The Wasser family: mother, father and five children (ages 4 through 16), plus a pet rat, go to France on vacation from their home in Germany. This time it was 3 weeks of camping on the Atlantic coast (near Bordeaux). They survived to tell the tale which follows. I (Liza) kept a diary while we were there to help me remember stuff. Sometimes I wrote the entries in present tense and sometimes in past tense, depending on when I was writing up the events. I didn't change this in the writing of this document. It's not too disruptive. The verb tense stays the same throughout that day's entry.
Editor's note: I (David) added some stuff to embellish the stories and relate to the pictures which I carefully took, scanned and lovingly retouched with Adobe Photoshop LE
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Now it all started two Thanksgivings ago, was on - two years ago on Thanksgiving when...(sorry, I stole that line from Alice's Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie). Actually it did all start about Thanksgiving when we were talking to our friends Ralf and Karin about summer vacations. Actually, they asked us what we were going to do the next summer and I said that we probably weren't going to do anything since we were still recovering from the financial shock of our previous vacation to Ireland. I didn't figure the family wallet could handle another vacation until we had given it some time to replenish itself. |
 Karin and Ralf |
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"You should come with us this summer", says Ralf, "We are going to Le Gurp, it's a really cheap vacation".
"Le Gurp?" we ask, "Sounds like a bad stomach illness". "No, no!" he explains, "Camping...in France...on the Atlantic coast...very cheap..." "Ah, Ralf", I started, "we don't have a car, so we'll have to go by train. We don't have any tents or sleeping bags or other camping gear either." "No problem", he says, "You can borrow most of the stuff you need and I can lend you the rest and you may need to buy one big tent, or you can rent one. The camping ground is gorgeous, under big pine trees near the beach and it is quiet and very cheap. Just imagine, red wine and croissants for weeks..." We thought, "This guy is nuts! Why does he want to drag an entire family along on his vacation?" We said "OK, we'll think about it." |
 Le Gurp brochure |
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Actually, we did think about it. We had never been camping as a family. I had done it as a kid, but Liza had "never ever slept in a tent" (her exact words). She was intrigued by the idea and I started to check on the logistics of getting the seven of us and assorted camping gear from our home outside of Frankfurt to the Atlantic coast by using public transportation.
Time went by...At one of our next visits to Karin and Ralf's house they hauled out the snapshots from their regular forays to "Le Gurp". It seems that this was the vacation spot of choice for them when there wasn't enought money for a "real" vacation. They'd been there lots of times. A lot of other teachers from the schools where they work also went there. It seems that the spot was popular with Germans. Looked nice enough. |
 Jan Schreindorfer | We had several conversations with Ralf and Karin to make sure they were serious about us joining them on vacation. They have 2 sons, Jan (13) and David (15), who would also be there. They also expected at least 2 other families to join them at the campsite for part of the time. It looked like it would be a big family party! Ralf offered to take some of our heavier and bulkier items in his car. If we could just get ourselves and most of our gear to the nearest train station (Soulac-sur-Mer) using public transportation, he even agreed to pick us up at the train station and ferry us to the campsite! | 
David Schreindorfer |
| I started talking with the Deutsche Bahn about train tickets and making plans. I checked all the possible routings and chose a route that was the least stressful for us (involved the least number of changes and the changes were all at (more or less) reasonable times of the day, considering that this was a train journey of something like 16 hours). I called the ticket office at least 10 times to ask for fare quotations and got at least 10 different prices. I wrote down the lowest price and a few weeks before we were ready to go I went to buy the tickets. I told the ticket-seller the price I was quoted and the route I wanted to take. She told me that she couldn't sell me the tickets with that route at that price. She offered me another route. I told her I didn't want to go that way and what difference did it make which route I took as I was still going from point A to point B. She said that it did make a difference because the fares were calculated in rail-kilometers and not distance-as-the-crow-flies. I said that I would buy the ticket for the cheaper route but actually travel the other one. She said that I would probably have problems with the train conductor on board. I asked her if she could sell me tickets over my desired route but only as far as Bordeaux. She looked in her computer and said that she could. I figured that the last bit from Bordeaux to Soulac-sur-Mer couldn't cost that much so I agreed to buy the tickets only to Bordeaux. I also got seat reservations from Frankfurt to Paris and booked "couchettes" (bunk-beds) for the overnight trip from Paris to Bordeaux. |
