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Date:         Sat, 31 Oct 1998 22:10:08 -0500
Reply-To:     The Bus Depot <ron@NETCARRIER.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         The Bus Depot <ron@NETCARRIER.COM>
Subject:      Trip Report:  Europe  (Long)
Comments: To: vanagon@vanagon.com, type2@type2.com, vintagebus@type2.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

It's impossible to summarize a month's worth of traveling through Europe in one post, and this is probably a pretty lame effort, but just the same I thought I'd relate to you some general thoughts regarding our recent trip. We had the time of our lives. If you can get even a couple of weeks free, it is well worth doing this yourself. In October, airfare is cheap because you're off season, yet the weather is still warm enough to make camping possible. I believe March is the same way, although I could be wrong.

To recap, Evon, 5-month-old Haley, and I spent a month traveling through Europe in a VW camper which we rented from a company in the Netherlands (see related post). We were doing this vacation on a very tight budget, so we spent most nights camping on the side of the road in highway rest stops. The full-service rest areas in Germany and the UK were generally as clean as my house is, and had free showers to boot, so there was little benefit to paying for a campground just to sleep at if we were going to be traveling again first thing in the morning anyway. And the savings from free-camping were enough to pay for hotel rooms on those days that we got tired of living in a bus, hit a particularly cold night, or hadn't found a free site with a shower for a couple of days. List member Frank Goodrick had been kind enough to recommend a couple of books, Travelers Guide to European Camping and Europe By Van and Motorhome (the latter written by a couple who regularly travel Europe in their VW camper), and these books were very helpful in giving us ideas of where to camp, etc. We visited eight countries in four weeks, so we sure didn't get a full dose of any of them, but we learned enough to know where we'd like to go back next time.

We started our trip in the Netherlands, and it turned out to be a great place to start. First of all, almost everyone spoke English, and was friendly to tourists, so it was an easy transistion. Secondly, the dollar is stronger there than in, say, England or Germany, so it was a good place to go to the supermarket and stock up the camper with a month's worth of staples at a reasonable cost. We enjoyed a visit to Gouda, and found Amsterdam a worthwhile day trip. But Holland's most memorable attraction was its robotic toilet. After checking into our campsite and setting up, we went to the tiny snack bar for a quick bite before dinner. When Evon returned from the bathroom she informed me that I had to go to the bathroom, which was news to me. But I obliged, as any well trained husband does when given firm instruction from his wife in a certain tone of voice. Inside the restroom I was facing a toilet that looked perfectly normal, save for an electric button in place of the mechanical lever that would normally flush it. I pressed the button, the toilet flushed, and then a little trap door opened from behind the toilet seat. Out came a little robotic arm, which grabbed hold of the toilet seat and proceeded to clean it while the seat rotated 360 degrees. Cool! I'm just glad I didn't mistakenly hit the button while sitting on the seat, or I would have been in for a big surprise. How do I get one of these for my bus?

Belgium was our next stop en route to the ferry in Calais, France, and we blew through it in about a day, so I can't say I got a really strong feel for it. I will say that the Belgian white beer was probably the best beer I had all month, which came as quite a surprise to me as I am a big fan of English bitters and was not expecting to like Belgian beer nearly as much. We really enjoyed the town of Brugge. (I think I have that name right. Working from memory here, on top of jet lag). Neat old buildings, a big center town square, and great food, if a little touristy.

I had plans to meet with the folks at Just Kampers in the UK, so we proceeded to England via ferry from Calais. After a long and very rewarding day at Just Kampers, we continued northward toward Scotland. The owner of Just Kampers had recommended a stop at the Lake District in northern England, and we wanted to visit York on our way there. We were a little disappointed by the Lake District but were by no means sorry we had gone there. We took a small country road from York toward the lakes, which wound its way over steep hills of green pastures. It was perhaps the most beautiful drive we experienced on our entire trip. Lush green and blue colors, old stone farm houses that probably had been unchanged for 100 years. It took all day to go maybe 100 miles with all of the sharp curves and steep hills, but it was well worth it.

