The Drapeau of Saint Germain

"Maybe, in a later post I will pose as a protagonist on a mission to retrieve a treasure of great importance." I never meant this statement from my previous post to be a empty promise, and now here is the foreshadowed, embellished story of my mission to purchase a Paris Saint Germain flag. (PSG is a European football - or soccer - club located in Paris.)

I know a secret. This secret has been passed down through the ages in remote monestaries where speechless monks broke their vows for the sole purpose of ensuring that the secret would live on. As the story, or myth as some would say, goes, sometime during the middle ages a small group of alchemists and apothecaries stumbled upon the secret to great power. Fearful for their lives and the lives of their families, they chose not to wield the power themselves but instead wove the power into a handful of colorful, powerful tapestries. Many of these tapestries have not survived to this day, but there are a select few that have.

This is where I enter the story. Crazy things happen in Amsterdam, and by one crazy chance accident, I became privileged to discover this secret. Immediately I acted, and after a return trip to Amsterdam, I had aquired one of the lost tapestries, the Vlaggetje of the Mokum. Since that fateful day, I have also discovered two of the Lesser Tapestries of the Land of the Gauls.

Recently, I discovered the hidden location of another of the Greater Tapestries, so under the pretense of a common tourist I grabbed a handful of companions and embarked on a trip to Paris, France, to retrieve the Drapeau of Saint Germain. Due to the rise of an elite, power-hungry group known only as The G14 who would do anything to possess the information I have, I knew I had to move fast. After a day of scouring the city and all of its famous clues, I finally came across what I was looking for: a small, non-descript building that housed the treasure that I sought.

The store was a shrine of sorts, and hung on all of the plain white walls were signs and symbols of the various lost tapestries. On one wall hung an indication of the White Tapestry of the Real Crown; on another hung the dark armor of Munich. Across the building hung the contrasting red and blue of the Milano Brace Tapestries. I knew I was in a place of vast significance; a place that I could never reveal to anyone for fear that they might be spies for the infamous G14. And finally, like a sight to sore eyes I saw what I was looking for. More beautiful than gold, more stunning than silver, the Red and Navy of Saint Germain drew me to the far wall, covered in brilliant adornments.

I searched every inch of the wall, in and out of the runes of Saint Germain, but there was no sign of my treasure. As far as I knew, the G14 had discovered the secrets that I had previously held in solitude, and had nabbed the Drapeau of Saint Germain before I had the chance. Devistated, I slumped off of the hallowed ground knowing that I had failed my mission.

The next day I knew there was no point in staying in Paris since my trip had been a failure. Since it was Paris, though, I enjoyed the great sights one more time before heading home. But then a new hope arose in me. Just one hour before I was scheduled to leave, I decided to give one last effort to finding the sacred tapestry. So I asked a humble souvenier shop worker who surprisingly gave me hope. "The object of your quest is located on the Shawnsa Leezay." The name sounded familiar, but I couldn't quite place it until suddenly, like a beam of sun breaking through the clouds, it hit me. Champs Elysées. Apparently I don't know my French pronunciation very well, but I suddenly realized what he was talking about and took off on a dead sprint toward the Arc de Triomphe. I had no time to lose; I sprinted past the vast, proud structure onto a large, busy street. Frantically I searched for some sign of my quarry. There, across the street, stood another souvenier stand; it was my only hope. I raced across the perilous avenue, knowing that the future of all things good was in my hands, and I didn't have a moment to spare. Out of breath I asked the worker there for any information he could give me. "You're too late," he claimed, "but I can sell you this scarf."

Once again, my heart sank. There were two logical explanations: either the man was completely unaware of the power of the Drapeau of Saint Germain, or he was a conniver for the G14. But my mind, in it's frantic state, had settled on a third thought: I was too late. Once again, I came to grips with the fact that I had failed my quest. Slowly, I walked down the great street in search of a metro station that would bring me back to the train station.

