Following our Parisian jaunt, we returned to London having planned to get away to Bath and Salisbury. The hire car was upgraded (again!) from a Vectra to a much larger Renault 5-speed with many bells and whistles. There was a lot of touring around the countryside, a lot of driving on the British highways and a lot of exploring overnight accommodations. Breakfasts were in the true English style, either with cereals, toasts, croissants and tea or the full English breakfast of sausage, egg, bacon, mushroom and tomato.

The touring was par for the course, with many crumbly buildings and a couple of guided tours through the respective cities. I now have my own pictorial collection (royalty free!) of Stonehenge, and out of about 20 shots I got one which worked in Cafe Nero, which, I can finally say, was my favourite coffee franchise during my time here.

An interesting highlight of the British highway system is the high quality rest stops which are spaced about 50 miles apart. The one we visited, called “Welcome Break”, had a full food court with KFC, Burger King, some delicatessens, a small shopping spot and a game hall. Outside was brilliantly landscaped with a running water feature and tall green trees. Wow.

And now, the end is near… We’ll visit Hillsong London tomorrow morning and then we’ll begin our 24 hours of transit time to get back to fabulous Australia. I’m looking forward to coming home.

Our time in Paris was brief but good. After meeting the folks at the Paris airport on time and successfully navigating through an obstinate French bus driver, we arrived at our hotel and were pleasantly surprised. It was a Best Western, and it was warm, sparkling clean and the staff were friendly. A stroke of good fortune meant that Tim and I had a twin share room with space for an extra bed, which meant extra floor space and actually a bigger bathroom. We spent a little while getting used to everything (and scamming the complimentaries so they’d be replenished the next day) and then went out and about for a walk in the neighbourhood.

The Eiffel Tower was in view as soon as we walked out of the hotel. Flying in I had thought it looked small, but that was simply an illusion of distance. Up close, the thing is huge, and a remarkable feat for something more than 100 years old. On the first night we hunted out a local “main street” with plenty of open cafes, restaurants and street vendors. We bought bread, sweet pastries and other delicious things right on the street. Once again, these French people showed their skill with making plain bread interesting enough to eat on its own.

The next day came after a warm evening in the room, despite the cool outside. Our beds seemed to retain all heat, so we were toasty toasty to the point of exhaustion. We got up and out fairly early to jump on a bus tour which circled Paris. We got out at the Louvre Museum expressly to see the Mona Lisa (I think I dragged the rest of the family, they didn’t seem too impressed), and we had coffee and croissants afterwards. Back on the bus to see Notre Dame, Pont Neuf and a whole heap of other sights.

That night when the others were back in the hotel room, Dad and I went out for a night time view of the Eiffel Tower. We were standing under the monolithic construction exactly on 10pm, when we heard a cry of enchantment from other passers by. You see, on the hour every hour after dark, the tower is lit up by hundreds of strobing white lights. It looks like stars sparkling all over the tower. We made a pact to keep hush hush about it and get Tim and Mum there on the hour the next night before our trip up to the top. The hot chocolate we bought from a street kiosk was simply delicious.

The next day we got on a boat tour down the Seine, which looped around the Notre Dame island and back to the Eiffel Tower. It was an enjoyable cruise and much more interesting than the one we took in London. After that, we headed off to the Latin Quarter for lunch and to buy some trinkets to remember Paris by. I found these cute little espresso mugs which will surely get good use…

After lunch we went back to the hotel and had some strange interpretation of pizza for dinner, which didn’t taste terrible but looked confusing with an egg plonked right in the middle. A little relaxation followed until 8pm when we went out to visit the Eiffel Tower once again. Unfortunately, they closed the very top level for one month starting that very day, so we could only go up to the second level. Quite frustrating given that we saw heaps of people travelling up the night before! But it was still nice to be on the Tower and Paris looks nice at night. One interesting thing to note is that Paris has basically no skyscrapers at all in the scenic centre – a credit to historically-minded town planners.

And that’s that. We finished off with the family photo in a cafe on the second level, went back to the hotel and crashed. The next morning (yesterday) was the usual pack up, breakfast, rush to train, wait around for train, get on fast international train and wait again. The Eurostar, which travels under the English Channel, wasn’t as fast as I thought it would be but the experience was another to add to the list of firsts.

