Hike to Santiago de Compostela

August 30 -- 33,000 Feet Above the Atlantic a (final entry)

2011-08-31T15:22:00.002-07:00

This will be the final blog entry. I expect to upload it when I reach Phoenix this evening, or if I'm too tired, tomorrow morning.

According to the screen in front of me, this United flight has just passed over the west coast of Ireland and is headed out over the Atlantic. We were two hours late leaving Frankfurt due to a problem with the water pressure in the sinks in the toilets. Despite our delay, the problem was not solved, and washing one's hands can be a problem. I only hope that the flight attendants serving me have found a way to wash theirs.

I was supposed to have a few hours to kill in the Washington D.C. Airport, but now, assuming I make my connection at all, it will be very tight. Going through immigration, waiting for my checked suitcase, taking the suitcase through customs, and re-checking it through to Phoenix will take time. (PS/ I made my Phoenix flight, but not with a lot of time to spare.)

Yesterday was a sunny although chilly day in Frankfurt. I started out intending to visit the Goethe Haus and Jewish museums, but I got involved in looking in store windows in the large pedestrian district and never did visit the museums. Well, I did go by the Goethe Haus, but by then I'd had enough of being on foot, so I walked back to the hostel. I went to bed early and got up at 6 a.m., a bit earlier than I had planned, and a half hour later I was on my way to the airport, first by bus to the train station and from there by S-Bahn or suburban train to the airport.

The trip did not go as planned, but despite my sciatica, which kept me from doing the planned pilgrimage to Santiago de Campostella, I'm glad I made the trip. To those of you who have followed this blog, many thanks. It must have made boring reading at times.

August 28, 2100 -- Frankfurt, Germany

2011-08-28T07:13:00.002-07:00

Normally I post to the blog early in the morning European time, but because I had a train to catch from Luxembourg City to Frankfurt am Main in Germany, I sped things up this morning and got out of the hostel early. Bus service to the train station is sparse on Sunday mornings, and today is Sunday. I'll post this when I arrive in Frankfurt, although I'll have to pay for Internet access there. In Luxembourg, it was free.

It turns out that I got to the railroad station in plenty of time. However, I had to change trains in Koblenz, Germany, which should not have been a problem, because I had 18 minutes to make it down the stairs over to another platform, and back up the stairs to catch my second train. However, there was a problem! The first train was already 17 minutes late before it crossed the German border. The train driver made up some of the time, and when we got to Koblenz, I had four minutes to make the change, just about adequate in the rush of people from the first train who were running trying to make their connections.

I made it up the stairs to the second platform just as the train was pulling in, and to my good fortune, the railroad car where my seat was stopped right in front of me. These InterCity trains stop for only two minutes to let people on and off (1:30 minutes if they're behind schedule), so there's not a lot of time to hunt for your car if you're not on the correct section of the platform when the train arrives.

To wind up this long-winded story, I got on the second train and had almost reached my reserved seat when the train pulled out of the station. I'm sitting on the train writing this now to post later when I arrive in Frankfurt.

Something is going wrong, because the conductor just asked over the PA system if there is a doctor aboard the train. (I never did find out who needed the doctor.)

Yesterday it rained in Luxembourg, so I spent the afternoon indoors working on my Arizona Road Cyclist News newsletter. A young Turkish woman asked if she could sit at the table with me and chat about American politics. That's always a red flag, because most Europeans and almost all Turks picture American politics as being even much worse that it really is.

First she wanted to know why only "Anglo Saxons" were in the American government. I explained that there is no Anglo Saxon identity in the USA, and I called up pictures of Obama's cabinet and showed here that they are a multi-ethic group. Of course people who think in stereotypes aren't dissuaded from their opinions by facts. She then insisted that most Democrats are abandoning the party and joining the Libertarian Party, and after I showed here that the Libertarian Party garnered about four tenths of one percent in the last presidential election, she complained that I wasn't respecting her opinions. I gave up. She had to leave for the airport and her flight back to Istanbul in any case. Why are people's opinions of value if they run contrary to facts. If I have an opinion that the Earth is flat, should it be respected?

Well, we are traveling up the Rhine River Valley, and I should be looking out the window at all of the castles we are passing. As said, I'll post this when I get to Frankfurt.

August 27, 2011 -- Luxembourg City, Luxembourg

2011-08-26T23:52:00.000-07:00

Today is my last full day in Luxembourg City. Tomorrow morning I take the train to Frankfurt, Germany, where I will spend two nights before flying to Phoenix on Tuesday. I may be out of Internet contact after tomorrow morning. I seem to remember its being difficult to find an open WiFi connection in Germany, so tomorrow could be my last blog entry until I do the final wrap-up when I arrive in Phoenix.

McDonald's in Germany has free WiFi, of course, but the German McDonald's organization has a strange way of accessing it. When you reach the log-on page, you are required to enter your cell phone number, and the system sends you unique log-on credentials by means of a text message, called SMS (short-message service) in Europe. If you don't have a German cell phone number, you're out of luck.

There's not much to report about my day yesterday. I did some exploring on foot during the morning and spent the afternoon indoors trying to stay out of the rain and dry. It began raining shortly after noon.

August 26, 2011 -- Luxembourg City, Luxembourg

2011-08-25T22:35:00.000-07:00

The snorer is gone! There are usually five guys in our dormitory room here in the Luxembourg City youth hostel. Three nights ago, or actually about 1 in the morning, a heavy-set, hairy, middle-aged man arrived as the rest of us were sleeping. He entered the room, slammed the door, and turned on the bright overhead light. Naturally, he woke us all. Being of mean temper, I yelled at him in English to turn off the light and use his flashlight. He obeyed without answering. Well, he turned off the light, opened the door to a hallway a crack, and used the light that entered to make his bed (his bed was right next to the door).

When I awoke early the next morning, he was still asleep. I went downstairs to eat breakfast and take care of some chores in the internet, and when I returned to the room, he had left for the day.

The next night he again came in late and slammed the door but didn't turn on the overhead light. He feel asleep and promptly started snoring loudly. VERY loudly. I attempted to awake him so he would roll off his back and stop snoring first by shaking his bed, then by dangling a wet towel in his face, and finally by grabbing his arm and shaking him vigorously. Nothing worked. He snored through it all. I have never known anyone to sleep so soundly.

To the delight of the rest of us in the room, he left yesterday.

Some of you old-time cyclists may remember Tom Hayes, who used to race in the 1970s. I was delighted this morning to receive an E-mail from him. I hadn't heard from or of Tom in decades.

The weather forecast for yesterday was for thunderstorms. Why do I keep putting faith in the European weather forecasts? The morning brought clear, blue skies that turned to partly cloudy in the afternoon. The late afternoon did bring some very light rain showers, but nothing like the storms that had been forecast.

In the morning I explored more of the fortifications that protected Pfaffenthal from the early Roman times up until World War I. There are so many of them that I keep finding new ones to explore. In the early afternoon I climbed the hill northwest of the hostel to the area occupied by the modern installations of the European Union. Luxembourg City is the home of the European Court. I was amazed at the number of large high-rise buildings that the Court occupies and by the fact that even more are under construction. They reinforced my prejudice that the European Union government is a bloated, inefficient bureaucracy, a prejudice that is shared by many Europeans.

The following photo, taken looking back after I had left the district, shows a few of those buildings in the distance.

August 23, 2011 -- Luxembourg City, Luxembourg

2011-08-24T22:52:00.000-07:00

The weather forecast for Luxembourg calls for thunderstorms today and tomorrow and rain through the weekend. It's cloudy at the moment (8 a.m. Luxembourg time) with fog on the hills above us.

Yesterday in the early morning I went to the German Military Cemetery, which is only a few hundred meters from the youth hostel. German soldiers who died in both World Wars are buried there. I remember it from when I lived in Europe in my youth and used to visit Luxembourg City. A large group of us would usually go out for a few beers in the evening, and I would usually convince one of the young ladies to visit the cemetery on the way back to the hostel. The cemetery was dark and shielded from public view, of course.

I spent the time from mid-morning until mid-afternoon in the city seeing such sights as the cathedral, the Grand Duke's Palace, where the Grand Duke of Luxembourg conducts official business and receives visiting heads of state. Although the weather had been slightly overcast in the morning, by mid-afternoon the sky had become very black, and it started raining, so I took a bus back to the youth hostel.

Here is a picture of the Palace, which like everything in that part of the city, is crowded in by the surrounding buildings. The palace is the brown building more or less in the center of the photo.

August 24, 2011 -- Luxembourg City

2011-08-23T23:02:00.000-07:00

The temperature in Luxembourg City was in the lower to mid-80s yesterday, something that I found quite pleasant, but the local residents were complaining about the heat. I spoke with a woman from Northern Ireland at breakfast this morning, who said she was going to do all of her sightseeing before noon, because the afternoons are far to hot to be outside.