My two faithful companions until this point have gone unmentioned, but they play an important part in this tale. As we reached the metro, one companion happened, most likely by something beyond mere chance, to notice a building across the street covered in navy and red. My heart for the third time bubbled with hope as she pointed this out to me, so we darted across the busy Champs Elysées once more and rushed into the building. And there, upon the top floor, my other companion spotted the Greater Tapestry. It was beautiful! The Drapeau of Saint Germain! Quickly, I grabbed the treasure and ran knowing that I was now in great peril, and that I needed to catch my train back to the Netherlands.

Paris

When we last left our hero, he was teetering perilously over the Thymes River in a glass prison at the peak of the ominous London Eye...

Okay, I thought about writing this blog in third person about some valient hero who travels from famous European city to famous European city, but I decided I'd spare you from that and, as usual, just give my account of Paris, France. Maybe, in a later post I will pose as a protagonist on a mission to retrieve a treasure of great importance.

So, Friday I travelled with a handful of young women to Paris, France. As usual, the mode of transportation was a train, which arrived at Gare Nord. Our first mission was to get to the Louvre by way of the metro.

The Louvre was far too big for me (or anyone in my company) to see in the hour and a half we had to spend there before it closed, so I concentrated my efforts on two main sections: Italian Paintings and Greek/Roman Statues. I also felt obliged to view the Mona Lisa; she must have really liked me because she would not frown no matter where I looked, only smiles she gave me (if only all women were so kind).

Saturday was the "big day," the day we had set to see all of the most important Parisian sights, and see the sights we did! We started at Volontaires Station, the famous station that - nevermind, it is not famous, it was merely the metro station that was nearest to our hostel, and the place where we purchased metro day passes, which ended up coming very much in handy.

The first sight was the La Basilique du Sacré Coeur de Montmartre, which most people (including me) refer to simply as the Sacré Coeur. It is this really massive cathedral. I found it amazing, but once again, I refuse to describe cathedrals, so you're out of luck. After seeing the cathedral, we moseyed around in search of the Artist's Market. Here, people were painting and drawing and doing all sorts of artsy things. It was impressive; I watched a father commission a charcoal and chalk work of his daughter; I saw an old man splatter blue and white paint on a canvas which eventually became a monochromatic image of the Eiffel Tower.

Apparently, there is a movie named "Moulin Rouge" which takes place in Paris, and apparently the women I was travelling with enjoy this movie, so I saw the big red windmill. Impressive? Not to me; maybe I needed to see the movie.

After a bit of lunch, we went to the other famous Parisian cathedral, Notre Dame. Once again, if you're waiting for a description, you are waiting in vain because one won't appear here. I enjoyed it enough to return on Sunday, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

By this time, it was about two in the afternoon, or fourteen o'clock if you are like my esteemed mother and sister, and we were in a bit of a problem. The only things left on our list were the Arc de Triomphe and some tower that Eiffel built, and we had planned to arrive at this aforementioned brown tower around six in the evening. We needed to improvise: we needed to find something to do to fill some of our time. I had heard of this landmark called The Bastille but I did not know too much about it. I thought it was this big fortress slash prison (yes, since I'm the author, I can use the word slash instead of denoting it as a fortress/prison), so that is what I was expecting to see. History had something else in mind, however, because at some point people tore down the Bastille and constructed a pillar in its place, which is what I observed.

After the Bastille, we hopped on the metropolitan once again and travelled to the Arc de Triomphe. When most people plan to go to Paris, the impression I get is that they want to see the Eiffel Tower, but when I planned to go to Paris, number one on my (hypothetical) list was the Arc de Triomphe. I am not really quite sure why that is. So, we went to this massive structure that stands stoicly on the the Champs Elysées. It was incredible and it lived up to my expectations, it was the best sight I saw in Paris.

Finally, we arrived at the Eiffel Tower around six in the evening. The reason we had a specific time to arrive is because one travelling mate was told that we should go up the tower before the sun sets so we can see Paris both during the day and at night. Good advice it was, and I'm glad we heeded it; the view from the top was stunning both in the light and in the dark.