Paris is a beautiful city, and the people are nice enough if you try to give them some French before gesticulating and muttering in English. And the fact that we didn’t get to the top of the Eiffel Tower simply means I have reason to go back one day…

Well, now this is weird. Only three days ago I was doing something similar in the same place, but that was before I had experienced the grandeur, scale and beauty which is inherent to Berlin. Now, I’ve got so much to think about from even such a short time in Germany.

I arrived at the airport at 8pm Berlin time without having ever seen my host or contact’s faces, and without having actually heard back from them whether they received the date and time of my arrival. I had been told that they were good people (which indeed they most certainly are) so I trusted that all was well. My contact, Gerrit Scherf, caught my eye as I came out the arrivals gate, and with him was my host, Carsten. The first challenge was snapping back into German, and that’s always a bit more difficult than it should be. The hardest thing is pronouncing the German word forms properly, because we never use them in English.

We went from there to Carsten’s place, where I was staying for the next couple of days. Carsten’s flatmate Christoph was still away at Uni so we had dinner as just the two of us (bread, cold meat, cheese and my favourite, “meat salad”) and spoke about life, church, music and everything else. My German came back in dribs and drabs, but I could express myself fairly well with a little stilted speech.

The next day it was as cold as usual, but that didn’t stop us from seeing Berlin. We went to all the sights pictured in the gallery (hint, hint). All I really had wanted to see was where the Berlin wall stood and the Brandenburger Tor. But Carsten didn’t need to work these two days and offered to take me around Berlin, which was very kind and very helpful of him. We ate lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant which is apparently fairly well known in Berlin, and that was fabulous. Let’s face it, it was all great.

That evening Carsten’s church had a leaders meeting which I attended. They’re a smaller church than ours but they’ve got a people with a great heart. It was a vision casting night so I listened intently as the individual group leaders stood and presented their vision for 2006. Then we sang a song together (in English, and I knew it too!) and prayed together, and celebrated afterwards with champagne. There was a girl there who studied for two years at Hillsong, and she bowled up to me after the meeting speaking fluent English (with a wonderful world-English accent, but still with a bit of Aussie in there too). It was so good to join with a church group in Berlin and see that God is indeed with us all over the world.

Christoph came back that night (before the meeting, I forgot to mention) and once we got home at 11pm(ish) he and Carsten began cooking dinner. We had chicken wings and some vegies with potato. Yum. At 2am we finally made it into bed.

The next day we slept through our alarms and got up at about 10am. Carsten had more to show me and so we went out straight away. We saw plenty and for lunch I had a real Berlin-style currywurst (sausage with a hot tomato sauce and curry). That was brilliant, particularly because it was ridiculously cold and there was a nasty chilling wind blowing. We saw the government building in the middle of Berlin and climbed in a great big dome to see all over Berlin. To get rid of the chill we then sat down in a posh cafe called Einstein Kaffee to have a hot chocolate with cream. I don’t think I’ve ever had a hot chocolate which tasted better.

That night I went over to Gerrit and Alex Scherf’s place for dinner. The Scherfs were in Australia in 2003 (Gerrit is a doctor – he worked at Modbury Hospital) and connected with Adam Low when they were looking for a church, hence my contact with them. Alex made some pizza which was just wonderful, and we looked at some photos of Adam and Clare’s trip through Germany with the Scherfs. Gerrit and Alex have a young daughter, Noami, and a younger son, Josiah. The other older girl in the photos is a niece who stayed the night. With dinner we had alcohol-free beer and also malt beer; the latter was very nice, even to this beer hater. After the pizza (did I say how good it was?) Alex asked me whether I had had a Berliner berliner, and when I responded in the negative Gerrit basically went straight out to a corner bakery to pick some up. The Berliners know how to make berliners, that’s for sure. Then we simply chatted about language and life and church and travel and heaps of everything else. Gerrit and Alex are great people – I can tell they’re fantastic parents and good friends, and I hope to see them again.

At 11pm(ish) Gerrit took me back to Carsten’s. By then my German was coming more automatically, with less English-German translation in the head before it had to be spoken. But I had to hit the sack pretty much straight away, because the train to the airport would leave the station at 7am the next day. Craziness, this 8:45 flight was. Who thought that up? Oh, right, me.

