Category Archives: France

Nice Nancy

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OK, that heading will confuse people. Nice is in the south, Nancy is in the north. I’m using the English adjective.

My couchsurfing host here was Suum, a law student who’s lived in and around Nancy all her life. Even though she’d just moved into her new flat, she was happy to host me and in the first instance was going to give me the whole flat while she stayed with a friend! I talked her into letting me use my bedrolls from camping, and then accepted a fold down bed she went out and bought instead. Talk about hospitality! I did build the bed myself (with a little help from one of her friends) which is cool. Anyone else who couchsurfs there will be on my handiwork.

So, Nancy. What’s it got? Well, a fantastic central square in the old town for one. Place Stanislas is magnificent in all senses of the word. Grand, showy, impressive, clean and bustling. Apparently the council gave it a really good going over a couple of years ago and it shows. It’s now completely pedestrianised and all the walls, paving, statues and fountains are as gleaming as stone can possibly be. The gold paintwork gleams in a more traditional way. Stanislas was actually Polish, and one of the last great dukes in the region. He was a huge patron of the arts and the Place was a way of thanking and remembering him. It’s a wonderful memorial.

I arrived at a nice time as well. I believe a world record was being set for the longest pastry, stretching from the statue in the centre of the square to one of the arches at the edge – 200m long. Either way, I arrived in time to get some photos and a couple of slices!

Suum walked me around a lot of the rest of town, and we saw some nice buildings. A few are original examples of Art Nouveau, so you can blame Nancy for starting that movement off. At least the style doesn’t look as awful as it does elsewhere. The original is still the best.

In the evening, we ended up at one of Suum’s friend’s flats and I got fed, watered, beered, wined and cidered quite well. I felt a little bad as I was expecting to eat out so hadn’t bought anything. So a public “thank you” is required to all those who made me feel welcome!

As ever recently, I’m sure I’ve missed some things out. Sadly, my internet time at the moment is more restricted than it used to be so… *shrugs* I have uploaded a video on YouTube, though.

Vesoul – small but nice

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Just a quick bit about Vesoul. The tourist information place is really helpful and provides a small map of the town and some directions for walking around it. These are well worth getting and read like an audio tour, pointing out little features of all the things.

Also take a walk up the hill and see la Motte, a little statue / chapel thing erected to Notre Dame (Our Lady) in thanks at only a small number of people being killed in an epidemic in the late 18th century. It offers a nice view of the town and surrounds, and has the coolest map I’ve seen at one of these sights.

While we were up there, we found three teeny kittens. They couldn’t have been more than a couple of weeks old and there was no sign of a mother. Philippe and I played with them for a little while, but when we came to leave they started to cry and chase after us. The only conclusion we could come to is that some ******* had dumped them there.

We were discussing where we could take them (animal shelter, vets…) when small family walked past and we got talking. They decided to take them home and adopt them. I’m just glad that most people are good enough. But if I got my hands on the retard who chucked them up there, I’d find myself running rather than walking out of Vesoul to avoid arrest…

My time in Vesoul was brief but as ever I was made to feel very welcome by my host and his friends. Bizarrely, I met four people besides Philippe – two French women who didn’t speak English and two Romanian women who did!

Also, there’s a video of the view from la Motte on YouTube.

Sunny (not) Besançon

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Besançon is a very nice place to visit but apparently doesn’t get too many tourists. A shame as it’s definitely got a day’s-worth of wandering in it. It’s a very old town with huge fortified alls still standing all over, some towers down near the river, a Roman gate and a huge citadel overlooking it.

I’d intended on seeing a fair bit, but due to the weather being atrocious on my one day here, I had to cut short the touristing. There is a video on YouTube… kind of. I uploaded it over an hour ago and it’s still “processing”.

Most things here do cost money, sadly, including the citadel and the museum. They’re not that expensive, though – maybe a fiver for an adult. The museum’s closed on Tuesday as well!