Sunday morning, some of us went to mass at Notre Dame. It was touted as an "International Service" but it was mostly in French. An alter boy read out of the bible in English maybe twice, but the sermon, if there was one, was given in French. Since Catholics seem to have so many symbolic actions my mind started to wander, wondring about what would happen if something like one of the symbolic candles would go out, or if the young boy swinging the incense would accidentally hit somebody with the large incense ball, or something else crazy like that. But my digression (both during the service and in this writing) stoped at the end of the service.

After Notre Dame, our seven person group suffered a schism (but not quite as monumental as any of the catholic church's schisms), and two companions and I trekked back to the Eiffel Tower. We had purchased some wine, some very cheap wine (€2.60) because we had been given the advice that all wine in France was splendid, even the cheapest fermented grape juice one can find. The advice turned out to be correct, and we spent much of the rest of our trip to Paris sitting in front of the Eiffel Tower sipping cheap, tasty white wine out of cheap plastic cups.

London: England = English

It is said that you can not really appreciate something until it is gone. Well, the ease of being surrounded in English is something that, for me, is gone. (Although it is incredible how much English is used in the Netherlands.) So, as you can imagine, I was pumped to go to London, where one can correctly assume that the since the name of the country is "England," they speak "English."

If you know your geography then you might know that England is not connected to the European continent, so instead of taking the train we decided to take an airplane across the channel. The airplane ride from Amsterdam Schiphol to London Luton Airport took less than one hour. The bus ride from London Luton to the good stuff in the heart of London took more than one hour: longer than the airplane ride.

So, we hopped off the bus in the heart of London on Friday afternoon. We had the address of the Central College of Pella, Iowa owned hotel called the Vandon House, where my friend Travis Gibbons is spending the semester. We also knew that this place was just a tad bit south of Buckingham Palace. So of course on our little trek to our weekend residence, we did the true tourist thing and stopped at the palace to snap a dozen pictures. My take on Buckingham Palace, after seeing hundreds of other gorgeous buildings since arriving in Europe, is that it is not really a standout building. It is impressive, but it is average compared to the other impressive buildings I have seen. Since Travis was a bit busy doing some sort of R.A. work, he pointed us in the direction of some major sights and bid us fairwell.

We walked all over London and saw quite a few sights that afternoon. We saw Westminister Abbey, Big Ben, the London Eye, St. Paul's Cathedral, and a recreation of the Globe Theatre. I was most impressed with Big Ben; I figured it was just going to be a clock tower and wouldn't really be that much of a sight, but I found it fascinating.

The Irish among my readers will know well that Friday was a special day. The Irish have a patron saint, and his name is Patrick. Apparently, he is so important that he gets his own day. If you knew the previous geography fact about the location of England, then you probably will also know that Ireland is really close to England, and so there are a few Irish Pubs in London. (And even if it weren't, the Irish have a mission to place at least one Irish Pub in every city in Europe. I'm not kidding, either, I think every city I have visited so far has had at least one Irish Pub.) Travis took us to one of these pubs, the most impessive in London, called Maxy O'Conner's. The pub is five stories high and pretty deep, but even with its massive capacity we still had to stand outside in what the English call a "queue," or what North Americans usually refer to as a "line," for over an hour. But it was worth it: once inside we were in a green world. Everybody was wearing green, and the atmosphere was incredibly festive. It was quite the experince. I couldn't help but think of my fellow soccer players, Sean and Ryan, or my former roomate Lucky, and how much they would love to be where I was at that moment. They may have described it as "Irish Heaven."

Saturday, Travis put on his hypothetical tour-guide hat and took us around the city. He was basically a wizard of the Tube, he was hopping from train to train in the subway and I had no idea where we were going, ever. Somehow, we ended up at Kew Gardens, which was something of an Arboritum. Then, we saw some park near St. Paul's Cathedral. It's in a movie that Dustin really likes, so that was pretty cool for him. Then we went to London's art museum. It probably has a name like "National Art Gallery" or something, but I do not remember it. That place was incredible, and incredibly it was free. I thought it was the most impressive gallery I have been to so far (topping the Rijksmuseum and some podunk museum in Leeuwarden). Oddly enough, I'm beginning to identify the type of art that I actually like, and the other art that I am not so impressed with. Maybe some art enthusiasts would punch me in the stomach, or hang trash from trees in protest, but I have found that I can be completely content walking right past "masterpieces" that I know I won't find as impressive to get to some lesser known paintings in the style I like.

