. The car she had organised from her uncle was built in 1981 (looked older though) and had a few techical difficulties to say the least... We should find out more about them later.

Oh, and ... it wasn't a Polo, it was a GOLF. HEHEHE we called him POLF from then on and waited for the day to go to Paris...

OK finally we are ready to start. It's the day after christmas - very early in the morning. Here you can see the first little problem our Polf entertains us with. After you leave it somewhere for more than 1 hour you have to tow it a little while to make the engine start! No problem for us, we just won't make any breaks that take longer than an hour, in Paris we will park the car for 5 days (it's even advantage if the car doesn't start so noone can steal it...) and on the day we leave we will definitely find someone who helps us for 5 minutes... (So we thought ;)

We hit the road. There's no heating - luckily it's warm. There's no radio - luckily we brought one. There's only one windscreen wiper - luckily it's on the driver's side....

After 30 minutes drive we switch the radio on to hear traffic news. The song they play is Mike Oldfield's "You'll never going to get to France". Oh god.... that's a bad sign!

Anyway, we take a longer break close to Cologne (and meet German TV celebrity Frierich Küppersbusch buying a sandwich) and another longer break in Belgium somewhere. The driving goes surprisingly well and soon we are 100 kms before Paris. Oops, the light that indicates there's oil missing is red suddenly. What shall we do? We stop, and search for a petrol station to buy oil. Alright, we are a bit nervous but probably Pinne's uncle hadn't checked the oil for a while.... (So we thought ;) We drive the last 100 kms until Paris, find the way into the 5th arrondisment quite easily and then we just get a little problem with the one way streets around Rue Tournefort... It's close to there that the oil light flashes again......

Matthias - the owner of the flat we want to stay in - told us his code for the front door and left his door keys upstairs on the door. We leave our car in front of the door for a little while and see whether he told us the right number. The door opens. And - wahey - we find the keys upstairs, too. Now we only have to find a place to park the car for 5 days and then the holiday can begin :-)

We fill up the oil again and find a space for our car eventually. Only a few metro stops away!!! Back in flat we have a look around....

The flat is in Rue Tournefort in the 5th arrondissment of Paris - the Quartier Latin. This is a wonderful area full with multiculturals shops and restaurants and for me it's the nicest area of Paris!! We can't believe how lucky we are to be here :-) (Not only because of the car and the fact Pinne's uncle had placed a bet on from where in Germany we would call to be picked up ;-) We even found a bottle of champagne in the fridge that Matthias left us for New Year's Eve...

This is the view from our kitchen window... it's great to see one of the cities' main sights so close: The Pantheon. In the distance we can see Eiffel Tower and Sacre Coeur as well... Unfortunately this window can't be opened because when someone painted the frame it was probably closed with wet paint and so it's glued together now :-) That might be the reason for the wet walls all over the flat ;-)

The kitchen isn't only a kitchen (= a sink and a cooking place), it's also the entrance hall (= a shelf) and the bathroom
(= a bathtub)! Oh .. and a piquenique area as well ;-)
Which means... if you let the tab of the bath drip (PINNE!) not only the bathroom is flooded but the kitchen and the entrance hall as well ;)

The toilet is in the hall.... At night going to the toilet turns into a nightmare. There's a light switch next to our front door but none on the way from there to the toilet. You have to turn around quite a few corners to get to the toilet. Which is easy on the way to the toilet... But if you spend a little too much time on the toilet (which is easy because Matthias left a Donald Duck Comic there ;) you come out and it's dark. HEHEHE And then you have to walk with your hand at the right wall and follow it for a while. A great toilet adventure :-)

We love the place. That always causes us to start being silly and childish and that's exactly what happens here :-)

Bigs fell in love with the neighbours flats so she watches "Karl Lagerfeld" eating soup all day ;) Unfortunately one woman watches us watching her so we better close the window for a while....

Oops Matthias seems to be a fencer as well as a rower. We have to try that sport as well... it's hard not to step on our stuff (mats, sleeping bags, bags were lying around everywhere because the flat is so small!!!) while trying it... guess we invented something like "offroad fencing" here :-)

This is definitely going too far, Sherlock!!!! Well as I said... we like being childish when we are having a good time...

...but how can anyone not have a good time with a fantastic view like this from the living room!?!?!?!