 Train route details |
After many discussions on the importance of light packing for a camping trip, after many discussions about how it is going to be so much fun roughing it, after many discussions about not dragging unnecessary items around France on our backs, we threw caution to the wind and over packed. We had five hiking back packs, two small back packs, seven sleeping bags, seven sleep mats, seven small shoulder packs, a bag containing the rat and his cage, three bags of food for the trip, and a cooler. Thus, our neighbor Christine drove our bags to the train station while we walked. Zoë, the contraband rat, was snuggled in his cage which was snuggled in a bag. Since we were not familiar with the laws about small rodents on trains, we were not advertising his existence. |  Family with all our gear |
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After four hours on the train we crossed the French border and noticed that the kids had eaten all the food we brought and drunk all the water and we still had twelve more hours to go. Oops! We prepared mentally for our next big hurdle in Paris. We were due to arrive in Paris Gare de L´Est at 9:00 PM and had three hours to get us, five kids and way too much luggage to Gare du Austerlitz using the Metro. Fun! Well, it was an adventure. We got off the train at Paris Gare de L´Est and found the Metro entrance. Of course, we had to buy Metro tickets. Good thing we had French coins for the Metro ticket machines. (We aren't amateurs!) The only problem we had was trying to fit through the turnstiles loaded down with back packs. Dave got stuck for a bit while the turnstile tried to eat him, but we pulled him out. Oh yes, then there was the little matter of fitting into the subway car. We decided, after seeing the number of people on the platform, that we were just going to have to be rude and push our way into the car. This we did. Eight stops later, we were at Gare du Austerlitz after twisting and turning to allow everyone in and out at the first few stops and saying, "Pardon!" every time we smacked the head of the person standing next to us with our back packs. After a few stops the Parisians decided to get friendly with each other down at one end of the car, leaving us at the other end to smack each other with our packs and to look mean and nasty and dangerous to anyone who would even think about getting into our subway car. Eventually, we had enough room to move around and breathe without causing brain damage to ourselves and other innocents. It was just about this time that we arrived at Austerlitz. We had a three-hour wait for our train and spent the intervening hours engaged in the time-honored tradition of staring at passersby. And Paris did not let us down. We watched two train station employees make a bet that the one could/couldn't jump high enough to reach the decorative overhang to track 23. (He couldn't.) We watched a group of young travelers beg cigarettes from other travelers. One man had a rat perched jauntily on his shoulder which made Sam want to get Zoë out of his cage, but we managed to restrain her. Our train from Paris to Bordeaux was an over-nighter with 6 beds per compartment. We tried to find our reserved compartment, but there didn't seem to be any numbers on the train cars. In Germany, the numbers are displayed in a friendly and helpful manner on the outside of the train cars. Not so in France. I looked into the train and saw a reserved compartment with our seat numbers on it so I assumed it must be our car. We all piled in, stowed the luggage, brushed everyone's teeth, got them undressed and into bed, and then the conductor came to check our tickets and told us we were in the wrong car. The conductor was uni-lingual, by the way. He spoke only French. He told us he spoke a "leetle" English and no German and he was right. With sighing, signing, and great Gallic shrugging, he got across to us that we were in the wrong car, but we could stay because he would make the gigantic sacrifice of taking his ballpoint pen and changing his manifest. This he would do because, as a Frenchman, he was willing to extend himself slightly for stupid tourists who can't find the train car numbers. (Which, by the way, are posted on tiny yellow cards hung behind the open doors of the passages into the compartment cars.) But, also being a Frenchman, he could not be this polite until he had given a good show of feeling put upon. (Yes, I know I'm practicing racism, nationalism, and all those other nasty -isms, but if the man insists on acting stereotypically, he deserves to be lampooned.) "Oh, yes," he said , as an afterthought, "you arrive in Bordeaux three hours later than you had expected because this car gets uncoupled in {insert unpronounceable name of French town here} and this part of the train takes the scenic route to Bordeaux." "Non! Non!" we cry, "We must catch a train to Soulac at 7:00 AM." With more sighing and huffing and shrugging (How do they do that so well? I have