Voila la France.

Most of the time I spent in France was in the small city of Orléans, a one
hour train ride south of Paris, with my friend Claire and her family. These people were immensely hospitable, offerring me a room, much food, gifts, and a day in their car, driving through the centre of France to see the chateaux of the Vallée de Loire. After weeks of crowded auberges and isolated hotels, this was quite a change of pace. I also spent two days in Paris - one before Orléans, alone, and one Sunday with Claire. The following are things I have discovered about les Francais.

1. They are fond of stairs. And not at all fond of escalators. Paris is accessible mostly by the métro, which is not only underground, but anywhere up/down to three levels underneath street level. Only one métro station that I saw had escalators. Also, at one Parisian cinema, I had to descend three narrow flights of stairs to get from the cassé to the salle.

2. They are fond of train stations. There are about five in the city of Paris alone, and the train routes are dispersed between them. This means that if you want to get from Orléans to Köln, as I did today, you have to get off an SNCF train at Gare D'Austerlitz, and then catch two métros, with all your luggage, to Gare Du Nord. This journey is conducted in an entirely subterranean manner, thus relieving you of the joy of seeing Paris. It is also, save for one stop, conducted
entirely with the use of stairs.

3. They are fond of monuments. But these are, surprisingly, not at all pretentious. No, seriously: they just seem to be there, without any real pompousness about them. The Eiffel Tower is really just a very large, artistic version of the Mall's Balls.

4. They are, contrary to expectations, not fond of rudeness. My experience could be exceptional to the norm, because I speak French, and because I spent one of my two days in Paris with une vraie Francaise. But most of the people I came across were extremely nice. There are always exceptions, however, and mine takes place at a small café in Montmartre (think Amélie Poulain), where our serveuse was practically at the point of splitting in half when dealing with a table of quite reasonable Italian tourists. Is it too much of a problem to replace the dessert of a fixed menu with coffee, especially when the coffee costs less than the desserts? I would think not. But by the time the dispute ended, the Italians were threatening to call the police, and the waitress was yelling, and snatched the bill out of their hands so that they could have no evidence to take with them. For our part, we were not enthused with the two hours it took to bring our three courses, nor was I enthused about the state of my hot-and-cold (i.e. semi-frozen) dessert. Being vegetarian, I was forced to have two entrées instead of an entrée and a plat de viande. I decided against asking to have this on a menu, and thus paid twice as much as I should have.

Oh, and a warning to prospective travellers on Eurail passes - if you want to catch the Thalys trains, be prepared.

I am now sitting at an Internet café in Frankfurt, waiting for my clothes to finish at a laundromat. When they dry, I will return to my Zimmer, to watch German TV with takeaway pasta and a bottle of beer. Tomorrow morning, it's Frankfurt Flughaven.

And Wednesday evening, I arrive in Melbourne.