Anyway, it's time to leave the flat. Only two people are allowed in the lovely old fashioned lift ("L'ascenseur est en retard") - Pinne and the photographer ;-)

At first we hate the elevator. It very old and it looks like Frank'n'Furter from the Rocky Horror Picture Show would come down every minute. After a while we like it though - with the two doors to close and the great views. And it's definitely better than walking all the way up to the 7th floor!

2 minutes walk from our house there's the Rue Mouffetard, we lovingly call it "Mouffette". It's my favourite market in the whole world I think. You can get everything from Paris atmosphere to smelly cheese :-)

On the first morning Bea invents the "breakfast trick". Of course we want to have Baguette and Croissant for breakfast - after all we are in Paris. What the trick is? To buy 5 croissants even though we are just four of us - because "Cinq Croissants" is much easier to pronounce than "Quatre Croissants"! So every morning someone gets an extra croissant because of our lousy French ;)

OK now we should do some serious sightseeing... Bea has even brought her guide book so we turn her into a travel guide quickly
;-) In the evening after our delicious homemade dinners she always reads from her guide book and tells us about the places we had seen the day.

Talking of cooking. What to we have? Two pots? Hmmmm A case for Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce I guess. First time we buy all the ingredients (and Pinne refuses to accept the salad as a present - because she doesn't speak French ;) and find out that we have nothing to open the tin of tomatoes with. Second time we buy a tin opener ;-)

It's quite cheap to survive in Paris when you're a poor student. Because it's too expensive to go to a restaurant you just don't eat out. Which makes Paris a cheap place. All we eat are breakfasts, homemade spaghetti with all kinds of sauces and crepes which you can get fairly cheap at every corner. We tried to eat at Burger King, too but since Bigs threw her plate down the stairs we refused to go there again because of the embarrassment ;-) Oh and once we ate sheep... but that's another story ;-)

Down the road the other way there's the Pantheon, grave for many famous French philosophers and divers ;)

In front of it on the big square there's a winterwonderland. Them French ;-) OK it's 2 days after christmas but it's also at least 15°C tonight!!! In my opinion there's no need to spray trees with fake snow to turn Paris into a skiing resort. It's romantic enough without....

We start sightseeing in La Défense at the Grande Arche. It's quite a strong wind .. so that's why they built an arch and not a solid building here I guess! Anyway, some great office buildings here, they are still building loads. But it's a bit too much concrete and glass, as usual the soul is missing a bit. But imagine the soul that are buried on this scenic cemetary!?!?! Very strange place for a graveyard I think...

Maybe they all are victims of this killer frog of La Défense? See the building in the background? I love that one .. looks like a lollypop :)

From the new arch we go to the old little brother - the Arc de Triomphe and go upstairs. From here you can see Paris quite nicely - and you can see the straight road leading all the way to the new arch.

Oh, we really enjoy watching the traffic on L'etoile - the roundabout around L'arc de Triomphe!!! I read somewhere that the world record of not getting out of it again is 5 hours. I doubt it - I bet it's more than that ;)

This is Les Champs Elysees as seen from the Arc Triomphe. We better not walk along there as we are on a tight budget it can't be good for our wallets ;)

Don't ask me why we took a picture here ;-) We are on our way to Centre Pompidou, hanging around corners ;)

This is the fountain outside of the Centre Pompidou. It's designed by wonderful artist Niki de Saint Phalle - a good friend of our hometown of Hannover.

One evening we find out that you get a cheap and nice view over Paris from the top floor of Centre Pompidou. It's for free to go up and even if it's not that high you can see a lot of Paris... :-)

Another day we go to the market at Porte de Clignancourt. It's full of the stuff we like, clothes, jewellry, shoes, trash etc ;) Somebody buys a new camera which can take you back to Paris whereever you are :-)

For lunch we go for some sis kebab from an Arabic stand at the market. The guy who sold it to us explained in his best German that it's spicy ("Und was ist das? Das ist scha(r)f". We didin't expect it to be that spicy though and suffer ever after :) !!!!!!

Disneyland next ... ehmm no, actually Sacre Coeur. For me it looks like it escaped from Disneyland anyway ;-) Lovely place, we are trying to agree on who get which Paris building to take home...