Besançon’s claim to fame is that it was the birthplace of Victor Hugo in 1802. Unlike Vernante with its Pinocchio fixation, however, souvenir shops here don’t have little Victor Hugo puppets to sell you. I’m not sure if this is a shame or a relief.

My host here has been Jean-Etienne, though I had two fallbacks: Jérémie and Gael. We all met for a drink last night and hopefully for dinner tonight before I set off for Vesoul in the morning.

Prior to getting here, I stopped off in Champagnol and was the guest of Florent who – as with every couchsurfer so far – took great care of me.

In both places I have been well fed, had a comfy bed, been given directions or taken around, had fantastic company and not felt the least bit embarrassed that my hosts speak better English than I do French. OK, maybe not the last bit.

I have a host sorted in Vesoul then I think it’ll be a matter of breaking out the tent again for two to three nights before I reach Nancy.

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More border-hopping

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Several times in two days, in fact.

From Geneva, I hiked back to Nyon to replace the video that got destroyed when my memory card fritzed on me. From there, up into the hills and to La Cure which straddles the French/Swiss border. I stopped for a drink in a hotel there (l’Hotel Franco-Suisse) which actually sits right on the border. Two of the bedrooms are laid out so that when you sleep, your head is in one country and your feet in the other.

While I was sat there, I got talking to a local Frenchman called Guillaume (the French version of William). His grandfather used to work at the hotel during the war as it was a way to escape the Germans, with one half of the building in France and the other in Switzerland. He sat with me and got me some guidebooks, told me about loads of things to see in the area then insisted on paying for my beer and driving me the 2km to the hostel.

If I ever say anything bad about the French ever again, kindly kick me.

The Auberge was the only one I could find online at short notice, but in the immediate area there must be another three or four gites. This one included breakfast and, when I arrived, dinner for an extra 10 Euros. I was tempted as it was getting late, but the main course was fish which I really don’t like. Apparently all the shops were now shut, but I opted to take my chances and head into the nearest town – les Rousses – and see what was to be had.

Half an hour later, I found a moderately expensive convenience store that was just about to close. Twelve Euros later and I had my dinner for the day and my lunch for the next. Back at the hostel I rustled up two nice steaks, some boiled spuds and mixed veg. Washed down with a Heineken and a half litre of (UHT – yuk) milk. And topped off with a cake someone had left in the “help yourself” box. And I was still hungry.

I got to bed around midnight after getting slightly addicted to my PSP for an hour or so, but was up very early the next morning to go for… well… for a walk. There’s a nearby hill called la Dolem atop which is the weather station and RADAR site for Geneva airport. The view is meant to be splendid but has to be seen early in the morning before cloud builds and spoils the view of Mont Blanc. Not to be missed, I’d been told. So I didn’t want to miss it.

The walk to the start of the hike is around an hour from la Cure. I was most of the way there when who shows up but Guillaume, driving back into town. He offerend – and I accepted – a lift to the foot of the walk to save me another twenty minutes. What a guy!

I took the direct route up, pretty much in a straight line under the main skilift. This was steep in places – very steep – but got me to the top in around thirty minutes. The meandering pathway takes twice that, though it doesn’t destroy your knees so much. Or your trousers. I’ve had to restitch the crotch on mine twice now.

The view from the top was one of those that simply makes you go “wow” when you first see it. Most of Lake Geneva is visible with mist rolling over it. Nyon, Lausanne and Geneva are clearly visible. The Jet in Geneva shows how huge it is by being an unmissable sight even from this distance.

It’s also interesting to look at the man-made stuff perched on the top of the hill relating to the airport. A huge golf-ball like RADAR station, accompanying weather equipment and an auto-tracking security camera… though I’m not sure what it tracks! Still, I didn’t have too long, so I hurried back down the hill (running seems easier when you’ve got gravity on your side) and made it back to the hostel to get my large rucksack and stride off towards Champagnole.