Carsten came with me to the airport to see me off. I can’t believe how welcoming and hospitable he was (even at 6:30am) and how comfortable and even befriended I felt throughout my short time there. He seemed so happy to have me there…

We arrived at the airport and checked in (with automatic check-in machines) and now suddenly our time was up. We said our farewells, I got in the security line and Carsten headed back home. I find that my heart is as heavy here now as I write as it was in the line up in Berlin just then, and the tears make the screen hard to see. Somehow I feel like I’ve left family behind, that our two days were meant to be just a beginning of some sort, yet I don’t actually know if ever I’ll see these great people again. They opened my eyes to a wider world of Christian friendship and fellowship, made me feel totally safe and loved and showed me what it really is to trust in God and follow him completely. They set the bar high, and I only hope that I can live up to the standard which they displayed so beautifully.

This is great. I’m writing to you today in a brief pause during my trip from Toulouse – Paris – Berlin. I’m sitting in Paris airport in front of my laptop, with continental lunch and a macchiato to drink. Surely it doesn’t get much better.

After overcoming the cold-induced bleakness before New Year’s Eve, the house had warmed sufficiently for us not to be frozen solid during our sleep. Tim hasn’t been well so we spent a fair amount of the day just chilling out at the house while the others ventured out and explored some more crumblies in France. It was good to just take a breather, so to speak, watch a movie and play a computer game or two. Following that we’ve had the chance to visit some more photogenic places, as evidenced by the gallery.

And now I’m off to Berlin! It’s exciting to be journeying alone, but Maxwell was right: it’s quicker to travel on your own, but it gets lonely quicker too. I finished his book, “Winning With People”, and devoured Matt Redman’s “Facedown” on the plane today. If travel downtime is good for one thing at least, it’s reading and contemplation.

11pm

Tonight’s entry comes to you from the old house you see fragments of in the corresponding photos. The household has retired to bed for the evening – yes, all ten of us – and the Hawke family is chillin’ in the darkened lounge-converted-into-a-bedroom before the new year kicks in. It’s quiet and reflective at the moment, which is a pleasant change from the preceding two days. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Yesterday morning we arose at 4am (after my alarm went off at 3:50) and were picked up promptly by the taxi at 4:30. The trip to the airport was interesting – our driver was a Pakistani, and a fanatic cricket supporter at that, and had been watching the current match for about half an hour before picking us up. Fortunately the Aussies were doing us justice at the time, with Hussey having scored a century in the first innings.

However, the trip to the airport took a while and we were crammed into the car, which wasn’t large. Come to think of it, there aren’t many large cars here at all. Anyhow, we arrived punctually and without further hitch. Gatwick airport is airy and tall, but my memory of the entry area is a little hazy. After proceeding through check in, we were left in the boarding lounge (quite large) which is below a terrace of shopping spots. I went with Tim to grab some Maccas for breakfast, despite the warning against it we were given by our “native” relatives. It’s at this point that I realise, with great resignation, that a Sausage McMuffin with Bacon (no egg) is very different in London to Adelaide. So while my stomach attempts to digest the carbs I ingested with an ample helping of multinational grease, we considered buying coffee. That’s all we did, mind – considering the poor state of the McMuffin, our coffee consideration was short and definitive. Apple juice was the beverage of choice, along with a chocolate croissant from a bakery franchise called Upper Crust.

Then it was quickly downstairs, off on a ten minute walk to the departure gate, a couple of security scans (remove watch, extract iPod, camera, wallet and phone from pockets, dump bag and lappy, step through beeping frame, reset watch, relocate iPod, camera, wallet and phone into pockets, shoulder bag uncomfortably and grab lappy hastily) and a sweltering wait in the easyJet gate departure room. easyJet doesn’t believe in seat number reservations, so it’s a free-for-all based only on a preference grouping system determined by the order you check in. We managed to get a good spot just inside the door to the causeway.

A flight from London Gatwick to Toulouse takes only 1:20, so there was barely enough time for me to open my book (“Winning with People”, John Maxwell). Until that point I hadn’t opened any of the reading materials I had brought with me, so I decided the France bit was the opportunity. Takeoff, in flight banter, landing – all standard.

