Popping over to France for a bit

A bad nights sleep, being bloated from the Swiss fare, silly bedding and non-blogger had the creaking bed as Interlaken went quiet apart from the trains rolling though it and the church bells duly reminding everyone on the half hour how clever the Swiss are at keeping time.

As the paragliding fraternity got going again after yesterday's weather farce we took two trains to get to the next destination. The first half of the first one was ridiculously overcrowded with a plethora of tourists leaving town for thr nearest airport (Bern). May thier haldrons collide. We had a real juggle, first earning and then protecting our reserved seats as well as the luggage as there wasn't anywhere to store it. One bag left by itself downstairs and the other on bloggers lap. The second half was much better. The Swiss are annoying in that they refuse to adopt the Euro but at least they make announcements in both local and English dialects. A very well co-ordinated by team work at the huge and complex station at Besel saw us on the next juggernaut in plenty of time, tinkels had on the way (a bargain at $2.58 AUD per pee) and found a nice table in which we could enjoy  yesterday's left over sushi that had been sitting in the fridge all night (aka outside the hotel window). So whilst the French are obviously still stuck up about admitting to able to be speaking the world's common language, their trains run a heap faster. Pity they don't clean the windowss occasionally. Luckily we had headed all the way down the to far end of the platform so it's not so crowded. Leaving the Alps to their mist covered peaks and dreary fog filled valleys we streaked into the bright sunshine,  though the dried out corn fields and shot into Strasbourg. It's a busy place. Many peeps moving around for every reason possible. Didn't actually ask anyone why they were doing so just assuming they all have their own purpose in life and it's not all staged aka Truman style.

Thanks to our handy location devices we trundled the cases over yet more footpaths specificly designed to tell everyone in the vicinity that there are tourists on the move. The clackity clack of the heavily laden casters adding to the cacophony of noises in the 10 storied high canyons of shop front ground floors and living areas above that look remarkably like Barcelona, and Paris, and.... probably most of Europe's olde city centre's. The hotel room this time is really good. We've become attuned to judging an abode by the smell when you first open the door (unlike home which is known to reek of dog) and this was a nice uplift of recent ones. Well layed out. Loo in a separate space helps, but more importantly it has a mini kitchen. Breaky sorted. Having some spare time before we caught up the first and foremost priority was a siesta. Magnifique.

In order to shake off the post meditation blur, headed off into town had a nachos from a automated chain store that managed to destroy two articles of clothing before ending up wandering around the very impressive cathedral. It has a very cool clock which does things like Gog and Magog do in Melbourne (it's amazing sometimes how much Aussie ingenuity is replicated around the world). It was good to see they'd actually finished this temple - the detail on the outside one suspects Guadi got his inspiration from. i.l.o. hundreds of individual people of religious relevance  (here) he went with nature depictions as well (there). Same level of complexity in the stone carving effort.

Back to our room to meet Joanne and Simon who'd just flown in from the UK where they'd spent a couple of weeks with Simon's Mum, and are joining us in the middle of their extended trip away from home (which is Nothcote). So the current count is two Aussies, one Kiwi and one Pom.

A nice catch up ensued outside the hotel on tables invading the sort of road out the front (great to see human carelessness creating a situation where restaurant billboards are being pushed aside by cars trying to squeeze past lazy delivery vans) as the trying to be warm sun headed it's way towards the idiots on the other side of the Atlantic. They were only part of the conversation though.

We were given a recommendation for dinner by our concierge which was followed up on and worked really well.

A popular restaurant which delivers authentic Alsace fare at reasonable prices. This blogger tried to ask directions to the twalette'? and was told "don't bother mate, it's down those stairs". At least I tried.

Merci is now in vogue. Bonjoure and Bonswar will quicky be adopted, thinking that the toilet question may take some more practice though. Here for two weeks though, so plenty of time.

Dinner was good. We all stopped by and raided a supermarket to stock up on the way home and had a pleasant debrief in the J&S room before retiring to our own pad.

Silly bedding here as well. Have not these people ever considered sheets on bed?. As there is no aircon either, maybe the French are so slim because they spend all night sweating off their excess fat underneath hot doonas. Found that hypothesis unlikely, so went and found the hotel linen cupboard and some sheets. That was easy here. Impossible in Switzerland.