I am learned a bit more about this Luxembourg City yesterday. The old part of the city down here in the canyon where the youth hostel is located is called Pfaffenthal, which I would translate as "Valley of the Priests." It was once defended by a fortress cut into the rock of the cliffs above it. The fortress, according to a brochure I picked up, consisted at its peak of 23 kilometers or more than 14 miles of underground tunnels. The fortress is called the Casemate in English and French and Die Kasematten in German. According to my dictionary, casemate means a vault or chamber, especially in a rampart, with embrasures for artillery. An embrasure is a loophole through which artillery can be fired. There are certainly plenty of those in the fortifications.

The Casement was conquered several times by different nations through the centuries, and each of the conquerors expanded the tunnel system and fortifications.

I toured the Casemate yesterday. Not all 14 miles of tunnels are open to the public, but there is enough to occupy a few hours, if one wants to see them all. There are also narrow winding staircases going up and down and places where one has to crouch to get through. Although there are openings to the outside where cannon were fired when the Casement was attacked, most of the network of tunnels and staircases would be in total darkness if the electric lights were to fail. I thought of that when I was inside. If there had been a power failure, I might not have been able to make my way out, and I would have had to sit in the dark and wait for rescuers.

Here is a picture of one of the canons that faces an opening that commands a view of the canyon below.

The picture below was taken in the same spot and shows the view from the opening in the rock from which the canyon used to be fired.

Above the casement, there still exist some of the old streets that were part of the old city in centuries gone by, although some of those streets are now paved in asphalt (a few are still of cobblestones). The picture below shows how one of the cobblestone streets, now a pedestrian path blocked off to automobiles, passes below an old building.

To the people who live in Pfaffenthal, it is a great source of pride that the great German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe spent some time here and even included a few paragraphs of description in his volume Campagne in Frankreich (Campaign in France) in 1792. The residents of Pfaffenthal erected a plaque in the rear garden of the youth hostel to commemorate Goethe's visit. The plaque quotes Goethe's flattering description of Pfaffenthal with translations of his words into French and English. Here is a picture of that plaque.

The way Blogspot reduces pictures, I doubt if you can zoom in to read the English translation at the right of the plaque, do for those 2 or 3 people who are curious. Here it is, followed by Goethe's original words in German.

The parents of our jovial guide possessed a pretty sloping garden in the Pfaffenthal, which they kindly allowed me to enjoy. The church and the cloister, not far off, truly justify the name of this Elysium, and whereas the spiritual neighborhood would seem to pledge both peace and tranquility to the secular inhabitants, each glance upward towards the heights constantly reminds them of war, violence and destruction.

Nothing could offer a more astonishing vision than the narrow valley serpentining along the river through the midst of all this; the few level places, the heights, whether gently sloping or precipitous, are laid out in gardens, cut into terraces or enlivened with pleasure houses. From there, to the left and right one beholds nothing but the steepest rocks and walls towering high.

Here so much grandeur unites with grace, so much gravity with beauty, that one cannot help but wish that Poussin [ a French classical painter -- JQ] had applied his glorious talent to such places.

The original reads:

Nun besaßen die Eltern unseres lockeren Führers in dem Pfaffenthal einen artigen abhängigen Garten, dessen Genuß sie mir gern und freundlich überließen. Kirche und Kloster, nicht weit entfernt, rechtfertigen den Namen diese Elysiums, und in dieser geistlichen Nachbarschaft schien auch den weltlichen Bewohnern Ruh und Frieden verheißen, ob sie gleich mit jedem Blick in die Höhe an Krieg, Gewalt und Verderben erinnert wurden.

….

Nichts kann deßhalb einen wunderlichern Anblick gewähren als das mitten durch dieß alles am Flusse sich hinabziehende enge Thal, dessen wenige Flächen, dessen sanft oder steil aufsteigende Höhen zu Gärten angelegt, in Terrassen abgestuft und mit Lusthäusern belebt sind; von wo aus man auf die steilsten Felsen, auf hochgethürmte Mauern rechts und links hinaufschaut.

Hier findet sich so viel Größe mit Anmuth, so viel Ernst mit Lieblichkeit verbunden, daß wohl zu wünschen wäre, Poussin hätte sein herrliches Talent in solchen Räumen bethätigt….

August 23, 2011 -- Luxembourg City, Luxembourg

2011-08-22T22:40:00.001-07:00

In Brussels I walked to the train station in the rain in Brussels, but what a difference! When I got to Luxembourg City, it was sunny and quite warm, really like summer! Now that I am about to leave, it appears that summer has finally arrived to Western Europe. In fact, the dormitory room was uncomfortably warm for sleeping last night.

The Central Train Station in Brussels is a madhouse. On each of the tracks, there is a train arriving every few minutes. That means that the traveler has at most a minute or two to hop on the train after it stops, because each train has to leave to make way for the next one.

In the Luxembourg train station, upon my arrival here, I managed to purchase a reasonably cheap ticket to Frankfurt. Trains here are like airlines, there are all sorts of prices, and it pays not to wait too long or the best deals are gone. I spoke German when I bought the ticket and with the bus driver on the bus I took to the hostel, but the language that dominates inside the hostel is English. Everyone who grows up in Luxembourg speaks Luxembourgish, a language that is seldom written, as well as French and German. I'm told that almost everyone also speaks English, although I haven't tried English on the street yet. French is supposedly the written language of choice, although I noticed that one of the local newspapers is written mostly in German with only a few articles in French.

The youth hostel here is beautiful, sparkling clean, roomy, and modern. Decades ago in my youth, I used to stay at the former hostel, which stood on the same site, but the old hostel has been torn down and this new one has been built in its place. The setting was beautiful then, and it is beautiful now. The hostel is located at the bottom of a canyon in the city, right at the base of an old stone railroad viaduct. Not only is the hostel very roomy, including the dorms, but there is a garden out back with swing sets for the kids to play on and tables with umbrellas for the adults. The hostel is modern, spacious, clean, and secure with electronically keyed locks on the dorm room doors and free lockers available in both the dorms and downstairs in the public area.

The following picture is of the viaduct. The corner of a structure at the left of the picture is part of the front patio of the youth hostel.

August 22, 2011 -- Last morning in Brussels

2011-08-21T22:01:00.000-07:00

Shortly I will be heading to the train station to take the train to Luxembourg, the next-to-the-last stop in Europe before returning home.

Yesterday I succumbed to temptation and again bought an order of Belgian fries with mayonaise. It was the devil who made me do it! I also broke down and tried one of the Belgian waffles. It was delicious! It had cinnamon and sugar baked into it, so it needed no toppings. As pictured below, the waffles that most Belgians eat are irregularly shaped, have a delicious flavor all by themselves, and are eaten without toppings. The square waffles with toppings are more popular among the tourists.

At least after this morning I will be away from the temptation of delicious Belgian food.

Yesterday I visited two districts that are side by side on opposite sides of the North Train Station: the business district and the red-light district. To me it's incongruous that these two districts could exist cheek by jowl. Stranger yet, in the red-light district many of the small grocery shops are owned by Arabs and sell no alcohol. If you want to get laid, no problem, but for goodness sakes don't do anything so sinful as ask for a beer!

In the red-light district, young women sit in storefront windows in their underwear and attempt to attract clients. (Sorry, no pictures.) As you might expect, there were also shops advertising X-rated videos and peep shows.

I did take some pictures of the financial district, however. I heard the buildings referred to as "skyscrapers," a term to which New York

City residents might object. However, the buildings are tall compared to the rest of Brussels. Here are two shots.

I also enjoyed my daily can of Belgian beer and purchased a spare can to drink on the train tomorrow so that I won't have to pay the high prices in the dining car. Aug

August 21, 2011 -- Brussels, Belgium

2011-08-20T23:00:00.000-07:00

Today is may last full day in Brussels. Tomorrow I take the train to Luxembourg City, my last stop before Frankfurt and the plane back to Phoenix. Only nine more days until I'm back in Phoenix. I don't know why that should make me happy. My sister E-mails that the afternoons there are still well over 110 degrees with high humidity.

I walked yesterday to an address where the tourist map said there was a brewery offering tours, but there was no brewery there! Did they close it? There were some buildings large enough to house a brewery.

The weather was great for a change, and my left leg was feeling pretty good when I left the hostel yesterday morning, and as a result, I overdid the walking, and I was limping by the time I got back in the afternoon. I did see some sections of the city that I hadn't seen before, however. I resisted the temptation to buy some more Belgium fries from the street vendors. I think I was loosing weight before I got to Brussels, but the food here is so great, that I can't resist trying everything.

The one disappointment is the bread. Many years ago I bicycled across Belgium, and I seem to remember stopping at bakeries in small towns and buying excellent, hearty bread. I seem to remember that one slice was almost a meal in itself. The bread I have eaten in Brussels is this airy, tasteless stuff with a texture like Wonder Bread. I don't like it, and as bread is a main part of the breakfast here, the breakfasts leave me hungry.

I'm limping around this morning, so I'm going to try to take it easy on the leg. -- Jack Quinn

August 20, 2011 -- Brussels, Belgium

2011-08-19T23:15:00.001-07:00

Just 10 more days until I'm back in Phoenix.