So here we are in France. I can’t understand the people, or the untranslated signs, or the billboards. It’s interesting how you grope for any level of understanding you can find. My groping led me back into the dark unused depths of the mind to my Year 8 French lessons, now seven years ago (I must be getting old(er)). Only snippets of the vocab and conjugation remain in my awareness. The first port of call is the Europcar desk, where we source our Renault Laguna rental car. It’s grey and it’s a reasonably new, 5 door 6-speed manual automatic-everything machine. It has a start/stop button and an activation card which goes into a slot. Back in my day…

Toulouse is rainy and French looking. It’s about one and a half hours’ drive from our final destination, and we had to stop a couple of times along the way to fetch groceries and some heating apparatus. Further, Dad’s been thrown a curve ball because all driving is the other way around in France – yep, forward travel in the right lane. Since the car’s a manual, Dad’s been hitting the door on his left at gear change time. It’s somewhat funny to watch, but he’s doing a great job of it. Now that we’re on the subject, the toll highways are fun. The fun factor is nothing to do with the speed limit, which is actually average and maxes out at 130km/h. No, what’s interesting is the eight to ten ticketing machines and toll booths which end-cap the highway. Essentially they make up a ten lane drift; once you’ve left your rank in the ticket booth, you’re out of the box like a horse in the Melbourne Cup. There are no lines at all for at least 50 metres while the road funnels into the usual three lanes. First in, best dressed. I’m looking forward to watching it all happen with more dense traffic on Wednesday in peak hour.

Lunch at McDonald’s was fun. I had to order for Tim and me, and so I put all my French knowledge into action. I end up asking for “Deux moyen Menu Best Of McChicken”. I get asked “Ou frites?” to which I reply “Oui.” I get asked something containing “boisson”, to which I reply “Cola.” I missed the next bit, but a bit of a hand signal from the understanding French girl serving me made me realise the meaning of “C’est tout?”, to which I reply “C’est tout, merci.” What a buzz!

Finally we arrive at our destination, about ten minutes’ drive outside a place called Caylus. This spot is truly idyllic, with rough stone walls, blue window shutters and wooden plank doors. Forgot to mention, it’s cold. -1 degree C outside the car as we drove, and not any warmer now that we’re preparing to go inside. The steps up to the front door were iced up and slippery as wet soap, and my Auntie had a fall from the top down all twelve or so. This place doesn’t get used much – our London relatives are branching out into France and renovating as they can. Thus, the foot-thick stone walls have had time enough to become as cold as the outside climate, chilling everything inside. It took some time to get everything uncovered and the wood fire crackling along, and all the while we’re exhaling mist, even inside.

The wood fire puts out plenty of heat, but the next little issue is the wood supply. There’s ample amounts around but not much of it is dry and readily accessible, and most of the good fuel we have on hand is pine which burns too quickly. It is at this point that I experience the first major frustration apart from the foregoing issues of ten people in a small space. We have wood. We have fire. Conservation of energy says that, no matter how fast we burn the wood, we’re going to get the same amount of total energy output. To my mind, maximising the heating rate without regard to the speed of fuel consumption is the primary concern. The place is literally freezing, and without pumping the heat into the building, the slabs of cold rock aren’t going to heat through. But I keep well out of the admin chatter, guessing that the older cooks won’t appreciate another broth-spoiler.

Well, suffice to say we had a very cold night. It was planned that Tim and I should sleep in an exterior room which had no heating. This plan was scrapped after it was discovered that the heater we purchased had no fan, and that the cold was almost unbearable even inside the wood fired lounge room. I hate sleeping cold, even more than I despise instant coffee. I awoke at about 4am (5am?) shivering in my sleeping bag, which turns out to be too far the other way in terms of thermal protection. Third time lucky, hopefully.

Today, then, we arose at about 8am and slammed down some chocolate croissants before heading out to the shops again, which shut at 2pm on a Saturday. This was another interesting experience. Without any decent language skills (and with my brain mistakenly suggesting German words where my poor French fails me) I was becoming more annoyed. It’s quite hard to function when you can’t even express the most simplest of concepts to a shop assistant or passer by. Even knowing numbers above 10 would help.

This afternoon I became quite dejected, with the next five days of cooped up family politics, saving face, polite smiles and shaky facades becoming less and less attractive. The inability to get out without driving and the inclement weather compound the language barrier to make France seem very unfriendly and my upcoming time in Berlin seem distant and short. Fortunately our residence is heating up by now and is not as icily repressive as before. Unfortunately Tim hasn’t been feeling well. The Hawke family decides to split for a while to debrief and ponder the next few days by taking a car drive down the road around our village, enabling me to capture some scenery on camera.

After returning I retreated to the dinner table (a few feet from the lounge area) and began to devour my book, highlighter in hand. This turns out to be a great use of my time and my mood improves as I read Maxwell’s advice on dealing with conflict and maximising relational skills. I don’t resent being here as I did this afternoon, and am now taking it as it comes. If nothing more, I’ve got some nice photos and a wider perspective on the world of travel, family and my own character.