I woke up this morning in Paris. Once again, I hadn't gotten much sleep, this time because just as I was drifting off at around nine, I saw something black move behind the dresser. Because the lights were out, I couldn't tell if it was a cockroach or a mouse, but it freaked me out enough to stay awake. I kept the TV and the lights on, watching increasingly odder things as the night wore on. Did you know you can find Doctor Quinn: Medicine Woman dubbed in French at 11 PM? There was also an unintentionally-hilarious sci-fi B-movie about aliens and the same loop of news running over and over again, mostly about the awards The Artist won at the Oscars. Around 3 AM I finally got over my fear of whatever scurrying thing was behind the dresser sufficiently enough to go to sleep, though not enough to turn the lights or TV off. Still, considering my severe lack of sleep, I was up, packed, and ready to go well before I needed to be, and I got to the train station with plenty of time to spare.
Ever since my mishap on the way to the Netherlands at the beginning of the month, I've been hyper vigilant about train travel. I triple-check my tickets and the platform number, even when I know I'm on the right train, which makes me pretty anxious. Luckily the platforms were announced well in advance of departure in both stations, and I had no trouble finding the correct trains. The journey from Paris to Frankfurt was uneventful; I slept, listened to A Way with Words, and read about Bavaria in my guidebook. Still, I had a knot of worry in my stomach all throughout the Frankfurt-Nuremberg leg of my trip, because unlike on the TGV from Paris, I could not understand for the life of me what the announcer was saying. Apparently he was using English in addition to German, but his English was utterly incomprehensible (rather like my French, I'm afraid). But since I knew I was on the right train and the German name for Nuremberg is not especially different from the English one, I figured things out readily enough. When I got to the Nuremberg train station, however, Raquel was late, and the cell phone number I had for her was missing a digit, so there was no way I could contact her. Calling my parents helped me to keep my head, and eventually Raquel and I found each other, so all's well that ends well.
We walked around Nuremberg for a bit and then drove to Grafenwohr, where she lives. Her husband is currently deployed in Afghanistan, so I'm more than happy to keep her company for a few days. Some of her friends dropped by at dinnertime, and they were very nice. They do swear rather a lot, but I have to keep reminding myself that I'm a mildly sheltered preachers' kid and they're in the Army, and really, I got along with them well enough in spite of the differences. Tomorrow Raquel and I are going to Munich and Dachau, which should make for an interesting day. Prague on Thursday!