The ground is wet outside, and it is very chilly, but the sky is clear blue, and it promises to be a good day. I'm beginning to believe that the weather forecast for Brussels is worthless, so I haven't checked it.

It was a very chilly day yesterday after the rainstorms of the evening before. I stayed bundled up all day and still felt the cold. It's incredible that August, normally the hottest month of the year, should be so cold this year. It's more like November than August. I later realized that another reason that I probably felt the chill more is that I have a cold coming on. The symptoms are still mild, but a cold usually hits me hardest the second or third day.

One of the features that one still finds in Brussels, although they seem to be disappearing from other French-speaking European cities, is the open-air pissoir or urinal. This one is located just below the youth hostel where I am staying (that's the youth hostel building behind it.) They give men an opportunity to relieve themselves, not very privately in semi-public view. They are however very convenient, since almost all public toilets, including those in shopping centers and restaurants, charge for using them. The pissoirs make life easier for men, but they don't solve the problem for the ladies. I have no idea what women do in case of a urinary emergency.

While I'm on the subject of public urination, one of the sights that all tourists must see when they come to Brussels is the statue of Manneken Pis, pictured below. Manneken Pis is located in the old section of Brussels. Manneken means "little man" in the sense that one would call a boy a "little man," and…well, I allow you to translate the rest on your own. As I was standing there taking this photo with my cell phone camera, I heard a woman's voice behind me say, "I had no idea it was that small!" I assume that she was referring to the statue as a whole and not to any of its individual components.

Brussels is full of beautiful buildings whose construction dates from medieval times to the present. Here are a few examples without comment.

The high point of my day yesterday was lunch, which was pure junk food. I bought a paper cone full of fries with mayonnaise. In the U.S., we call potatoes fried in the Belgian style "French fries," but they should properly be called "Belgian fries," because they originated here, and Belgium is still the country where one can buy the best fries. The fries I had today were thicker than the ones typically served in the USA and were golden brown on the outside and soft on the inside with a great flavor. They were definitely not purchased pre-cut and frozen as is the case with most U.S. restaurants.

The traditional way to eat them is with mayonnaise, not with ketchup. The man who served me, while speaking perfect English, but a big glob of yellowish mayonnaise on top of the potatoes, and it hit the spot. It had a much better flavor than the mayonnaise sold in glass jars in supermarkets in the USA.

Finally, a sad note. The number of people killed by the storm at the rock concert the night before last was not two as previously reported but five. Several others are in critical condition and could die.

August 19, 2011 -- Brussels, Belgium

2011-08-18T21:44:00.003-07:00

I had a pretty stressful day yesterday, as you can see in the following picture.

This one of my favorite traveling pastimes.

Well, to tell the truth, that picture was taken in the afternoon after I decided that I had probably been walking more than I should on my bum leg. So, I purchased a can of beer (the small shops here have dozens of brands of Belgium beer, and every shop has a different selection, so I plan to try a different brand of beer every afternoon) and sat down in a pleasant park to sip the beer and read one of the books I have going on my Kindle.

There were a lot tourist buses parked near the park, and I found this one that apparently belongs to an illiterate. You would think that if there is one word in the English language that people knew how to spell, this would be that word.

Why can't people learn to spell simple words?

Yesterday started out cloudy and chilly, and some very light rain even fell in the morning. The afternoon was very warm, motivating more people than just be to find a spot in the shade in one of the city's parks. In the evening, when I was safely indoors, there were heavy thunderstorms, despite the fact that the forecast had been for partially sunny skies with no mention of rain. It was of course during the heavy downpour that the cyclists staying at the hostel arrived, soaking wet. Two women, who I think work at the hostel, pedaled in, each with a child seat and a small child on the back of the bike. The kids thought it was great fun to be drenched from head to foot.

However, on a sadder note, I read this morning on the Website of the French newspaper Le Monde that the storm killed two attendees at a rock concert elsewhere here in Northern Belgium.

As I wrote yesterday, Belgium has a language war going between the Dutch and French speakers. The Dutch would just as soon divide the country in half and declare independence, but no one can figure out to do with Brussels, which as I also wrote, is a largely French-speaking island in Dutch-speaking territory. A lot of businesses and other organizations are solving the problem by ignoring both Dutch and French and putting up signs exclusively in English. Here, for example, is an information booth that I ran across today. In France, the sign on the side of the booth would definitely be in French.

English is taking over in Brussels

Among other sections of the city, I visited "Little Africa" yesterday, a section of the city where most of the residents are immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa. The little grocery stores in the neighborhood had some pretty wicked-looking peppers on display among the other fruits and vegetables out front, but the main business in the neighborhood was women's hair-dressing salons. I have read that many of the African women spend hours sitting in one of the chairs in a saloon getting one of those complex hairdos that so many of them sport.

August 18, 2011 -- Brussels, Belgium

2011-08-17T21:53:00.000-07:00

This is a great city! If I could afford it, I would love to live here. I'm enthralled!

The train from Lille to Brussels was a half-hour late, quite a bit when one considers that the high-speed train takes only 35 minutes to get here from Lille. When I arrived at the Brussels train station, I had a ticket to pick up that I had bought on the Internet for the next leg of my journey to Luxembourg in five days. I went to one of the ticket areas, where a receptionist with a name tag that read "Inge" (same name as my daughter) asked me in French what I wanted. I stupidly asked, " Parlez-vous anglais ? She answered, "Of course I speak English!" as if that were one of the stupidest questions I could have asked. Sorry, but I just came from France, and if you can't speak French there, you have a rough time of it. In Brussels, pick your language.

I got my ticket, and everyone I spoke to spoke perfect English, although at times with a slight accent. I knew which bus to take to the hostel, and when I got off at the correct stop, I looked around trying to figure out where the hostel was. It turns out it was on a side street just a few doors away.

The guy at the reception spoke very vernacular English with an American accent tinged with the slightest touch of British. If I didn't know better, I could swear he is a native English speaker, but his native language is actually Dutch. He told me he spoke Spanish, and I thought I had him. Most people in northern and central Europe who claim to speak Spanish know only the few words that they remember from school, and when I speak to them in Spanish, they struggle to reply. However, he replied in perfect Spanish that he had worked in Barcelona, and I'll be damned if his Spanish didn't sound to me like that spoken in that city!

I sprang for the evening meal at the youth hostel, 10.40 euros or about $15, which I considered a bit expensive compared to what I could have thrown together on my own, but the meal was to die for! I have never eaten so well in Europe before, and there was even a bottle of chipotle sauce on the table to spice up my soup. The desert consisted of two scoops of vanilla ice cream, probably the best I have ever eaten, served on top of two Belgian crepes. Even the vegetables, just carrot slices, were so well spiced as to be delicious, and the potatoes were cooked with some sort of exquisitely tasting cheese. I could write an entire blog on the food here.

I took a walk around the neighborhood, and there are many shops specializing in one type of food. One was a biscuiterie or cookie shop, but the cookies looked like nothing I have ever seen before. Those ain't no Oreo! The chocolate shops, and I looked in the windows of several, had incredible creations of chocolate such as chocolate covered strawberries served in a cone made of a waffle. One shop sold only different varieties of macaroons. For about 30 bucks you could buy an assortment of them that looked too good to eat. OK, out of my price range, but window shopping is free.

Brussels is supposedly a French-speaking island in a sea of Dutch-speaking surroundings. The three official languages of Belgium are Dutch, French, and German, although German is spoken natively by a small minority. However, due to the fact that Brussels is the headquarters of the European Union and NATO, there is a lot of English spoken. For example, many of the shops have signs in English only, and I heard a lot of English in the street spoken by people to whom it was obviously a second language.

By the way, it is quite warm and pleasant here. This is the first really nice weather I have experienced in over a month. Rain is forecast early next week, but lets worry about next week when it gets here. The only problem I'm going to have today is trying not to walk to much on my leg with the sciatic leg injury. There is so much to see here, and it is best seen on foot.

August 17, 2011 -- Last day in Lille, France

2011-08-16T21:56:00.002-07:00

This is my last partial day in Lille. This afternoon I take the train to Brussels, where I have booked a room to stay in the Flemish hostel. There seem to be two of everything in Belgium: one of the French-speaking Walloons and one for the Dutch-speaking Flemish.

Yesterday was another nice day in Lille by the standards of this lousy European summer, meaning it didn't rain (OK, there was a light sprinkle) and it was warm enough in the afternoon to be outside without a jacket or sweater.

I had three roommates last night. One is an Iranian who is working on a master's degree in Finland. He is studying in English, of course, and speaks no Finish or Swedish. A second roommate is French, with whom I spoke only briefly, and I don't know where the third one is from. He was asleep when I went into the room yesterday afternoon, he went out late with the Frenchman, and the two came in at 1 a.m. When I awoke this morning at 6:30, he was gone.

By the way, this youth hostel has a cat who thinks that she owns the place. She is looking at me accusingly at the moment, because I sat down near her and disturbed her sleep.