never seen so emotive a movement as a French shrug. It seems to incorporate equal parts of despair, acceptance of the world's ills, and arrogance.) he showed us to our originally booked compartment where we found two Britons asleep in two of our beds and their boxed bicycles asleep in two of our other beds. More sign language, huffing and waving of the manifest, and it transpires that the Brits belong next door. They understand that a family cannot be separated and they graciously decide to wake up, pack their stuff and move next door. No problem. The conductor then opened the second compartment, which was empty. "Wait. Un moment." This is ridiculous. We will sleep here and the poor Brits can fall back to sleep where they are. The conductor's manifest is now a mess of cross-outs and write-ins. He has no more room to change it. This disturbs him greatly. He wants us to make the half-comatose British people move all their stuff because he doesn't have any more room on his paper. At this point, I draw myself up like the lioness mother protecting her young because it is 1:00 AM now and the kids are falling asleep in the corridor standing up. I tell him in a combination of English, German, and broken French that he can do what he wants with his paper but my kids are going to sleep now. HERE! He shrugs and walks away. Then I wish the Brits good night and put the kids to sleep while Dave and Nate carry the luggage from our old compartment to the new one. We get to sleep around 2:00 AM and sleep like the dead until 6:00, when it's time to change trains in Bordeaux. |
 Map of Bordeaux (Soulac-sur-Mer is circled) |
We change trains in Bordeaux with no problems after buying tickets to Soulac which is another story. (Supposedly, our tickets covered the entire trip, but alas, they did not and the small final leg of the trip was surprisingly expensive.) The train to Soulac is nice unless you are a little tired because, like all European day trains, it is designed with sleep deprivation in mind. Since it's a day train, those European train designers decide, one must design the train cars so that napping is completely impossible. Even sitting was rather uncomfortable. I feel sure that the European Chiropractors Union has spread bribes throughout the Train Car Designer's Club. But it really makes no difference because had the seats been more comfortable we still would not have caught up on our sleep because French railroad crossings in the countryside have no flashing lights or rails that lower to keep cars from crossing the tracks when a train is coming. With the money saved by doing this, the French have bought loud train horns that blare forth to warn cars that the train is coming. Every fifteen minutes or so we involuntarily rise from our seats with each blast on the train horns from hell. Since we weren't sleeping we stared bleary-eyed out the window at grapes. Everywhere you look there are grapes. How beautiful. It finally dawns on us that we are in France! |  Map of Soulac-sur-Mer area |
 Soulac-sur-Mer train station |
Ralf picked us up at the station and had to convey us and our luggage in two trips to the campsite. Karin was waiting at the site with fresh croissants and hot tea. (Bless her heart!) After we fortified ourselves, unpacked, shopped, set up the tents and "made camp," as we professional campers say, Dave and I were ready for sleeping. But we took the kids to the beach instead because we are good parents. | 
Karin at the table (with croissants!) |
| I had forgotten about the dress code on this beach. Clothing is optional. There are people on the beach in modes of dress ranging from t-shirts over their bathing suits and large sun hats--That was us. We burn easily--through various stages of undress to totally nude. One of the male nudists was practicing his diabolo techniques. (No, that's not a strange sexual habit. A diabolo is a large yo-yo-like thing that sits and spins on a string. The string is attached at either end to two sticks which you hold in your hands while you throw the diabolo into the air and catch it again and do many variations on this theme.) I don't know, but nude diabolo looks dangerous to me. An unintentional medieval torture/castration device. |
 Kids on the beach L to R: Paula, Sam, Maxx, Jan, David, Nate |
We stayed at the beach for only two hours because we didn't want to overdo it and burn ourselves up the first day. Plenty of time for sunburns later. Being of Irish stock, red-headed, white-skinned, and genetically prone to skin cancer, I have great respect for the power of the sun's rays. So, we went back to the campsite and communed with nature. Nature, at this campground, consists of other campers and their campsites. We communed with them by watching them surreptiously while they were watching us watch them. |
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Later, we tried out our gas cooker for the first time. We decided on a simple meal of boiled potatoes and salad. Our simple meal took an hour and 15 minutes to prepare since the cooker doesn't like to boil huge pots of water. |
 Dave at the table |
Dave went to the local market today while I sat around and wrote and
lazed about. I must recommend this as a relaxing activity.