Saturday night we went up the London Eye. The London Eye is the biggest ferris wheel in the world. I read on an information packet that it is the largest "Observation Wheel" in the world, so maybe people are trying to distance the Eye from the fact that it is just a gigantic ferris wheel. Well, despite their efforts to disguise that fact, I knew it was a ferris wheel, so I wondered in the back of my mind if it would really be that cool. I have been on ferris wheels before and have been disappointed, but the thing about the London Eye is: it doesn't overlook the Sioux Empire Fair. No, it overlooks London, and it was really cool. It is one of the coolest things I have experienced since coming to Europe, actually.

Going to Extremes

So I was in London this weekend, but that has little bearing on this blog entry. Well, since I've been in Europe, I haven't found a suitable haircutter (nor have I looked), so my hair had grown to be quite long. Actually, I'm pretty sure it's the longest it has ever been (Extreme 1). I decided last week that I was going to try to shave it (#4 setting, if you care). My reasoning was simple: if it looks bad, it will grow back again by the time I set foot on United States soil again. So, I did it. And now, my hair is the shortest it has been since I started growing hair as a baby (Extreme 2).

I think before, during, and after pictures would be appropriate.

Long Overdue Pictures

Switzerland: Ski Verbier

My trip to Switzerland was a fine break for the history-laden buildings I have been visiting on my other trips. In Switzerland, I traded these architectural masterpieces of man for the natural masterpieces of God far larger than anything man can build: the Swiss Alps. And what better way to fully experience these massive pieces of art than to rent a 148 centimeter piece of plastic, strap my feet to it, and lay myself at the mercy of the snowy mountains?

So, after our wonderful train-sleeping experience (see "A Night in Delémont"), Pug and I arrived in Verbier, a ski-town in the mountains of French Switzerland. We went to Verbier for a good reason: free food and lodging. You see, Jennifer (remember, Pug=Jennifer) has family in Verbier. I'm not really clear how they were related (and frankly, I don't think Jennifer is, either), but the truth is that they are related, and Anne-Marie (Pug's relative) wanted us to come and stay with them, so we did. I say "wanted us" but it's more that she wanted Jennifer to come, and I just reaped the wonderful benefits of her benevolence. But I digress. So, we were staying with this family, and they had two children, Deana (f,8) and Cloede (m,5). More about them later. It's about time to stop rambling and use the most logical ordering system: chronology.

We arrived in Verbier (pronounced "Ver-bee-ay," rememeber, this was the French part of Switzerland) on Friday morning. We didn't really have too many plans for Friday, so we decided to walk around the town to see what it was all about. Turns out we really were in a ski town: 90% or more of the shops were either ski rentals, ski clothing, or nightlife. We did find a souvenier shop at one point that we browsed for a while - I like meandering around souvenier shops for some odd reason - but other than that there wasn't much to see. At around 2, we went to the pizza restaurant that Patrick and Anne-Marie own, and had ourselves a wonderful pizza loaded with mushrooms, salomi, and some other stuff. That night, we hung out with the children and went to bed early in anticipation for skiing and snowboarding the next morning.