I took no pictures yesterday, and I didn't visit any exciting tourist spots, so there is nothing more to write about. - Jack Quinn

August 16, 2011 -- Lille, France

2011-08-16T01:22:00.003-07:00

Yesterday turned out to be a nice day: sunny in the morning, threatening clouds around noon, and partly cloudy in the afternoon. Most of the day it was warm enough to walk around in a short-sleeved T-shirt. I saw several of the centuries-old constructions in and near Lille's Old City. It was also a French religious holiday, the celebration of Mary's supposed ascent into Heaven, so it was very quiet in the city.

I have read that Lille changed hands several times. Its name comes the Latin insul or L'Isla, which means "the island," because it was built on a bit of dry land in the middle of a marsh. The original inhabitants were Celts, then Germanic peoples, and finally the Vikings invaded the region that was later to be known as Flanders. The Normans and Hungarians had their turns conquering the region also. Next came the Portuguese. During their occupation, Countess Jeanne (or Joan) of Flanders, the wife Lille's ruler Fernand of Portugal, founded L' hospice de la Comptesse (Countess's Hospital), which is still standing in the old part of the city. Here's a picture of it.

Next Lille became part of the Duchy of Burgundy, then it passed onto the Hapsburgs and became part of Spanish Netherlands until it was conquered by the French king Louis XIV in 1667. That wasn't the end. It became part of Holland again and then became part of France again under the Treaty of Utrecht.

Just around the corner from the youth hostel is the Porte de Paris or Paris City Gate, ordered constructed by Louis XIV and was constructed between 1685 and 1692 as part of the city's fortifications. It replaced an even older Porte des Malades (malades is French for sick people), which had been bombarded when Louis Xiv conquered the city and returned it to French hands. (I have no idea why the original gate was called the Sick People's Gate.) Here are two pictures of the gate, the first one taken from outside and the second from the city side. As you can see, the gate is much more elaborate on the side that faced outward away from the city.

Finally, here's one of several pictures that I snapped in the old city.

There are four other guys in my room at the youth hostel. Three are young English lads from Nottingham who are returning home today. The fourth guy arrived after midnight the night before last and was still asleep when I left the hostel yesterday morning to go sightseeing, so I didn't get a chance to meet him yesterday. Now he's gone. I believe the three English guys are also leaving today.

I had some very interesting conversations yesterday evening and this morning at breakfast with a German, an Englishman, and a Spaniard. One of the good things about traveling alone and sleeping in youth hostels is the great variety of people on meets from all over the world.

August 15, 2011 -- Lille, France

2011-08-14T22:07:00.000-07:00

It did in fact stop raining about midmorning yesterday, although the sky remained very dark and threatening all day, and most of the day it was chilly enough that I felt more comfortable wearing the green sweatshirt that I purchased in Paris.

There is a group of people staying at the hostel who are apparently of low intelligence. The evening before last, one of the men kept staring at me with an odd look on his face, and his companion also stared at me but with a smile on his face that looked as if it would break out in laughter at any moment. It took me a few minutes to realize that they were part of a small group of mentally handicapped persons who are staying at the hostel.

The weather looks better this morning. The sky is clear, and it promises to be a good day. I've been reading up a bit on the history of Lille, and I've picked out some sights I want to see today. -- Jack Quinn

August 14, Lille, France

2011-08-13T21:58:00.002-07:00

In Paris, all signs and announcements were in French, of course. If they were also in a second language, it was English, and as a third language, they were sometimes in either Spanish or German. Here in Lille, almost all signs in the railway stations, etc. are in French, Dutch, and English, and the announcements over the PA system in the train stations are in French and Dutch and occasionally also in English. Lille is close to the Belgian border, of course, where the official languages are French, Dutch, and German, although only a minority speaks the third language as a native tongue. However, to the best of my knowledge, the language spoken across the border is French, and not many French-speaking Belgians, known as Walloons, speak Dutch.

Lille is a small city. I'm not sure what I'm going to do here for the next three days, but even if I sit around and read, it will be good, because it will give my leg a chance to rest and heal.

This city is certainly white compared to Paris. Paris is very multi-ethnic with lots of blacks, Arabs, Asians, etc. In Lille, almost everyone, surely 98% or so, looks European and white. As to my roommates, there are two Germans and one Chinese student who is studying in France and speaks good French and poor English. I am that only one who is able to carry on a conversation with everyone in the room. However, we didn't speak much last evening, as everyone was engrossed in reading.

The weather was damp with light rain when I arrived yesterday, and by evening it had gotten worse. It rained during the night, and it is still raining. The weather forecast calls for heavy rain this morning clearing toward noon. This youth hostel is closed during the day, so if it doesn't stop raining, walking around Lille today won't be pleasant, although I do have a rain poncho.

August 13, 2011 -- Lille, France

2011-08-13T03:12:00.000-07:00

I just arrived in Lille on the "high-speed" train. I write the words "high-speed" in quotes, because there was some sort of problem en route. We rolled along at about 150 miles per hour the first half of the journey, which was to take 59 minutes, but then we slowed to a crawl for about half an hour due to what a voice over the PA system called a "signaling problem." It didn't matter to me that we arrived a half hour late except for the discomfort of sitting a bit longer cramped into a second-class seat. I have restless-leg syndrome.

Last night, or rather early this morning, in the hostel in Paris, the fire alarm went off at four a.m. We all walked down the steps, I from the seventh floor (eighth floor as we count them in the USA). Near the ground floor, the stairwell was jammed, and we could go no farther. Then people starting coming up the stairs saying it was a false alarm. According to one person, someone had set the alarm off with a cigarette.

At least once again I had the four-person room to myself last night, and except for the fire alarm, I had a good night's sleep.

I'm sitting in McDonald's at one of Lille's two railroad stations, where I am about to take advantage of the free WiFi to upload this post. It's more hectic here than in a McDonald's in the USA. The tables are closer together, and the place is full of families feeding their kids Happy Meals. One of the kids is screaming for some reason, which is nerve wracking.

The weather is dark, chilly, and wet. For the moment it's not raining. If the youth hostel manual is correct, I've got a few hours to kill before I can check into the hostel here, which means I must lug my backpack around. I hope the rain holds off. -- Jack Quinn

August 12, 2011 -- Paris

2011-08-11T23:39:00.000-07:00

The sky is threatening this morning, so it will probably rain.

This is my last day in Paris. I will travel to Lille in Northern France tomorrow. I won't have time to post before I leave for the train station, but I have read that the youth hostel in Lille has a free WiFi connection to the Internet, so I'll try to write the entry while on the train and post it from Lille.

I was the only person in this four-person room last night, so I was able to get a good night's sleep with no one awakening me.

I have nothing special planned for today, so this entry is short. -- Jack Quinn

August 11, 2011 -- Paris

2011-08-11T00:08:00.002-07:00

Yesterday did turn out to be a beautiful day, sunny and warm enough in the afternoon to walk around in short sleeves. Some brave people even donned their swimming suits to sun themselves along the Seine.

I must look much more infirm than I picture myself. In the past several days, people have twice jumped to their feet on the subway to offer me their seats, and yesterday, as I was about to get off the subway, a young woman held out her hand in an offer to help me up out of my seat. Although I would have been delighted to hold hands with her under different circumstances, we were about to fight our way against the flood of people trying to get on the train, and so felt I needed both hands free.

I purchased my train tickets from Lille, France to Brussels and from Brussels to Luxembourg City online yesterday. I have to pick the first one up at any French train station and the second one at the Brussels Central Train Station, because I don't have a way to print them out here. The first ticket only cost me 17 euros! Being able to access the Internet is a big help in planning as is being able to read the sites in the various European languages. Train tickets in some European countries are like airline seats: they come in all prices with all sorts of special deals. If you wait too long, the cheap tickets are gone. It usually pays to shop online in advance so you can browse the different possibilities and find the cheapest.

My crazy roommate informed me yesterday that he is moving out at noon today. I asked him as a special favor if he could make his bed before going out for once so as to not keep me awake so long when he comes into the room after midnight. He accused me of "restricting his rights". We got into a warm discussion about it, which I didn't think I was capable of doing in French. Finally I left the room in disgust with his still insisting in a loud voice that I was being completely unreasonable to ask him to make his bed earlier. When I came back, he was gone, and low and behold, his bed was made! Even more astounding, when he returned to the room after midnight, he was quiet and went to bed promptly and quietly.

I don't know if his having to change rooms is good or bad. He says the administration asked him to change. There are four beds in this room, and if there is no room for him, that probably means that all four beds are going to be occupied tonight. The more people in a room, the greater the chances that someone will have some bad habits.

August 10, 2011 -- Paris

2011-08-09T23:25:00.000-07:00

The sky is mostly blue this morning, although it is chilly as usual. I wonder if today is going to be a nice day. If it is, I'm going to try to find a bench in the shade by the Seine to read.

