Day 1: Germany-Luxemburg-Verdun-Paris-La Chaussée

The beginning of the great adventure was all but adventurous. We set out January 25th early in the morning... at least kind of. Romy was late – who would have thought?! But when she got to Ochtendung, Danni wasn’t ready anyway. After some last minute-packing and desperate music-onto-mp3-copying it was 2 hours later than planned when we finally got going.

From being grey and cloudy, the weather went to dark and even more cloudy. It was snowing by the time we were driving on the Autobahn. Imagine a 2000 km journey like that – highly inconvenient, to say the least.

It was snowing heavily when crossed the Hunsrück, but by the time we reached Luxemburg, all snow had vanished from the air and the sky had miraculously cleared up. Our first highlight: Fueling the car.

Though we couldn’t agree on how to call it,
(British) petrol and (American) gas had never been cheaper.

At the same time, Danni was making herself useful by wiping the windscreen.


Well fed and cleaned, the Corsa rolled on towards France – or so we thought. Suddenly we were back in Germany. Oh well, who hasn’t been dreaming of seeing the “Igeler Säule”?! Declared UNECSCO world heritage, it was still nothing that could keep us. Just an enormous stone column...


At least it was a great chance to take all the pictures of the “Luxemburg” sign at the border we initially hadn’t pictured perfectly. In fact, we decided to document all future crossings between countries in the same way.


But then it was back on the road and off to France. Everybody knows that you have to carefully plan and organise a trip such as ours. It is essential to set off early after a good night’s sleep. And naturally both of us had just slept a mere 2 hours. So we took the chance to swap turns. Danni took over while Romy dozed off. In fact, nothing could wake her until well into France. So much for taking pictures of all border signs...

Our first “proper” stop was in Verdun to see the historic battle fields from World War I.

The whole area is organised in memorial sites such as trenches and bunkers as well as gun emplacements, which you could only enter through a very narrow opening.


In fact, Danni was amazed to find that they had actually named one of the main roads „Avenue of the European Bodies“ – or had they? More likely that the “Avenue du Corps Européen” is a tribute to the "Eurocorps", a force made up of soldiers drawn from the armies of Belgium, France, Germany, Luxemburg and Spain.


Stretching out as far as the eye could see, the whole area was marked by the holes and crates left by bombs and grenades.


Another site was the original location of a completely destroyed village. Where only crates remain, Romy was far more fascinated by the patterns the ice had formed in some of them during the freezing process of various nights.



Talking about ice – it was freezing cold. As a rule, Romy never locks her door, but this time she had actually gone one step further in leaving it gaping wide open - which didn’t really help much with the cold.


Overlooking the battle fields was an impressive cemetary
scattered with thousands of white wooden crosses.

Shaped like an enormous bullet casing, the "Ossuaire" was a huge monument containing the bones of the fallen soldiers.

Though... we couldn’t help but wonder if its phallic shape wasn't much rather a symbol of manhood fallen from grace.

Paris – a city Romy had wanted to visit for a long time. Yet, when we checked our route, it seemed just too complicated to stop by. What a shame. However, things changed just two days before we left: A good friend of Danni’s she hadn’t seen for over two years was in Europe – and even better: Christophe was in Paris. As if that wasn’t enough, it turned out that Vivi, an Italian friend Romy had made in Porto had just arrived the day before.
It looked as if Paris was just meant to be…

We had arranged with Vivi to meet her at a Mc Donald’s near her place. However, once we had left the Périférique, reaching our destination in less than one minute seemed too easy in a city with a reputation for impossible traffic conditions. So we continued towards the centre until we finally realised that we had actually been spot on in the first place. To make up for it, we had to find our way back against a challenging system of tricky one-way roads.
And there she was!

If the meeting point had already been easy to find (in theory), it was nothing against parking. That was when Vivi took over the place behind the wheel. Thanks to her insider knowledge we instantly found a space and if that wasn’t enough, for free!!! Thoroughly pleased with ourselves, the three of us set out to meet Christophe.

Easier said than done. As Danni had problems to understand Christophe’s directions to some “Poeb”on the phone, we tried to find the bar he had mentioned by the little information we had. It was like looking for the famous needle in the haystack in a street where almost every house included at least one bar or café – and many of them had Pub in the name. Or was it maybe our incapability of pronouncing “Pub” with the proper French accent “Poeb”?
Yet eventually we found Margen’s Pub.

However, when we entered Margen’s Pub there was no Christophe in sight. What to do? Luckily, one of the waitresses had overheard his conversation with “someone from Germany”. It turned out that the most important part we had missed was that he was going to collect us at the Metro station… No point in going back now, so the waitress directed us to a table where his friends were still sitting. Just at that moment the door opened and Christophe came in.
Together – at last.

We sat down to a drink and a chat. Finally Christophe and Danni had a chance to catch up on what had happened during the past few years. As with all good friends, it was as if they had never been apart. Yet time was flying as we enjoyed a good time together. Vivi had to leave and we still had to go as far as La Chaussée. Before we continued our trip, however, Christophe took us on a nightwalk through the softly lit streets of Paris.


So beautiful! Walking by all the famous buildings felt like a dream. Then Christophe’s surprise: almost out of nowhere Notre Dame suddenly appeared in front of us.


But the highlight was Le Louvre.
Impressive as it must already be in daylight, at nighttime it is simply spectacular.


For us, it was a special occasion which we will keep in our memories.
But nothing wrong with helping the memory once in a while by sharing it with others…

Completely enchanted, we walked for nearly two hours, hardly noticing the freezing cold. Accordingly, we were running very late... It was well after midnight when we finally arrived at La Chaussée St. Victor. However, Christophe’s parents hadn’t gone to bed yet and gave the two long awaited wanderers a very warm welcome.