Visiting Rheinbach Pt. 1 - In Motion

On August 3rd, 2007, we left Herbignac for our first extended, "beyond one day's driving distance" trip & vacation in over five full years. Ever since we moved here, we've had to work seven day weeks, round the clock, so we took the opportunity to do the pipe show as a sort of mini-vacation as well. The weekend was spent at the show, or seeing local Germany, and Monday and Tuesday were spent in the German city of Cologne and the French city of Lille. A two day vacation may not sound like much, and I'd have loved to stay longer in both places, but we were limited by time and budget.

Our trip kicked off in the scenic train station at La Baulle, where we hopped a first class TGV (France's high speed train) for a direct shot across France to the northern city of Lille. At the Lille station, we picked up our rental car and commenced our drive across France, Belgium, and into Germany. I'm dividing my posts up into three parts - This first will deal with the traveling, and then the next two will focus on our visits to the cities of Cologne and Lille. I've assembled web galleries to match, and you can see the first web gallery of our travel photos HERE.

I love traveling. There's something romantic about being in motion, and I like places that are hubs of people in motion.... usually (There are exceptions, such as the horrific Montparnesse train station in Paris, or the Chicago airport). Our friend Claudie dropped us off at the TGV station in La Baulle and we were off on our way, which as usual meant that we settled into our train seats, spent some minutes acclimating to the strangeness of being in first class (I could stretch my legs all the way out!), and then both fell fast asleep, lulled by the somnolent rocking vibration of the big electric train as it whipped across the countryside at 180 mph. In case you're curious for a window view, check this short video, which I shot as the train was accelerating away from a mid-country station stop.

The Lille train station is an impressive place. The pics in the gallery only show a couple of shots of the painted walls, but it was quite a sight.

All went just fine as we picked up our car (A funky bubble-shaped Citroen, shown in the gallery pics). It was so nice to be in a "real" car again, instead of our rattly 10 year old Clio. The Citroen had power, comfort, and enough headroom that I could have sat in the thing in a top hat. Of course, we promptly got lost trying to get out of Lille. Our Google directions didn't account for some highway destruction that involved numerous obscure deviations from the route, but soon enough we were back on the right road and plowing across Belgium.

Travel Observation: Gas is cheaper in Belgium than Germany. Why? Then again, why is gas cheaper in South Carolina than North Carolina?

I once saw a hilarious short animation comparing Italy with the rest of the EU. In my experience, the subject could just as easily have been France versus the EU - the situations and attitudes are remarkably the same. We started noticing differences in little ways as soon as we crossed the German border.... For instance, drivers actually stayed in their lanes! And, they even left proper following distances for braking (You can't leave proper following distance in France. It will only confuse the French, and they will try to fit their car into the open space). I'll touch on this more when I get to the post about Cologne, where Em and I were both boggled that we could walk through a crowded city street without feeling the urge to bash someone to death with a mallet.

All told, the traveling couldn't have gone better, especially when our host offered to drive us to the show each day in his convertible Jaguar XK8... A vehicle that was QUITE entertaining on the 100+ mph German highways.

When the show was done with, we spent all day Monday exploring downtown Cologne, which will be the next post...