home sweet home

I spent my last day in France in Sarreguemines. Looking back at all the adventures when buying tickets for trains or any logistical hurdles of the last week I can I can hereby declare the Germans extremely well-organized and very efficient. I will think twice before complaining about the people behind the desks of the train stations / hotel desks – it is a catastrophe in France – I don’t know how this country can survive.

Let’s start with the Taxi from work to the train station. Now Sarreguemines is a city of 23,202 (Wikipedia). There was simply no taxi available so someone from work had to drive me to the station. Needless to say a city this side needs two of those and so I was driven to the wrong one. Arriving at the station they were unable to sell me a ticket for the train as only the machine can do that. But they could get me a ticket from Saarbrücken to Frankfurt which I however declined as I was about to miss the connection I originally wanted.
Honestly, I wasn’t really surprised. Only yesterday had I experienced something similar in Metz where I spent half an hour at the counter trying to explain them to give me a ticket for today’s trip which I printed out of the internet. Their computer did not find the trains I found on the internet – in the end they existed of course as I saw one of the trains leaving in front of my eyes. Yes, I also missed the train I wanted. And so I had to change my plans and in the end found an even quicker connection which will bring me home 11 minutes sooner!

Another funny thing happened in the Hotel in Paris when I returned from the city one evening only to find two ladies from Japan talking to the night shift about the room temperature in the rooms. They wanted to have a second blanket as the room was apparently too cold. The answer of the guy behind the desk was similar to the temperature – “No”. Not “Sorry, no” or “I am very sorry, maybe I can check if I can help you with the temperature” or anything. A simple “No”. The second question of the ladies concerned their Taxi in the morning as they ordered it for 6:15 and wanted to change it to 7 when they realized that there is no breakfast served until 6:30. The same answer here “No, I cannot change the Taxi, sorry” – oh, and I cannot do anything about the breakfast only. Germany is not a Service-Wüste at all!

To close the past week in France with something nice here are the instructions on taking the escalators in the Louvre:



Don’t take your baby with the trolley. Take it out and hold his / her hand. No poodles allowed – especially not the ones with a shaved tail with the pom-pom at the end. Also please take off your boots and if this is too much for you just stop and turn back!

Ps: I am currently listening to a CD I purchased in Paris called Monsieur Gainsbourg revisited - the songs of Serge Gainsbourg revisited by some of today’s most influential artists containing Franz Ferdinand, Jane Birkin, Placebo, Jarvis Cocker, Portishead, Michael Stipe, Tricky, etc. (I don’t know where to stop copying the names from the cover.) Grooooooovy baaaaaby.