Friday, February 27, 2009

Travel journal, part three: Metz

Hahaa! You didn't see this coming, did you? ;)

Well, if everything had gone as we planned, we would have been back in Paris on tuesday evening. But, as always over here, something went wrong. We went to the trainstation in Luxembourg in time, just to see that almost every train was delayed by at least 30-40 minutes. Including our train to Paris. Someone had decided to commit suicide and jumped in front of a train between Luxembourg and Bettembourg, causing major delays on that route. When we had been waiting for an half an hour or so, they announced that due to an accident the train to Paris wouldn't leave at all from Luxembourg and that in stead, they would arrange a bus to take us to another town pass Bettembourg where the train to Paris would wait for us. Ok. Fine. We went outside to wait for the bus. When it finally came (after about an hour) the driver wasn't familiar with the road and got lost a couple of times. So when we finally arrived in Thionville, they told us that the train had already left! Apparently there had also been another bus and a train from Luxembourg that had been there in time, but nobody knew that we were coming too, so they didn't wait. I guess there were bad communication between Luxembourg and Thionville...

Well ok, so when does the next train leave then? Tomorrow morning! Great... So due to a slow driver, we had missed the last train to Paris for that evening. But I have to say that SNCF (like VR in France) organised the follow-up very well and everyone was so nice. They put us (we were three people that wanted to go to Paris) on a train to another town, Metz, and booked rooms in a hotel for the night. Then the next morning, we changed our old tickets to new ones to whichever train to Paris we wanted to take and we even got seats in first class!

But in stead of taking the first train to Paris, me and Sophie decided to stay a few more hours in Metz. Once there, why not take the advantage of exploring a new town? :) Metz is also a pretty old town with a long history. I especially liked the trainstation. It was built by the Germans in 1908 during an occupation, just to show off! :D


Then there were also a very impressive cathedral with enormous glass windows! Really! They were huge! Imagine a big, gothic cathedral with windows covering almost every wall!

This glass window was actually one of the smaller ones, but it's painted by Marc Chagall so I thought it could be interesting for you :)

In Metz we also visited the oldest church in France, build between 380 and 395, an old abbey, a city gate and of course the whole old town with it's numerous buildnings and streets.

But, after four days of monuments, churches and museums, we then decided to just have a relaxing walk by the river and in the different calm, green parks before heading back to Paris.

...but well, still one more problem crossed our path: when we went back to the hotel to get our luggage, the door was locked, eventhough the reception should have been open 24/7! We knocked and knocked and knocked, but nobody opened. And there were not a single telephone number anywhere. Then we just had to leave it and run to the railway station in stead. As we noticed that our train was 5 minutes late, we went to talk to the SNCF again to see if would be possible to send our luggage to Paris later. They were very surprised about the hotel and decided to call the reception. And now there was someone there! So we ran back, grabbed our luggage while listening to the receptionist's appologies (apparently he has just had a small break...) and then ran back to the railway station and jumbed on the train just before it left. Phew! It took a while before we had calmed down after that.

Loppu hyvin, kaikki hyvin! :)


Oh, almost forgot. The third person who wanted to go to Paris was a french guy and as we talked for a while with him in the hotel, he said he had immediately noticed that we possibly could not be french because we stayed so calm and quiet during the whole time! :D He, on the other hand, had been very distressed and argued with the staff etc. So even though we've been here for almost a month already, I can now announce that we haven't changed at all! We're still finns! ;)

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Ja vill också åka tåg!!

Kom just hem från vad jag tror var den första Kupolfesten som int du också var på! Det var helt konstigt när jag märkte det... :D

Nuuskis said...

Jaa, de e väl Öffens årsfest veckoslut nu? Sku nog ha vari härligt att vara med i år igen :( Missar alla årsfester, ju! Men hoppas du har de roligt!

Unknown said...

Jepp, de e de - kom just från frissan och känner mej ganska sprayad... =) Woo!