My strange roommate only awakened me once during the night. He didn't come to the room as usual at 10:30 to make his bed and rearrange his stuff. He waited until it was time for him to go to bed at around 1 a.m. and then started rearranging everything. After about 15 minutes of his moving his belongings from one place to another I got up, told him that I was going to leave the room, and asked him how long it would be before he permitted me to go back to sleep. He seemed taken aback by the question. When I returned to the room about 15 minutes later, he was much quieter, although he didn't stop his activities. I lay in bed about another 15 minutes before he finally turned off his light and settled down to go to sleep, which permitted me to fall asleep also.

I have booked youth hostels for the remainder of my stay in Europe. Here's the schedule:

August 13 to Lille in Northern France

August 17 to Brussels, Belgium

August 22, Luxembourg City, Luxembourg

August 28, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

August 30, Home to Phoenix, AZ

I already have the train ticket to Lille but must yet purchase the tickets to Brussels, Luxembourg, and Frankfurt a. M. I assume I can buy the ticket from Lille to Brussels here in Paris, as the French high-speed train goes all the way to that city.

Yesterday I tried some more walking. I walked from the outskirts to the Seine River, but by the time I got there my leg was hurting, so I took the subway back to the youth hostel where I spent the rest of the afternoon reading and resting my leg. I can't force myself to stay off the leg, because if I don't get some sort of exercise during the day, I sleep very badly at night. I think my leg is worse this morning than it was yesterday at this time.

August 9. 2011 -- Paris

2011-08-08T23:21:00.000-07:00

My roommate is fascinated by my computer and the Internet. He doesn't seem to understand where one leaves off and the other begins. He keeps telling me when we discuss something (anything!) that I can find out about it in my computer.

Yesterday morning, when I placed my computer on a shelf below the dorm window in order to pick up a WiFi signal and connect to the Internet, he did not understand what I was doing. He asked me if I were connecting to the Internet through an American company. I tried to explain to him that the connection was local and therefore Parisian, but my explanation didn't seem to sink in.

He also tried out a few words of English on me this morning, "How are you?". Unfortunately, I couldn't understand his pronunciation, so he finally wrote the words out on a slip of paper.

The day started rainy and cold, but between morning rain showers I did manage to revisit the Pere Lachaise Cemetery, which I believe I mentioned in an earlier entry is where many famous people are buried. Here's a partial list:

Honore de Balzac, Sarah Bernhart, George Bizet, Luigi Cherubini, Frederic Chopin, Jean de la Fontaine, Moliere, Jim Morrison, Edith Pilaf, Marcel Proust, Gioachinno Rossini (Well, he's not buried there anymore, although his tomb is there. He was dug up and reburied in Italy.), James de Rothschild, and Oscar Wilde. Maria Callas also has a spot, although her body is also not buried there. Her body was cremated, and its ashes were spread over the Aegean Sea.

Here's a picture of Proust's tomb, whose works, I am ashamed to say, I have never read. His works are supposed to be required reading for all intellectuals, which I suppose explains why I am ignorant of them.

I snapped the following picture of one of the alleyways that leads through the cemetery. Notice that the leaves on the trees are changing color and many have already turned brown and fallen to the ground. This summer is so cold and dark that many trees have apparently been fooled into beginning their winter hibernation in August.

Naturally, I would have to come to Europe during the coldest summer in modern European history. Where is global warming when you need it?

Despite being an old insomniac, I slept well and long last night with two exceptions. I've noticed that my strange roommate has very fixed habits. He comes into the room at almost exactly 10:30 p.m., makes his bed, and spends about a half hour rearranging his possessions. Then he leaves. At about 11:45 he comes into the room again and spends about 15 minutes getting ready for bed. Because I had been very tired and had gone to bed early last night, he awoke me both times. Each time I got tired of waiting for him to finish so I could go back to sleep, so I got dressed and took the elevator to the ground floor. Luckily, I was able to go back to sleep both times, something that my insomnia often prevents when I am awakened in the night.

On the first trip downstairs I saw that my old Tour de France buddy was also back in the hostel. I call him that, because we both spent hours in front of one of the TV sets here in the hostel watching the final stages of the Tour de France.

Now it's time to go back upstairs to the room to see if I can post this using that free WiFi connection.

August 8, 2011 -- Paris

2011-08-07T23:02:00.002-07:00

It's quite chilly and windy outside this morning. I believe it rained quite a bit during the night.

I moved from one youth hostel to another yesterday. I am in a four-bed room here, but last night there was only one other person in the room, and he is quite an odd duck. He's French, very skinny, and he has a terrible cough. He coughed so much during the night that I was wondering if I were enclosed in a room with someone who has tuberculosis, but this morning he apologized and said he has asthma. He said the coughing fits come on when he eats something that he shouldn't.

He also talks in his sleep. He seems to be unemployed. He says he spends his time traveling around France and living very modestly.

He is very opinionated. On this trip, he is only the third person who informed me right off the bat when we met that he doesn't like the United States. He claimed that Americans are so fat that we weight 300 kilos (about 660 pounds). He wouldn't believe me when I told him that I had never seen a person THAT fat and he wouldn't accept the fact that many French people also have a problem with obesity. When I mentioned that telling someone you have just met right off the bat that you don't like his country is an insult, he asked me to not take it personally and insisted on our shaking hands.

I find his opinions tiresome, but they don't seem to be expressed with any malice. He seems to actually believe the things he says and seems to want to be friends with me. I suppose I should be grateful for the opportunity to have someone with whom to practice my French .

I have no idea what I'm going to do today. Let's see how the weather turns out. -- Jack Quinn

August 7, 2011 -- Paris

2011-08-06T22:52:00.000-07:00

I feel very well this morning after a good night's sleep. For once, I didn't stay up until midnight talking but got to bed early and got 10 hours sleep.

it threatened to rain all day yesterday, but it did not. I did get my train ticket to Lille, even though I won't be traveling there until the 13th. After leaving the train station, I visited the Church of the Madeleine, which is built like an old Greek building with many exterior columns. The church's altar is shown in the picture.

I had an interesting chat with a young Indonesian man on the front steps of the hostel on my return. He wants to study philology, which is essentially historical linguists and the study of ancient texts. I minored in philology in graduate school, but I thought no one but weirdoes like me would find it worth studying. He explained however that many of the Indonesian historical documents are written in old Dutch (Indonesia was a Dutch colony), and there were many immigrants from India, who brought Sanskrit with them and left writings behind that almost no one in modern Indonesia can read.

August 6, 2011 -- Paris

2011-08-05T23:08:00.002-07:00

I still have a week to stay in Paris, although I have to change youth hostels tomorrow. It seems as if I've been in Paris so long that I belong here.

We had quite a conversation on the front steps of the hostel last evening. There were two Texans, one of whom speaks Spanish as a first language, a Dutchman, the Canadian-American who has been living in China for ten years, a Spaniard, who speaks fluent French as well as Spanish, and a few Germans wondered into and out of the conversation. Naturally, it was all fueled by bottles of cheap wine.

I went to bed about midnight and couldn't fall asleep until 1 a.m. I was at breakfast a 7 a.m. where I met the Dutchman. He didn't look well. He had stayed drinking wine and talking until the wee hours of the morning, and this morning he is hitchhiking back to Holland. I don't know if I'd want to be standing alongside the road with my thumb out with his hangover.

Today I need to buy some train tickets. -- Jack Quinn

August 5, 2011 Paris

2011-08-05T00:31:00.002-07:00

I suppose all good things must come to an end. The partially sunny skies lasted into the afternoon yesterday before the rain started again. It didn't rain hard. It was a drizzle. The weather stayed warm and turned muggy during the day and cooled off to where one needed a sweater in the evening.

There is a folkloric dance group composed of teenagers here from Monterrey in Mexico. I was talking to one of the adults accompanying the group yesterday evening, and she said the group is in Europe to give a performance in Bruges, Belgium.

I spent yesterday morning at Les Ivalides, a huge complex built originally for the wounded and disabled veterans of the armed services, and a portion of it still seems to cater to disabled veterans. However, the major part of the complex is a series of museums, all of which have something to do with France's military past. Napoleon's crypt is also located there, and there is a museum dedicated to Charles de Gaulle. The grounds and courtyards are filled with ancient cannons, many of which France captured from enemy forces. Shown in the picture is one of the earliest tanks that was deployed in World War I when it was realized that such machines might be able to roll over the enemy's trenches.

Not far from the Invalides is the statue of this gentleman shown in the picture. I tried my best to match Mr. Churchill's scowling features. He and I have reciprocal histories. His mother was American and mine was English. Also, he was a great man, and I am a slacker.

The Eifel Tower seems to be visible from all over that section of Paris. Here it is seeming to grow from the brim of my hat. As you can see in the picture, the sky was still clear when I snapped it.

Yesterday evening for the first time on the trip I had a bit too much wine and was quite tipsy when I went to bed. I did sleep well, however. I have been suffering from my insomnia problem during most of the trip.

This morning it's dark, cloudy, and wet outside, although it's not raining at the moment.

