Kentry

Blog entry. By Ken. Here we go. Kalene and I made our way from Germany into France, which is scary because France is full of French people and I didn’t know what to expect. Though I was excited about learning more of the French language. Like most of my male-anglophone-ontarians I learned French in school and do not speak it!

We got to Strasbourg, France amidst heavy rain. We were scheduled to stay with a lovely couchsurfing couple but at the last minute they advised us to ensure we brought a sleeping bag. Ugh, we are traveling for a year and have no such thing, also, our profile clearly says so and the profile of this couple said that they can provide sleep gear. So we had to switch hosts last minute because they were dumb. This ended up being one of the worst experiences of our trip. Another couple took us in which was great but we arrived at their home and it was without a doubt the dirtiest most disgusting place we had ever visited and we had to sleep there for three nights. In retrospect we should have left after one night but we are so Canadian that we did not want to seem rude. It amazed me that a female lived there cause it was miles past gross. Kalene showered with flip flops on.

After that crap we visited an old friend from Toronto who now lives in Luxembourg. We were so happy that we got in contact with her because Luxembourg was very cute and those two days were very relaxed and comfortable. We had some drinks, saw a local band at a nightclub, and ate great food. Thank you Kasia!

***At this point Kalene says to Ken. “I think we should write more about Luxembourg and not just breeze past it,”

Ken: “It’s Luxembourg, it’s used to it.”

From Luxembourg we headed south where it was a bit warmer. Nice, France where Kalene’s mum spent a year in University. It was great to finally see the elusive Mediterranean sea. It was dark the fist night and the water was black. A hostel for one night in order to do some much needed laundry. After the experience in Strasbourg I wanted to throw out all my clothes…partly because I have been losing weight and I want to get tighter fitting clothes to show of my manly physique. Apparently carrying around your girlfriends crap for two months is good for the abs.

The first morning in Nice we jogged along the coast of the Mediterranean in the sunlight. Christmas trees are sold along this coast too FYI. We spend a day in Monaco which is the second smallest nation (next to Vatican) and it is very rich. They do not have income tax! Many of the world’s richest people set up in Monaco to avoid losing money to taxes. It was pretty, but geared toward the wealthy.

From Nice we stopped for an afternoon in Cannes. Large film fest town…that’s it. We arrived in Marseille which is the city Kalene and I have both voted as the one to skip if you are in France. A lot was closed in winter, or under construction, or both. It didn’t seem to have a lot to do, was a bit pricy, kind of rude and just overall poopy. This culminated in a very irresponsible couchsurfing host. I don’t want to condemn a whole nation but two bad experiences with people both of which happened in France. I guess it was inevitable because we had been spoiled by lovely people up until then.

Being a few hours late is considered on time. There is a lack of what I want to call accountability amongst some Europeans which I did not expect. I thought all people lived like I do in Canada.

The holidays were approaching but snow was nowhere to be seen. We had our hotel booked in Paris and we were getting excited about it.