Our day started out at 4am in Paris where we took the high speed train to Colmar. After arriving to Colmar we ate breakfast and walked around the town for a few hours. We decided that since Germany is only about a 30 minute drive we would get an Uber and we would go eat lunch in Germany.
We looked and used TripAdvisor to find a good restaurant across the border in Breisach, Germany. It is not a tourist town, just a regular small town with working class people. We like to see the real parts of the country and not just the tourist places. I order an Uber and off we go. After about a 30 minute journey we cross the Rhine River and we are in Germany, mark another country off the list, even though we want to go back to see more of it, it has been visited. Before we get out of the Uber Miranda points out the drivers business card that you can contact him direct, I said nahhh, we will walk around a bit then just order another car. She said you sure you do not want to ask him to wait, nah no point in him waiting on us. Well…
The Uber dropped us off at Elsasser Hof, a restaurant with German fare. We sat down and ordered a salad, schnitzel, and fries with hot tea to drink. Food was good, not sure what the people thought out of accents. They spoke no English, not that I expected them to since they are not in a touristy area. When we would talk to each other the restaurant got quiet and everyone would just listen.
After eating we went walking around the town to take in the sights of just how they built things. The town was founded in the 1660’s and still had some of the original structures. The streets were cobblestone and the building were all 100’s of years old. We walked around and looked at the sights for an hour or so and I decided since our train was scheduled to leave in about 2 hours we would head back to Colmar.
Well… I pulled up the Uber app and it says… we do not service this area, this is where Miranda says, “You should have listened to me.” So I say we will just find a cab, we walk, and we walk but no cabs anywhere. I try to call a cab but no English. We walk to a grocery store and I ask for a taxi using my translate app and the lady looks at me like I have 3 eyes and just shrugs her shoulders. She walks to the back and a guy ask to help in broken English and I tell him De Taxi and he said train station. Whooo hoo train station, that will take us right back to Colmar where we can just hop on our train. We walk about a mile and get to the train station, the tracks only go one way, EAST, we need to go west.
We found the bus schedule and there is a bus in 30 minutes that will take us to Colmar that will arrive 10 minutes before our train is set it leave, but it has 12 stops along the way. What happens if the bus is delayed, we will be stuck in Colmar over night. Miranda sit down to wait on the bus and I took off in search of a taxi. After a bit of walking I run across a lady in a taxi, looked like she was sleeping but I knocked and asked if she could take us back, she said sure it will be about 100 Euros, at this point I didn’t care.
We take off back to France, we drive and I still had my maps up on my phone from where I was looking how far a walk it was just in case we had to go that route. My maps kept recalculating, the driver kept fooling with her phone. We had a language barrier as well as a plexiglass wall between us so this next part does not really tell how hard it was to communicate. Come to find out she did not have service once she left Germany and she had no idea where we were going. I started giving her directions from my phone. I would say second road turn right and the first road we would come to she would turn left.
This went on for about an hour, we are down to an hour before out train is to leave. I continue to try to give her directions but we just keep going in circles. Finally we are within a half mile of the train station I ask her to stop and just let us out and we will walk the rest of the way. She did finally let us out and off we went on foot to the station. We arrive with about 10 minutes to spare. We get on the train and I am not sure the train even left the station before I passed out. I do not remember anything on the way back to Paris.
So what I learned from this adventure is that to always, ALWAYS, listen to your wife so you do not hear, You should have listened to me. I heard that plenty this trip to France. Like when she asked me if I had everything when we got off the plane in Amsterdam, of course I do. Everything EXCEPT my iPad I use for work. I am going to do better, maybe.