The Internet connection here at the youth hostel is on the fritz at the moment, so I'll have to try to upload this entry later in the day.

August 4, Paris

2011-08-03T23:12:00.002-07:00

The rain stopped yesterday morning, and although the sky was dark and threatening through the morning and into the afternoon, it did not rain again.

I spent the morning and early afternoon in town yesterday, and came back to the hostel at mid-afternoon for lunch. I spent most of the rest of the day and into the night BSing in English on the front steps of the hostel with a group of people from various countries. On was a dual Canadian-American citizen who has been living in China for 10 years and claims to speak Chinese well. He has booked his flight back to China by the Russian airline Aeroflot with a stopover in Moscow.

The obese Dutchman left the room yesterday, and in his place is another black Frenchman. The first two times I spoke to him, he answered in monosyllables, but on the third attempt, he began a conversation in rapid French, most of which I was able to follow. He said he also speaks German and Portuguese, but when I spoke to him in German, it became apparent that he speaks no more than a few words. This same guy came rolling in in the wee hours of the morning, and of course he turned on the bright overhead light and woke my other roommate and me. We greeted him with curses, I in English and my other roommate in French. He finally turned the light off and used his flashlight, which is what one is expected to do when one enters a dorm room at night where others are sleeping.

The weather looks promising today: partially cloudy with lots of sunshine.

Paris August 3, 2011

2011-08-02T23:35:00.002-07:00

It started raining last evening, and Paris is supposed to experience thundershowers off and on today before returning to partly cloudy weather tomorrow. At least the cold weather seems to be over. I was sure that my buying a sweatshirt for the cold would cause it to warm up, and it worked!

There is a large group of elderly people (younger than I, however) here in the Clichy Youth Hostel. They seem to be from Slovenia. The problem with people of that age is that they all get up early and crowd the breakfast room just at the time when I am eating breakfast. One good thing about younger people is that they stay up all night drinking and are in no shape to get out of bed early in the morning.

I saw part of a bike race on TV yesterday. The volume of the TV was turned down, so I couldn't quite make out where it was taking place, but I would guess again Slovenia. It was in Eastern Europe for sure. It's nice to be in a country where bike racing is a major sport that is televised by the major sports channels. :) -- Jack Quinn

Paris, August 1, 2011

2011-08-02T23:34:00.001-07:00

After days of calling United Airlines, I finally got my flight back to Phoenix rescheduled. I fly back on August 30, so I'll be back a month earlier than planned and back to harassing everyone with my online diatribes. :)

I moved yesterday to a youth hostel in Clichy, a suburb of Paris. I had remembered this neighborhood as being a bit rundown, but my memory seems to have played tricks on me. It is in what appears to be a solidly middle-class suburb. There are several parks with lots of shade trees, inviting benches, and lush green grass within blocks. The hostel is also just a few blocks from the Seine River.

I spend a lot of time BSing with my fellow hostelers yesterday. One guy from the USA is more of a bum than I am. Jim is his name, and he spends his time traveling with his girl friend Pilar, who is a Mexican immigrant to the USA. His history includes having served on several river boats in Vietnam, where he says he was wounded several times, and he also said he was the only survivor of any of the boats he served on. He also served on an ocean-going tugboat and as a paramedic in California, where he said he was also shot. He owns a sailboat, which he sails up and down the Pacific Coast from California to Southern Mexico. He says he still has nightmares about Vietnam, where he was in a gunfight every time the boat sailed out from its moorings.

My roommates last night were a Dutchman and a black Frenchman. I only spoke briefly with the Frenchman, who came into the room shortly before he and I went to bed. I chatted earlier quite a bit with the Dutchman, however. He is way overweight and says he works as a manager in "logistics'. His job is getting articles from one place to another on time and as efficiently as possible. Most Dutch people speak four languages, but he speaks six. We chatted in English and Spanish until the Frenchman came into the room, when we switched to French. I suppose we could have also chatted in German.

My leg continues to improve, but it is not well yet. I'm going to try to take it easy today while I see as much of Paris as possible. -- Jack Quinn

August 1, 2011 -- Paris

2011-07-31T22:48:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was warm and sunny. It really seemed like summer in Paris. I rode the subway to the base of the hill where the Sacre Coeur or Sacred Heat church is located. The church sits on the top of a hill called Montmartre, which is I believe Paris's highest hill. There is certainly a great view of the city from up there, but there are also thousands of tourists swarming over the hill like an army of ants. You can see pictures of the church in the two photos. For some reason, half the time when I try to take a photo, the face of that ugly old man annoyingly pops up in the foreground.

There is a funicular that travels up and down the hill, or you can climb it on foot. I did the latter in easy stages, stopping often in the shade to admire the view, despite fears of further injuring my leg.

I also called United Airlines yesterday using Skype as my telephone, seeing what would be involved it I decided to fly home earlier. It's not that easy. First, there are a limited number of seats reserved for customers using air miles, and then there are different classes of air-miles seats. The upshot is that there are no seats for the class I booked, but I could fly on certain dates with an additional fee and a downgrade in the class of service. If I were desperate to fly back, I would accept any terms, but it's not to that point. If my leg actually does get better in another week or so, I'll be mobile again and start enjoying the trip more. The bad point about the trip, now that the weather has improved, is that I feel I have to limit the amount of walking I do to protect the injured leg. The one time I didn't do that, I had a relapse.

I hate dealing with the airlines, and I suppose United Airlines is no worse than most of the others.

July 31, 2011 -- Paris

2011-07-30T23:14:00.002-07:00

The most distressing thing to me about the robbery of my money is that no one did a thing about getting the money back, even though the guy was still here. It was explained to me that in such cases the police don't send an officer out to question the guy on the spot. The case details are entered into a computer, and the case will eventually be assigned to an investigating officer. Of course, now the guy is gone, and by the time the police get around to investigating, I will be gone, too.

France is the most bureaucratic country I know. Everything is done on the basis of shuffling papers, although today it's more of a matter of shuffling electronic documents on a computer system, with multiple printouts of everything, of course.

At least explaining what happened over and over gave me quite a bit of practice in speaking French. Even getting robbed can have its upside. :)

Since yesterday morning the weather has been warmer. T-shirt temperatures begin before noon, and this morning there is not a cloud in the sky. I wouldn't call it proper summer weather, but it's certainly better than the cold, gloomy weather that has marked this trip so far. Despite having been robbed, the sunny weather yesterday lifted my spirits.

Today I'm off to see some new sights, if I can do so with a minimum of walking. The worst thing about having to baby this injured leg is the lack of exercise. Spending so much time sitting around without much physical exertion has me climbing the walls.

July 30, Paris -- ROBBED!!!

2011-07-30T01:03:00.000-07:00

I was robbed last night, or rather early this morning, in my room at the youth hostel. Up until yesterday, I had been alone in the room, but a young man of Senegalese descent arrived yesterday morning. When I went to bed yesterday evening, he had not yet returned to the hostel. As is my custom, I put my wallet and passports in my shorts pockets and put my shorts at the head of my bed, feeling sure that no one could grab them without waking me.

At about 1:30 this morning, I awakened, and I soon noticed that my shorts were missing. I got up without turning on the light, and noticed that the other guy had been in the room, because his things had been moved around. Just then, he came in the room and started at seeing me up.

Suddenly I found my shorts, to the left of the door of the room, not at all where I had left them. I'm sure that the guy had them in his hand when he came back into the room and let them fall there.

Checking everything in my pockets, I found that at least two 50-euro bills were missing from my wallet (maybe more, I'm not sure). When I accused the guy of taking the money, he denied it, of course.

He apparently came in the room and did awaken me when he grabbed my shorts, but before I was fully awake, he had left the room with my shorts in hand in order to be able to go through the pockets out in the hall or perhaps in the men's room. I imagine he intended to replace them without awakening me. If he had managed that, when I later in the day discovered that some of the money was missing from my wallet, I wouldn't have had a clue as to where it had gone.

I reported the theft to the night clerk at the desk, and his only response was to take a few notes to leave for management's arrival in the morning and to move me to another room. After a few hours sleep, I came back to the lobby at around 5 a.m. and asked why the police hadn't been called. He said it was up to me to report the incident to the police. A phone call revealed that the police wouldn't come out and I would have to go to the police station and make a report, which I managed to do in mangled French.

What I have to show for my efforts is three sheets of paper, a printout of the police report. The officer who took my information said that it would eventually be investigated. To my inquiries as to why an officer couldn't be dispatched to question the guy I'm accusing of robbery, he said that things just didn't work that way.

I haven't taken the time to read the police report yet, but I did glance at it, and it seems to be thrown together without a lot of attention to detail. For example it says that my nationality is Irish and that I arrived at the hostel last evening, neither of which is true.

So as of this morning, the guy was still in the hostel; the hostel personnel knew that I had been robbed; the police had been informed; and nothing had been done about it. Police work seems to be done here the way it is in Mexico, by filling out and shuffling papers (electronically now, of course) and not by sending anyone out to actually talk to the accused and try to get my money back.