Edinburgh, Scotland was our next destination, as we had a friend there. As cities go, I could live in Edinburgh quite easily, if only the weather weren't usually as windy as our friend told us it is. When we were there it was sunny and beautiful, but he assured us that we were witnessing one of the three nicest days Edinburgh had seen all year. The castle, way up on top of the hill in the center of town, is well worth the visit. It is still used by royalty, and nicely maintained, and they provided a CD player to each visitor, who can wander around and punch in the appropriate track number to create his own personalized "guided tour." We both learned that we love haggis (sp?). Haggis, in case anyone is not familiar with it, is the local version of what we in the Philadelphia area call scrapple. Scrapple, as its name implies, is basically everything from a pig that couldn't be used for anything better, all mashed together into a hunk of gray meat-like substance, and then fried up and served as though it were actually food. Like a hot dog, it is best eaten without contemplating what exactly is in it. Haggis is basically lamb scrapple, with a bit of a spicy bite to it. I have to admit it was delicious!

Back across the pond, we crossed into Germany so I could take care of some business. Mostly we traveled down along the coast of the Rhine river, which was a very picturesque drive in places, through small towns and the like. We didn't have a lot of time to spend in Germany, but this drive along the river had been recommended, and was well worth it. Our tour books made mention of the Romantic Road, a section of road that the German government had designated as a tourist route because of the quaint villages it went through, etc. etc. etc., so we detoured off of our Rhine route to pick up a little section of it and see what it was like. Bad idea. Frankly where we had been before was even nicer than the so-called Romantic Road, and at first we were sorry we'd trusted the tour books. But we ended up being glad we took the detour, as it led us into Switzerland, which is a really beautiful country.

Switzerland is an expensive place to visit, but worth it. We really liked the outdoor markets of Bern, a city which impressed us with its cleanliness, friendliness, and picturesque view as you drove into it. And the Swiss Alps were spectacular to say the least. We drove as high as we could on them, but didn't do much hiking above that partially because we had Haley with us, and partially because we were being incredibly lazy.

Once we got through Switzerland, we found ourselves in northern Italy. It was late at night so we pulled off on a highway rest stop, planning to visit Turin in the morning and then work our way toward the Italian Riviera. When we woke up, it occured to us that we were on a toll road and would have to pay a toll to exit, yet we had no Italian lira, since we had reached Italy too late in the day to find a bank. Fortunately the toll collector agreed to accept about double the toll in french francs, encouraged by the fact that it was that or nothing, since we had no other currency at the time. From there it was on to Turin. No offense intended to those of Italian descent, but the Italian drivers were the rudest, most selfish drivers I have ever experienced! It was every man for himself! People cut eachother off every chance they got. Ten cars tried to push their way through each yellow light, leaving the people with the green light sitting there because they were in their way - so those people did the same to the next cars, and so on. People double and triple parked, blocking two or three cars in as a matter of course. People parked smack in the middle of the fast lane! No kidding! If you wanted to park somewhere, it seemed you just stopped your car wherever you were and got out, and everyone behind you had to slam on their brakes and try to go around you. I've never seen such a bunch of obnoxious inconsiderate drivers! The last straw was when we decided to park our car. I wasn't willing to block people in so i drove around for about half an hour looking for a legal parking space (not that the police really seemed to care). Finally I found one- someone pulling out of a spot right in front of me! So I put on my signal and waited. Meanwhile, a car pulls up behind me, the driver gets out, walks in front of me and confirms that the car in front of me is vacating the spot, then proceeds to tell me that I can't have that spot because she is taking it! Even though she is behind me, and has been all along! At that point, I just gave up and blew out of Turin. Every Italian city we drove through was like that, and it was not at all fun. On the other hand, we did enjoy the small towns. Much friendlier, and saner. My cousin in Bern had recommended the Cinque Tierre, or five towns, along the cost of Italy. These are five tiny towns nestled between the steep cliffs and the beach, four of which are completely unreachable by car. You can drive to the first one via narrow, twisting roads that wind along the cliffs with no guardrails (and Italian drivers passing eachother even on these roads, on blind curves). Finally you get to a sign warning that larger vehicles should go no further, and if you proceed steeply downhill from there you reach the first town. To reach the other four you must take a mule path or a milk train. The roads to the first town were so perilous that Evon, who is not crazy about heights, was literally begging me to turn around (as if I could manage a K-turn in a van on these roads :-). But it was worth it. The town was quiet and sleepy, with cobblestone roads and small shops, and old men playing cards in the center square. It was a great place to unwind after the frantic pace of the Italian cities, and we enjoyed our first hotel room along the water. Our vacation was already half over.

