how maggies got lost in france:-)
How I Broke My Foot, Got Lost and Found My Family Tree. I spent a summer awhile back helping restore a 13th century French chateau near Menessaire, a small village nestled amongst the rolling hills in the Burgundy region of France. I was lucky enough to become part of an international student team hosted by the International Council on Monuments and Sites. Quite an experience for traveling in Europe for the first time alone.
We worked hard six days a week, doing everything from hauling cement up three-story towers by rope and removing rubble by the wheel barrow full, to carefully removing damaged floor tiles and window lintels for the stone masons to reproduce and volunteering at the lumber yard operated by a beret-wearing local named Gou Gou, a confirmed chauvinist who insisted on taking hourly breaks for "un petit gout" (small jelly glasses of the worst rot-gut red wine imaginable the bottles came in a six-pack and had plastic flip tops).
For some reason, Gou Gou had taken a shine to me, so I found myself at the lumberyard at least twice a week during my last month in France. So it was that just two days before I was to board the train and return to Paris and then continue on to Holland to visit the family of one of my father's colleagues, I was stacking 3-meter timbers, freshly cut on the giant band saw inside the wood shed (Gou Gou didn't allow women near the saw). The day was hot, my stacking companion and I were tired and we'd partaken of a few too many "petits gouts" so we weren't paying close attention to the ever-increasing height of our woodpile. We stacked one piece too many and it came tumbling down directly onto my foot.
The majority of the small bones in my right foot yielded instantly to the crushing force of the plunging 3-meter timber. The 25 km trip to the nearest hospital was out of the question, so Gou Gou's wife taped up my swollen appendage as best she could.
On the day of my departure from Menessaire, my foot was a lovely shade of purple from the ankle all the way to the tips of my soon-to-be-missing toenails. It was the middle of August by this point so when I arrived in Paris, the train station was a sea of tourists from every point of the compass. I'd had the presence of mind to reserve a room in a small hotel near Nфtre Dame before I'd left Paris in June, but due to an unexpected turn of events involving an unwanted suitor who met my train "another story for another time" I lost my reservation and found myself walking around the city looking for a place to stay.
I finally found a vacancy in a run-down, four-story walk-up. "That is if you don't mind sharing a room," said the enormous caftan-clad woman seated in one of those tall, fan-back wicker chairs, it was like a scene straight out of an old black-and-white movie. At this point I was desperate enough to take anything, anywhere so long as I could get off my feet. I paid an extravagant sum for one night, limped up four flights of stairs and was greeted by my roommate at the door... a tall Swede who was very surprised and very male!
I had no patience left. "That's your side of the room and this is mine," I barked. "Just keep it that way and we won't have any problems." There were no problems, but after all that walking, my throbbing foot didn't allow me to get much sleep.
By the time I settled into my second-class seat on the train for Amsterdam the next day, I was exhausted. I slept soundly through northern France, Belgium and Luxembourg. I awoke suddenly, not knowing where I was or what country I was in, only that the station sign out the window read Rotterdam. I checked my ticket; the last station listed was Rotterdam. "This must be where I should disembark," I thought groggily. So I grabbed my backpack and made the platform just as the train pulled away.
It didn't take me long to realize that I was not in the Rotterdam station in Amsterdam. I was in Rotterdam the city in the middle of the farm country of Holland at least two hours by train from Amsterdam where I was to meet the Klinkenbergs. I had no Dutch money nor did I see any place to exchange French francs for guilders. I couldn't find a soul who spoke either French or English. I was tired. My foot was killing me. I'd been away from home for 3 months speaking a foreign language. So I did the only thing I could do at the time "I sat down on the platform and had a good cry.
Someone nearby must have overheard one of my rambling, unsuccessful attempts to purchase a ticket to Amsterdam and took pity on me, because the next thing I knew, this kind person picked me up, guided me toward the waiting train on the next platform and tucked a ticket to Amsterdam into my hand.
By the time I finally arrived in Amsterdam, the people I was supposed to meet had given up hope and decided not to waste the lovely afternoon in the train station so they went boating, figuring I'd show up eventually, which is why there was no answer when I tried to call them from the station. Having been forced to rely on the kindness of a stranger in Rotterdam, I was determined to solve my own dilemma this time. I remembered one of my co-workers at the chateau mentioning that travelers could arrange a room at a local hostel through the tourist office directly across the street from the train station, so I found the office and got in line.
The woman in front of me soon struck up a conversation. When we got around to sharing our names, she stopped suddenly. "Your name is Kemper?" she asked incredulously. "And you're from the United States?" when I answered yes to both, she was so excited.
"My housemate's last name is Kemper also and she is tracing the family lineage, but had no information once the family emigrated to America. You must come home with me and tell her everything you know about your family tree."