At least the sun is shining, and it promises to be a nice day.-- Jack Quinn

July 29, 2011 -- Paris

2011-07-28T21:52:00.000-07:00

I feel refreshed this morning after a good night's sleep and a cold shower. (The hot water facet runs cold in this youth hostel.)

The weather is about to turn very hot in Paris. How do I know? No, not the weather forecast. It continues to predict lousy, chilly weather. However, I finally got tired of shivering in the July Paris temperatures and bought a sweatshirt today. I'm sure that now that I am prepared for the cold, it will turn warm and the only result of my purchase will be that I'll have one more item to lug around in my backpack.

The clothing strategy also worked on the rain today. I took along my rain poncho when I went out, and of course it was not only dry, the sun occasionally peeked through the clouds, and the temperature climbed to almost 70 degrees Fahrenheit. However, as soon as I returned to the hostel in the afternoon, the rain started again, although it remained warm enough outside that one could comfortably be outside in a short-sleeved shirt.

As shown in the picture, on one of the pedestrian bridges across part of the Seine River, couples have locked padlocks with their names engraved or written in indelible ink on them and thrown away the keys or combinations. I believe they are to symbolize that the couple will be locked in a faithful relationship all of their lives. There must be hundreds of thousands of these padlocks on the fencing below the handrails on both sides of the bridge. I think that there should be a law requiring them to return with bolt cutters when they separate or get divorced and cut off the lock. I also wonder if Dominique Strauss Kahn and his current wife or any of his exes have a lock there.

I managed to take it easier on my leg yesterday, but it doesn't feel any better. It was doing a lot better before I stupidly reinjured it! I spent part of yesterday sitting on a bench on the footbridge in the picture reading and admiring the padlocks.

July 28, 2011 -- Paris

2011-07-27T22:54:00.001-07:00

I didn't stick with my resolve not to walk yesterday and to rest my injured leg. It's had to be in Paris and not . However, I did stop often to sit on a bench and read on my Kindle.

The day started overcast but not overly cold, perhaps in the mid-60s. However, as the morning wore on, the sky became more and more threatening, as can be seen in the picture, and the temperature dropped. In the afternoon, it started to rain. I ducked into a Metro (subway) station and made my way back to the hostel, where I spend the rest of the afternoon reading.

I see that two of my fellow hostelers have just packed up their pannier bags and mounted them on their touring bicycles and are about to ride off. Although it is still very wet outside and looks as if it could rain again, I envy them. The next time I come over here, I've got to figure out a way to bring a touring bike.

Thanks to those of you who have E-mailed. I do enjoy getting messages from back home, and I do answer. I can be reached at the usual E-mail addresses, which I won't publish here to avoid getting my address on all of the spam lists.

Paris July 27, 2011

2011-07-26T23:08:00.002-07:00

My big project yesterday was getting me and my backpack from one youth hostel to another. I am now at the Cité des Sciences hostel, so named because it's close to a science park. Getting here did more damage to my leg injury, I'm afraid. I had to take three subway lines, and the walks through tunnels and up and down flights of stairs when one transfers from one subway line to another can be quite long. Carrying the heavy backpack put quite a strain on my leg, and I could not walk without a severe limp when I got here. After a good night's sleep, the leg is somewhat better although far from well. I just have to force myself to walk as little as possible until it's healed.

The weather turned warmer yesterday. I didn't check the temperature, but it felt as if it were in the 70s Fahrenheit. The sky is still overcast and gray, however.

The good night's sleep is due to the fact that I am the only one in my room, although there are four bunks in it. No one rolled in at two or three a.m. and turned on the lights in the room to awaken me as happened in the old hostel.

This is a smaller hostel, which also means that there are no busloads of kids here yelling, screaming, and running around in the morning. On the downside, breakfast was typically French, corn flakes with milk, coffee, bread, butter and jam. Nothing substantial to get one through the morning.

Some of the desk clerks here don't speak very good English, which means that I have more of an opportunity to practice my French with them. I have not yet gotten into any conversations with any of the other hostel guests, however.

Before I left the other hostel yesterday, I had breakfast (a much better breakfast) with the Scottish guy and a newly arrived Japanese guy from my room. It was a bit of a strained conversation, because the Japanese guy spoke very little English and not a word of any other European language.

My plans for today are to take the subway into Central Paris, search for a quiet bench along the Seine River, enjoy the view and read. I'm about to use the Calibre program to download the news from several newspaper Websites and then load it onto my Kindle for later reading. I also have two books in progress on the Kindle.

July 24, Paris

2011-07-24T00:18:00.002-07:00

First, thanks to those who have E-mailed or posted comments on the blog. It's nice to hear from people back home. In response to Doug's comment to yesterday's post: Yes, with this sciatic nerve problem, I do have occasional jolts of pain below the knee. The problem is not nearly as bad as it was the first few days, but I still feel as if I don't have complete control of my leg when going up and down stairs. I am able to walk miles, however, and I try to do so when it's not raining. The pain is minimal.

The rain took a pause yesterday morning, and I took advantage of the pause to walk into Central Paris again. The rain started up again about 1 p.m., so I ducked into the nearest subway station and rode back to the youth hostel, arriving in plenty of time to see the start of the Tour de France time trial in Grenoble on TV. Grenoble is the city where I once spent two semesters as a university exchange student.

Who says a time trial can't be exciting? There was a group of French-speaking teenagers gathered around the TV set with me, and they were screaming at the TV every time the time splits between Cadel Evans and Andy Schleck were flashed on the screen. Their favorite was Andy, of course. I can't imagine American teenagers going nuts over a time trial.

Today I am headed for the Champs Elysees to see the final circuits of the final stage in person. According to the forecast, it's not supposed to rain, and the afternoon temperatures are expected to climb way up into the upper 60s!

By the way, the guy in the bunk above me who annoyingly came to life after midnight every day is gone. There was only one other guy in the dorm last night, who came back to the hostel after I was already in bed, so I haven't met him yet.

July 23, Paris

2011-07-23T00:37:00.002-07:00

This blog is not going to get any more interesting. I envisioned it as a means of documenting my pilgrimage to Santiago de Campostela and a possible source of information to others who might undertake the hike, but I now have to resign myself to the fact that the pilgrimage is not going to happen. In the first week, my sciatic nerve problem seemed to improve rapidly, and I talked myself into believing that I soon would be shipshape, but I've reached a plateau in my recovery, and things are not going to improve quickly from here on. I still walk with a slight limp.

I'll continue the blog as a personal journal of the trip, but to anyone looking for anything interesting to read, I suggest looking elsewhere.

The weather in Paris is cold and wet today, and there are more rain showers in the forecast. For tomorrow we are promised partially cloudy skies for the grand finale of the Tour de France with temperatures up into the 60s. By the end of next week, the temperature is supposed to reach the upper 70s.

I generally go to bed early and am awakened several time during the night by my roommates dragging in after midnight. Last night the guy above me not only came in late, but after an hour of lying quietly, he turned on the light above his bunk and began moving around, opening and closing zippers, and shaking the bed as if he were rearranging everything in his pack. Finally, I asked him to be quiet so we could sleep, and he settled down to watching a video on his laptop computer. I believe I mentioned that he sleeps with his computer in his bunk and turned on.

I finally met one of my other roommates, a Swiss guy. He also speaks multiple languages, so we chatted first in French, then switched to German then to English before switching to Spanish and back to English. He must be very gifted at languages, because he said he learned Spanish living with families in Cuba for several months. His Spanish is not great, but it's certainly much better than I would expect from someone who learned it casually in such a short period of time. I have never had a chance to talk to this guy before, because he is one of those who drags in during the wee hours of the morning when I am in bed and gets up sometime in the late morning when I am out exploring the streets of Paris.

I watched the final mountain stage of the Tour de France on TV yesterday, and it was again very exciting with an unexpected stage winner and with Contador finally proving himself very powerful in the mountains, although not powerful enough to overcome his accumulated time disadvantage. It will be interesting to see if Andy Scheck rides a good enough time trial in Grenoble today to hold onto the yellow jersey. I'm betting my money on Cadel Evans, who is probably a much better time trialist than Andy Schleck and is not that far behind Andy on general classification. I see no way that Contador can make up his time deficit. -- Jack Quinn

July 22 -- Paris

2011-07-21T23:09:00.001-07:00

I went out yesterday morning despite the cold and rain, but I soon got discouraged and took the metro back to the youth hostel in order to spend the afternoon watching the Tour de France on TV. I'm glad I did. What an exciting stage! I can't wait to see who finishes today, the last mountain stage, in the yellow jersey. I'm betting on Fränk Schleck. It was a pleasure to see France's Thomas Voekler still in yellow at the end of today's stage. I'm sure he never felt he would wear the yellow jersey after a hard Alpine stage.

The guy in the bunk above me seems to spend his days in his bunk with the curtains pulled shut watching DVDs on his laptop computer. He has his computer up there in bed with him and even slept with it last night.