Bea and me look like we made a bad deal ;) At least it's sunny :-)

A strange writing on the wall.... guess where we found it? Yep, next to Jim Morrison's grave on Père Lachaise, the graveyard where the famous people of Paris are buried. Actually it was not written on a wall but on another gravestone. Disgusting I think!

There are hundreds of people... quite annoying. We confuse them with asking ourselves questions quite loudly "So..where is Kurt Cobain's grave then? Straight here or left?" HEHEHE it didn't help though...

How can people ever be sure that Jim Morrison is dead when he would wake up all the time because of the screaming and shouting going on around his grave?!

For New Years eve we decide to take our bottle of champagne and walk up to Montmartre again to celebrate the new year there. Unfortunately all Germans that were in Paris that day had the same idea so it wasn't exactly quiet ;)...

Pinne was cought in a toilet until 3 minutes before midnight and escaped in time luckily. Imagine people ask you where you were in Paris at midnight and you have to answer "on the toilet" HAHA

After midnight we walk down the the metro and unfortunately while changing trains in our favourite metro stop called "Stalingrad" (how on earth can you call a station like that?) we miss the last metro. It's cold ... but then again we shouldn't complain. I think German froze more in Stalingrad before us ;-)

The taxi home costs us a fortune and we walk the last bit trying to avoid all the "Knutschtouristen" (kissing tourists). Famous last words of the night "I have no mouth" :-)

We leave the flat on the next morning and leave our luggage there to quickly get the car. It was still there (who would take such a car, anyway?) and we use all our charme and our best French to convince a frendly French man to us so that the engine will start. He said he'd do it and parks his car behind our POLF and starts pushing it. HAHAHA Them French and their cars ;-)

Anyway, of course there was no chance that the Polf would start like this. Luckily we find some Germans at a petrol station that agree on doing it the old fashioned German way. While Bigs and Bea stay in the car Pinne and me go back to the flat again to get our luggage downstairs and meet there. Unfortunately the car doesn't start for 45 minutes!!!! Afterwards the brave German guys are the heroes of our day :-)

We pack the car, fill up the oil and hit the road... We thought this was the end of an adventure and we just go home.... Unfortunately quite a few adventures were awaiting us on the road....

We drive for a while and shortly before the French/Belgian border we decide to take a coffee break to spend the last Francs. It worked quite well on the way to Paris to leave the car for half an hour and it would start again without problems. So we thought. Unfortunately the weather had changed a lot and suddenly it is freezing cold!!!! So after we come back from the break we have to push the car for a while to make it start but with the help of a few Germans it works quite quickly.

From time to time we have to fill up oil (now with the engine running - we don't want to risk anything) but that's not a big problem. We got used to it and have no panic attacks when the redlight comes up anymore :-) It starts snowing at the Belgian/German border. Luckily we are almost there, it's just a short distance from Aachen to Hannover. 4 hours... So we thought....

The snow gets more and it gets darker in the car..because we only have the one windscreen wiper. It gets much colder as well and the driver can't see a lot anymore because of the heavy snow. Hmmmmm hopefully this will stop soon. Actually it got worse. By the time we get to Cologne the streets are covered with pure ice. From there we end up in a lot of traffic jams and we never can drive faster than 80 kmh.

It takes us approximately 5 hours to get to Wuppertal from Aachen. It's freezing cold and we can't even take a break because we know the car wouldn't start again. We just quickly do out oil stops and continue as quickly as possible. When we are finally in Bielefeld after 2 more hours or so we think soon we're there. The conditions got a bit better the closer we got to home. We called home and told our parents that we'll be home in an hour. So we thought....

Suddenly in the hills nothing is possible anymore. The trucks are all over the Autobahn and our car smells of rubber. It breaks down in the left lane on one hill but we succeed in bringing it back to life while pushing it. It's so icy that Bea falls down while trying to push. Our feet just slide away. Once the car is moving again Bigs decides to drive on the extra lane (the one for cars which broke down) because we suspect the breaks to be the reason for the funny smell. Slowly we get closer to Hannover, we make our last oil stop 10 kms away from Bea's house and after 14 1/2 hours we are home safely. Bigs and I park the Polf in front of Pinne's uncle's house and walk home to our parents' place. There we just collapse into bed, completely frozen and tired.

The Polf never started again and died the next day on a scrapeyard!
We spent more money on oil than on petrol!
Looking back this was the funniest holiday ever! But never again please ;-)

LA FIN