And so I did. I finally connected with the Klinkenbergs, but I never would have been able to present my father with his entire family history" all the way back to Germany in the 1600s' if I hadn't broken my foot, lost my hotel reservation, slept on the train, disembarked early and arrived in Amsterdam three hours late.
We worked hard six days a week, doing everything from hauling cement up three-story towers by rope and removing rubble by the wheel barrow full, to carefully removing damaged floor tiles and window lintels for the stone masons to reproduce and volunteering at the lumber yard operated by a beret-wearing local named Gou Gou, a confirmed chauvinist who insisted on taking hourly breaks for "un petit gout" (small jelly glasses of the worst rot-gut red wine imaginable the bottles came in a six-pack and had plastic flip tops).
For some reason, Gou Gou had taken a shine to me, so I found myself at the lumberyard at least twice a week during my last month in France. So it was that just two days before I was to board the train and return to Paris and then continue on to Holland to visit the family of one of my father's colleagues, I was stacking 3-meter timbers, freshly cut on the giant band saw inside the wood shed (Gou Gou didn't allow women near the saw). The day was hot, my stacking companion and I were tired and we'd partaken of a few too many "petits gouts" so we weren't paying close attention to the ever-increasing height of our woodpile. We stacked one piece too many and it came tumbling down directly onto my foot.
The majority of the small bones in my right foot yielded instantly to the crushing force of the plunging 3-meter timber. The 25 km trip to the nearest hospital was out of the question, so Gou Gou's wife taped up my swollen appendage as best she could.
On the day of my departure from Menessaire, my foot was a lovely shade of purple from the ankle all the way to the tips of my soon-to-be-missing toenails. It was the middle of August by this point so when I arrived in Paris, the train station was a sea of tourists from every point of the compass. I'd had the presence of mind to reserve a room in a small hotel near Nфtre Dame before I'd left Paris in June, but due to an unexpected turn of events involving an unwanted suitor who met my train "another story for another time" I lost my reservation and found myself walking around the city looking for a place to stay.
I finally found a vacancy in a run-down, four-story walk-up. "That is if you don't mind sharing a room," said the enormous caftan-clad woman seated in one of those tall, fan-back wicker chairs, it was like a scene straight out of an old black-and-white movie. At this point I was desperate enough to take anything, anywhere so long as I could get off my feet. I paid an extravagant sum for one night, limped up four flights of stairs and was greeted by my roommate at the door... a tall Swede who was very surprised and very male!
I had no patience left. "That's your side of the room and this is mine," I barked. "Just keep it that way and we won't have any problems." There were no problems, but after all that walking, my throbbing foot didn't allow me to get much sleep.
By the time I settled into my second-class seat on the train for Amsterdam the next day, I was exhausted. I slept soundly through northern France, Belgium and Luxembourg. I awoke suddenly, not knowing where I was or what country I was in, only that the station sign out the window read Rotterdam. I checked my ticket; the last station listed was Rotterdam. "This must be where I should disembark," I thought groggily. So I grabbed my backpack and made the platform just as the train pulled away.
It didn't take me long to realize that I was not in the Rotterdam station in Amsterdam. I was in Rotterdam the city in the middle of the farm country of Holland at least two hours by train from Amsterdam where I was to meet the Klinkenbergs. I had no Dutch money nor did I see any place to exchange French francs for guilders. I couldn't find a soul who spoke either French or English. I was tired. My foot was killing me. I'd been away from home for 3 months speaking a foreign language. So I did the only thing I could do at the time "I sat down on the platform and had a good cry.
Someone nearby must have overheard one of my rambling, unsuccessful attempts to purchase a ticket to Amsterdam and took pity on me, because the next thing I knew, this kind person picked me up, guided me toward the waiting train on the next platform and tucked a ticket to Amsterdam into my hand.
By the time I finally arrived in Amsterdam, the people I was supposed to meet had given up hope and decided not to waste the lovely afternoon in the train station so they went boating, figuring I'd show up eventually, which is why there was no answer when I tried to call them from the station. Having been forced to rely on the kindness of a stranger in Rotterdam, I was determined to solve my own dilemma this time. I remembered one of my co-workers at the chateau mentioning that travelers could arrange a room at a local hostel through the tourist office directly across the street from the train station, so I found the office and got in line.
The woman in front of me soon struck up a conversation. When we got around to sharing our names, she stopped suddenly. "Your name is Kemper?" she asked incredulously. "And you're from the United States?" when I answered yes to both, she was so excited.
"My housemate's last name is Kemper also and she is tracing the family lineage, but had no information once the family emigrated to America. You must come home with me and tell her everything you know about your family tree."
And so I did. I finally connected with the Klinkenbergs, but I never would have been able to present my father with his entire family history" all the way back to Germany in the 1600s' if I hadn't broken my foot, lost my hotel reservation, slept on the train, disembarked early and arrived in Amsterdam three hours late.