This morning, it's not just chilly. It's downright cold!

July 21, Paris

2011-07-20T23:49:00.002-07:00

It's a cold and rainy morning in Paris. It's incredible that the weather could be so cold in late July, but it is. It's certainly going to be miserable for the cyclists on the Tour de France today if this weather system extends to where they are riding.

Yesterday was an exhausting day, even if it did involve mostly sitting. I spent from mid-morning to mid-afternoon mainly reading at the train station at Perpignan, as I had my heavy backpack with me and didn't feel like lugging it around. I had splurged on a first-class train ticket to Paris (an extra 11 euros or about $15.50 in US funds), so I had plenty of space on the train. From the train station I took two subway trains to get to within about two blocks of the hostel.

I'm in a four-person room. Being tired, I hit the hay early, around 10 p.m., and then was awakened repeatedly by the others coming in and out of the room and turning on the bright overhead light each time they entered.

I've only met one of my roommates, a young black man who pointed to himself when I entered the room and said "Me French". He doesn't seem to quite accept the fact that he can talk to me in French and insists on using phrases of broken English, even though I speak to him in his language.

For someone who has never been to Paris, speaks no French, and doesn’t have a plan of the subway system, trying to get to one's destination when one arrives must be daunting. The trains are always very crowded, and in the stations it's easy to get caught up in the rush of people hurrying to their next train. Most trips involve changing trains a time or two, and getting from one train to another within a subway system involves going down long corridors and up and down long flights of stairs. Only sometimes is their an escalator.

July 20 -- Leaving Perpignan, France, heading back to Paris

2011-07-19T23:22:00.000-07:00

I don't have much to write. There isn't much to see in Perpignan, so I spent my last day in town walking around and stopping from time to time to read some of the news articles and books that I've uploaded to my Kindle.

The Kindle is a great device for travelers who love reading, by the way. I use a program called Calibre on my laptop to download the entire contents of the Websites of several newspapers every morning that I have Internet access, and I then upload them to my Kindle to peruse at my leisure throughout the day.

I will have lots of time to read today, because my train to Paris doesn't leave until 1:30 p.m., and I will then have five hours aboard the train to kill. -- Jack Quinn

July 19, Perpignan, France

2011-07-18T23:20:00.000-07:00

Today is my last day in Perpignan, which is fortunate, because there is not much to do here. Unfortunately, after I check out of the hostel no later than 10 a.m. tomorrow, I will have to lug my backpack around until my train leaves after 3 p.m.

My sciatic nerve problem is much better. The left leg is almost back to normal.

There were seven people in my room at the hostel last night, and American (me), two Frenchmen, a Belgian, a Russian, an Englishman, and an Uruguayan. The mixture of English, French, and Spanish was interesting.

The weather was beautiful yesterday morning and turned overcast in the afternoon. Today periodic rainstorms are threatened. -- Jack Quinn

July 18, Perpignan, France

2011-07-17T23:45:00.002-07:00

I uploaded some pictures to earlier entries of the blog yesterday. Two of them I finally managed to transfer from my cellphone to the computer (I had to download a driver from Microsoft), and the third one was sent to me by E-mail by an Englishman who took it with his iPad in Orisson. The two earlier pictures were taken when I was staying in Strasbourg.

It was cloudy, windy, and cold in Perpignan yesterday and it even rained a bit. I thought Southern France was supposed to be hot in summer! I could have used a jacket.

I walked around a lot to try to exercise my leg. When I have sciatica, it seems to help if I walk a lot. I ducked into the railroad station each time it rained.

There are some interesting people in my room here in the youth hostel. One is a guy just two years younger than I who fled the dictatorship in Uruguay many years ago and has been living in France ever since. He and I speak more Spanish with one another than French.

There is also a young Englishman in the room who is reading a novel by Margaret Atwood that his sister recommended. It's niece to see that there are still young people who read. I had to explain to him, however, that Ms Atwood is Canadian, not American.

Well, first a morning hot shower and shave and then out into the cold. -- Jack Quinn

July 17 -- Perpignan, France

2011-07-16T23:33:00.000-07:00

I'm seated at a table in the youth hostel drinking my third cup of coffee after having eaten breakfast. I had to spend two nights in an inexpensive (by French standards) hotel before a bed became free in the youth hostel. There is a large group of teenage girls in the hostel, who are taking up most of the rooms. However, I believe they are leaving today.

I no sooner arrived in the room yesterday than a retired Frenchman named Jean-Claude apologized to me in advance for the fact that he was going to snore loudly during the night. His statement proved to be true, and I did not get a very good night's sleep. I have seldom heard such load snoring. Fortunately, he also left this morning after having given me his E-mail address so that we can stay in touch. I just spoke with one of my other roommates, and he told me he slept in the lobby, because the snoring was so loud that he couldn't stand it in the room. He broke into a big smile when I told him that Jean-Claude had just departed.

Perpignan is a small city in the French part of Cataluña in Southeast France. In the Spanish part of Cataluña, everyone speaks Catalan in addition to Spanish. However, I have heard no Catalan here in Perpignan, and I have only seen one sign in Catalan. Almost everything is in French.

No one in the hostel seems to speak any more than rudimentary high school English, which has the benefit of forcing me to speak French. I badly need the practice. When two French people speak to each other rapidly in their language, I understand almost nothing, although I can communicate OK if they slow down and speak directly to me. Perhaps the fact that I am here in France instead of marching across Northern Spain as planned has its advantage. I already speak Spanish well and speak it almost every day in Phoenix, so the practice in French is welcome.

There is one WiFi connection here at or near the hostel. I have no idea to whom it belongs, but I am now going to take advantage of it to upload this post so that I can lock my computer in my locker at the hostel and don't have to lug it into town with me today. -- Jack Quinn

July 16, Perpignan, France

2011-07-15T23:40:00.000-07:00

Things are looking better this morning. My leg isn't hurting as much, and I managed to get a good night's sleep. The night before, every time I would move my leg in my sleep, a jolt of pain would awaken me.

I think the thing to do is just take it easy and see if this sciatic nerve problem clears up. I plan to remain here in Perpignan the next four nights and then go to Paris on the 20th. I should be in Paris on the Champs Elysees to see the finish of the Tour de France, so that is a consolation prize at least.

July 15, Perpignan, France

2011-07-15T01:05:00.003-07:00

I'm sitting in an overstuffed chair in the lobby of the Hotel Paris Barcelone in Perpignan feeling refreshed after a restless night's sleep. I intended to stay in the youth hostel here, but I was unable to book online yesterday morning due to the short notice, and when I arrived, the place was full. I had forgotten that yesterday was Bastille Day, the equivalent of our Fourth of July, and that the hostels would be full of traveling youth groups taking advantage of the holiday.

I'm staying in Perpignan until July 20, one more night in the hotel and then four nights in the youth hostel, in an attempt to give my leg a chance to rest and perhaps heal. On July 20, I'll return to Paris. By then I should know if I should stay in France or if my leg still hurts so much that it would be better to return to Phoenix early. In the past, a pinched sciatic nerve has taken at least several weeks to heal.

I don't plan to do much sightseeing here. I'll probably spend the afternoon lying in bed watching the Tour de France on TV.

I had to take two trains to Perpignan. The first was from Bayonne to Toulouse. In Toulouse, I had 21 minutes according to the schedule to find the train to Perpignan, but the train from Bayonne left late. When the conductor (conductress?) came to punch my ticket, I asked if I would have time to make the connection, and she assured me that we would be in Toulouse on time. We kept arriving at the intermediate stations late, so I was doubtful, but sure enough, when we arrived in Toulouse only one minute late, and I easily made the connection.

The country side in the Midi-Pyrenees region between Bayonne and Toulouse was mostly flat, although we did skirt some mountains. It reminded me of Eastern Pennsylvania, because there were lots of milk cows on small farms. Most of them were brown cows (jerseys and/or guernsys, I suppose?), but I also saw some holsteins. Everything was green with lush vegetation, and there were fields of corn and sunflowers. I have never seen whole fields of sunflowers before.

As we rolled eastward, the sky became clearer, and it was obvious that the weather was warmer, because most of the people I saw from the train window were dressed in shorts. It's sunny here in Perpignan and the temperature is pleasant.

July 14, 2011 -- Bayonne, France

2011-07-14T02:13:00.001-07:00

I'm sitting in a train station killing time. My train to Perpignan departs in four hours, but with nowhere to leave my backpack in safety, I'm pretty much confined to the waiting room of the train station unless I want to risk stressing my injured leg lugging the backpack around.

I have a much more positive outlook today. It's amazing what six large cans of beer and a bag of potato chips can do for one's mental state. I realize that I am restricted to being fairly sedentary until and unless this leg heals up, but I'm reluctant to give up the journey. I think a beach or seaside resort in Spain may be just the ticket for someone who is forced to sit around.

Perpignan is one the Mediterranean coast of France and right on the Spanish border. I'm considering spending two nights there and then perhaps continuing to Gerona in the Cataluña region of Spain. -- Jack