Early is the best time to get up on Snowboarding Day. Every time I have been snowboarding, that's when I woke up: early. There's something about Snowboarding Day (it's almost a holiday, hense "Snowboarding Day") that it's just better to wake up early, I guess like little kids that wake up at five in the morning on Christmas. We rented our equipment and headed to the Gondola up the mountain. Eventually, we went as high up the mountain as we could possible get, and, not being the greatest snowboarder, I was scared. When I got off the gondola, everything I could see was white. I think we were in the midst of a cloud, because I could only faintly tell the difference between the white-gray air and the white ground, and I couldn't see the contour of the slope, it was just a mass of white. But on Snowboarding Day there is only one way to get down the hill once at the top, so I strapped in and was off. We took the Red slope, yeah, that's something you don't see in the United States. Red here is intermediate; Blue is easy and Black is hard. They don't have shapes though, no Blue Squares and Black Diamonds, everything is just a circle. So I went down the Red Circle. Because it was snowing, and had snowed the day before as well, there was a lot of powder on some of the slopes which is something I have never experienced before, so that was pretty cool. Other than that, it was just normal snowboarding. I say "just," but snowboarding is just plain fun, so I had a blast.

That night, we babysat Deana and Cloede, who were really fun. They reminded me a little bit of Jordyn and Joel a few years back, even though they were completely different. Anyway, we watched Vegi-Tales with them: "The Lord of the Beans." I personally thought it was hilarious, especially since I am currently reading the Lord of the Rings Trilogy on the trains.

That's about it for the trip.

A Night in Delémont

It was a cold, snowy Thursday when we left from the Zwolle train station. As usual, we had our overly full bags, some travel food, a little bit of excitement, and our travel itinerary. But this travel itinerary was a little bit different from the rest: because Pug and I didn't plan far enough ahead, we could not reserve a spot on a "sleeper train," so our hand-written itinerary contained a layover from 1am to 5am in Delémont, Switzerland. Well, to be honest, I was pretty worried about the whole situation, but we decided before we left that we were just going to be brave and try to sleep in the train station.

We arrived in a nearly forsaken Delémont train station at the expected time, an hour after midnight. Our first mission was to stake out the place, so we walked around scouting the best places to sleep. We finally came upon a nice, glass box on one of the platforms that served as a waiting area during the day. The glass box had one long, black bench which was easily long enough for two people to sleep on, and under the bench was an old heater that was dutifully pumping out warm air. This was the ideal place. However, we noticed a worker lethargically walking around cleaning the trains and emptying trash, so we figured that maybe we should leave for a while and come back when the eyes that could get us in trouble had moved on from our quaint glass haven.

One half of an hour later, after scoping the city to be sure that are conjured excuse about no open hostels was true, we returned to our chosen beds. I was still a bit scared that my wonderful snowboarding trip might quickly turn into a nice stay in a Swiss prison. With thoughts of calling the United States Embassy with my only phone call, I drifted to sleep. Less than an hour later, I heard a loud, repetitive thud against the glass which I later realized was caused by the butt of a wooden broom. I was awake, but I didn't dare to open my eyes yet, afraid that all of the thoughts that were running through my head would turn out to be true when I let the light of the world flood into my eyes. But the noise needed acknowledgment and I was now somehow aware that there was a person near, so I sat up and looked around.

There were two people standing near: one was a dirty looking worker who was still standing outside of the glass waiting area with broom in hand. The other had already entered our makeshift home and was looking at me; he was better dressed and clean shaven, and although I was terrified, he didn't look very scary. This man said something in a French, so we went through the now common process of finding a mutual language to speak in (which of course was English).

"You can't sleep here." He was kind, but stern, and there was obviously no way to argue with him. "Do you have somewhere to go?" Semi-conciously I gave him my helpless puppy dog with no place to go response. "Well, hmm... where are you going? To Biel? That train leaves at five... from platform one... okay... well I guess you could sleep in the train."

I was startled. He is going to let us sleep in the train?! He's kicking us off of our chill, uncomfortable benches only to relocate us in a train? "A train? That train?" I stuttered as I pointed in no particular direction, still quite shocked.

"No," was his stern response. I did hear wrong. He wasn't going to let us sleep on the train. "No, the train over there, the one you will need to be on in the morning." He smiled. I'm not sure whether my shocked, scared face changed, but I was certainly smiling inside. He led us to the train, unlocked the door, and held out his hand in polite courtesy. After many long and heartfelt thanks, we drifted to sleep on the floor of our train. As the darkness of rest came over me, only one peaceful thought manifested itself in my head: this is much better than a Swiss prison.