The route there is long – a marathon, literally – but I got there in the late evening to be greeted by Florent, my Couchsurfing host for the evening. We avoided the excellent-looking Big Ben pizza (complete with genuine London taxi cab for delivery purposes) as the food’s apparently awful and had a healthy organic salad instead. Florent was to be up at 6am for a cycling race the next day and diet is all-important!

Water jets, parks, physics labs…

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Geneva has them all and more. I’m going to rush through everything here as I don’t have much more time to add to the blog before I have to set off. A shame as there’s so much to tell! There are a few videos on my YouTube "MoshTour" player so go to my default channel to enjoy them all.

Delphine flew up from Nice on the Saturday and together we toured the city centre and surrounds. One of the major sights is the water jet in the "harbour". This thing fires water into the air at around 200kph and has been running for well over 100 years. Impressive stuff. Also around the lake, you can hire a myriad of different boats or sit on an artificial beach. The botanical gardens are rather nice with some animals in one corner, fish ponds, art displays, greenhouses and the like. On the way up there from the city is the History of Science museum which was great aside from the lack of signs in English. OK, so I’m in a French-speaking country, but it’s quite annoying when around 25% of the exhibits are marked in English and the rest aren’t. It’s also mainly a shame as it’s such a good place to visit with tons of things to see. There are other gardens on the south (or "old city") side of the lake which are also worth a visit. More like a park than a garden, really, but relaxing and with some lovely flower displays with views over the lake that the Botanical Gardens don’t have. Getting around Geneva is moderately cheap with 1-hour and all-day passes available across the bus, tram and trolley networks. Watch out for the ticket machines, though – they don’t give change. If you over pay for a ticket, you can save the little bit of paper (it has how much you overpaid printed on it) and get the money back from an office. Apparently. I never found one. An alternative is the free bike service. There are at least four "depots" where you can pick up a bike for a 20 Franc deposit and a copy of your ID. For four hours, the bike is free and can be returned to any of the drop-off points. After that, it starts at 1 Franc per hour, so still remarkably cheap. It’s even cheaper when you hire three and return them at different times and they give you the deposit back twice over… But, the coolest thing is that Geneva is home to the main offices of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. As well as being the headquarters for the largest nuclear accelerator on the planet (a 27-kilometre ring situated 100m underground and crossing into France for a fair part of that), it’s where Tim Berners-Lee drafted and tested the WWW. In fact, I’ve seen the first ever Web server, encased in glass in the Microcosm exhibition. And I am sad enough to admit that I was awestruck by a fairly crappy old PC. We went to CERN three times. The first on the Saturday as there is a free demonstration / lecture at 3pm once a week where a mad professor-like guy does stupid things with liquid nitrogen (like making ice cream which is scrummy). We didn’t get time to finish our walk around the Microcosm museum, so we went back on the Monday to finish it off. There is also a 3-hour daily tour around the facility, but it’s a different language each day and all the tours are booked up for 10 months in advance. We settled for buying geeky t-shirts and playing cards instead. That is, until Delphine invited a friend of hers over for fondue at it turned out over conversation that he works at CERN! More to the point, he could take visitors around… Not in the same capacity as the official tours, as he has to fit it around work, but all the same we leapt at the chance. Thomas was a great guide. We started off with lunch in the canteen (steak and beer!) before he took us to see the CMS Project, part of the enormous LHC ring. This thing is phenomenal, made up of parts weighing upwards of 800 tons each. These are all assembled and tested on the ground and then lowered through a tube into a chamber 100m down – the tube is barely 10cm wider than the parts themselves, so it’s precision work just getting the parts assembled underground. Our little trip was barely an hour, but definitely well worth the bus ride out (and Delphine almost missing her plane home). Just to feel the scale of the thing is something that can’t be achieved without standing right next to it. Well, as I said, Delphine flew back to Nice and I caught up with all this stuff while Daisy, my kind host, was out for the evening. The dogs kept me company as I watched us lose to Germany (on BBC1… in Switzerland!) and I finish typing this at 4am when I should be in bed! I think tomorrow will be a fairly short walk.