Markus and Brian's Excellent European Adventure

No treaty for us

Hello there peoples,

After clubbing Brian over the head and kind of propping him upright, I've managed to get a picture of the two American girls (Lindsay and Carrie) with us. I shall post it later, but rest assured that the your thirst for the photos will be quenched.

To get to current events, we all went to Versailles together today and as far as I'm concerned it was one of the highlights of the trip so far. The huge mansion was thoroughly impressive by itself, but what really got to all of us in the end were the gardens.

At first sight, you think that it's nice, but nothing spectacular. There's your usual fountains, trees and symetrically cut bushes, but the fountains weren't spraying any water and the place looked kind of small from the entrance. What we didn't notice until later is that there were a whole bunch of small paths that ran from the central area to other parts of the the gardens, with more fountains, and even though they still weren't functioning this made things a little more interesting. After having some lunch and exploring the smaller, but still beautiful, hidden areas of the garden we decided to lounge around for a little while and thought about leaving.

Now at this point it doesn't sound like there's much to this place, and that's exactly what we were thinking, but at about 3:30 we hear an announcement come on in bad broken French followed by bad broken English, informing us that the fountains were going to come on and music was going to get played. As soon as the lady on the speaker had decided that she had massacred both languages enough, all the fountains around us burst into life and classical music began wafting through the air. I don't know about the others, but for me the effect was almost intoxicating. Suddenly the atmosphere in the gardens transformed itself completely and instead of feeling like I was in one of France's largest tourist traps I found myself strolling in a court worthy of kings and queens. I closed my eyes and felt it all wash over me and for a few moments, let myself get lost in the moment. Maybe it was just that we weren't expecting that much and ended up getting something good out of it, but this has got to be one of my favourite moments of the trip thus far.

Aside from that we're getting ready to head out on a night train to Munich. From there we'll try to get as close to Mauern as we can and then we'll either call my Aunt Christine for a ride or just take a bus or something.

Thanks for all your comments. They're entertaining as usual and keep us in the mood to do this thing.

Take it easy,

Markus

Posted by Markus at May 29, 2003 08:44 PM