The next day we had planned to take a boat to one or two of the other small towns (the ones unreachable by car), and do some walking through them, but when we woke up it was pouring rain with no signs of letting up, so we moved on, back over the mountains and west toward France. The French Riviera was disappointingly built up and touristy compared to where we had been (not that there weren't tourists at the Cinque Terre - in fact there were even a couple of tourist busses that had made it over the winding roads!). We bypassed Nice, which reminded me of a French version of Atlantic City, and stayed in a nearby town, between Nice and Monaco, called Villefranche ser Mer (sp?). The old section along the waterfront was very reminiscent of the small town we'd visited in Italy if you pretended that Nice wasn't sprawling next to it with its casinos and Hiltons and department stores. It was Evon's birthday, so we spent a couple of days there relaxing before moving on toward our next adventure. We traveled over the French alps and through Provence, and hoteled it again, in a 12th century castle perched way up on top of the hills. A real neat place to stay, for only about $80 a night. Highly recommended. The name of the hotel escapes me right now, but if anyone finds themselves driving between Nice and Paris, e-mail me before you go and I'll dig up the name for you. Paris was of course exciting, and we did the requisite touristy stuff. The Eiffel tower is bigger in real life than you would imagine, and after viewing the city from the top you can have a quite nice and relatively affordable dinner in a restaurant inside the tower with a panoramic view of the city. We timed our visit for dusk, when the lights of the city were just turning on. I thought it was spectacular. Evon, who as I said isn't crazy about heights, enjoyed it from a location slightly closer to the center of the tower. The Louvre was also a very worthwhile visit. We visited after 3 pm, when admission is reduced in half, but of course the downside is that you only have three hours to take in a huge museum that could easily take all day to see. The Mona Lisa was nearly impossible to enjoy because of the huge throng of tourists jockeying for position in front of it while their mates took a picture of them with the Mona Lisa behind them. I tried to take a picture of Evon but hit the button too soon and ended up taking the picture of a random Japanese tourist posing in front of it, beaming at me. Oh, and while in Paris you must stop into the local version of Red Lobster for lunch, actually a Belgian based chain called Leon's. Their specialty is mussels, mussels, mussels, mussels and mussels. Seriously, it reminded me of the Spam sketch on Monty Python. This place has mussels in curry sauce, mussels in roqueford sauce, mussels in wine, mussels in just about everything you could imagine. But just about nothing else to eat other than french fries or waffles. If you like mussels, this is your place. Anyway, despite the French's reputation for rudeness to foreigners, etc., we didn't experience this at all. Everyone was perfectly friendly and nice. We really liked France.

Our last stop was a return trip to England, from where we were to fly home. We took the ferry back from Calais to Dover, and then explored southward to Stonehenge and Bath before visiting London. I could easily live in England. It's really a beautiful country, with a certain quirky personality that just clicked with me. Of course I could be influenced by the fact that I'm a British beer affectionado, and every tavern has half a dozen exceptional bitters, drawn up through old fashioned taps from the basement where they await the eager palate in wooden casks. And it was a kick trying to figure out the heck the British were talking about when they said things like "there's a qeue on the dual carrageway due to a spilled lorrie." And Indian restaurants on every corner - or more! On one street there were two next to eachother with a third across from them! Besides the usual London sightseeing, a stop at the record stores near Picadilly Circus was a must, to pick up a ton of CD's just not available in the states. The big record stores had 20 or 30 CD's from such relatively obscure "has-beens" as Captain Beefheart, Fairport Convention, or Gentle Giant. I was like a kid in a candy store! My luckiest score was a lone copy of Renaissance's Shaharazade, unavailable in the states for years, on CD for about ten bucks. I could have filled a suitcase with all of the music titles I will never see again, but Evon made me stop at about ten CD's.

Finally it was time to go. With deep regret, but also a sense of homesickness (and a backache that can only come from sleeping in a bus for 30 days straight), we drove the van to the ferry where it was to make its lonely journey back to the hook of Holland without us, and continued on to the airport.

With Haley growing fast (and gradually beoming less portable than she is at five months), and the Bus Depot growing even faster, I doubt that we'll have much chance to do a long trip like that again. I am so glad that we did it while we could - and also that after being away from my family for so long, wrapped up in the 80-hour-a-week-afair that is the Bus Depot, I finally had time to see my wife again, and get to really know my new daughter, who laughed for the first time when I was there to see it. My advice to you is, if there is something like this that you have always wanted to do, and it is remotely possible to do, do it rather than spend your life wishing you had. We traveled Europe on a shoestring budget in a VW van and had the time of our lives! There's nothing I'd have rather been doing.

I'll be happy to share more info with anyone who is contemplating a similar adventure - just p-mail me.

Whew - this became a long and rambling trip report after all! Well, anyway, back to work...the Depot awaits...

- Ron Salmon The Bus Depot http://www.busdepot.com


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