Writing and lazing in the French sun. A wonderful combo. Later
in the afternoon we hit the beach for another two hours and I actually
sat in the sun for thirty whole minutes. Ah, hedonism!
David and Ralf had bought some chanterelle mushrooms at the market and they each took half and made creamed mushrooms for dinner. Ralf's with white wine and lots of cream, Dave's with red wine, less cream and more herbs. They were both excellent. Dave also made a huge salad and Ralf made fried potatoes so we had a great feast with much wiping of plates with the last of the baguette. |
 Liza, Karin and Sam at the table |
| Having eaten so much last night, I was looking forward to going to gymtonics class. They should change the name of this class to gymtorture. The exercises were led by one of those perfect-bodied 20-year-olds who thinks that we decrepit 36-year-olds with 5 kids can do half an hour straight of abdomen exercises. (May she one day be blessed with three sets of twins!) But even as we curse every breath this woman takes--How can she do that and still breathe!--we'll be there tomorrow. If it hurts that much it must be working. |
Paula |
Tamara, Thomas, and Paula arrived in the afternoon. Tamara is a teacher in the elementary school in Hainstadt where, under her alias, Frau Neckermann, she was Nate's fourth grade teacher for two whole months before we went to Hongkong. We watched them set up their tent. It was amazingly entertaining. The tent was a complicated affair and it was the first time they had used it. I wonder if we were as entertaining the day before when we set up ours? It was finally up and we thought all was well, but it turned out that Thomas spent that whole night alternately pumping the air mattress up again and then listening to it hiss in his ear while the air let out again from a slow leak. Vacations can be so relaxing! | 
Thomas |
| Dave keeps having trouble buying croissants. He asks for fourteen and they give him four. Then he says, "Non," and flashes ten fingers at them and then holds up four, and the woman behind the counter says, "You said four." The French are not very forgiving of innocent attempts to speak their language. They are morally affronted by a bad accent. Four is quatre and fourteen is quatorze. We think that the reason for the misunderstanding is that quatre is heavy on the quat and quatorze has the accent on the second syllable and Dave seems only to be able to say it with the accent on the first. After a few days of this we found out it is not his pronunciation that is lacking, it is that they can't believe he wants so many. After I explain that we have five kids back at the campsite, they nod wisely and from then on, when they see us coming, they begin to fill bags with croissants. |
| My last journal entry was a week ago Thursday. What happened to the time? We don't know. Time behaves differently here. We get up, eat breakfast all morning, digest breakfast for a few hours, go to the beach, make and eat dinner, digest dinner with the help of red wine and good conversation and bad jokes, and then go to bed so we can rest up to do it again tomorrow. | 
Dave soaking up the sun |
 Rebecca showing off her new Ikat overalls |
We did have some variety the last week. We went shopping at the
open air market in the next town. Everyone bought some tie-dyed,
patchworked, and/or batiked piece of clothing. We went to the free
movie night that the campground sponsors on Wednesdays. We saw Tom
Hanks speaking French in "Philadelphia." Funny, he has a completely
different voice when he speaks French. The movie was an interesting
experience. I was amazed at how much of the movie I understood just
from facial expressions, action, camera movement and background music.
(A sobering thought for a writer.) I'll have to rent the movie the
next time I go to the USA. I can't wait to find out what the actors
actually said.
The circus came to town on Thursday. One of those small, family-run circuses you find all over Europe. There were three performers in this one. They had animal acts, juggling, unicycle tricks, acrobatics, and a clown act. Some of these circuses are quite good for all their small size, others are a waste of time and money. This one was on the waste of money side. It was good, but over-priced. For what they charged I expected a lion tamer. |
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Even with using #30 SPF sunblock and staying at the beach only two hours
at a time, I still managed to get a bit of a sunburn. I seem to have
missed the top of my legs one day with the sunblock and so I burned them.
This was after a week of exposure to the sun and after beginning to lay
down a layer of tan. I swear the sun's out to get me.
The bugs, on the other hand, are leaving me alone. Other people in our group are having a real problem with the bugs. Maxx's legs are unrecognizable. She gets all bitten up at night and then goes in the ocean the next day and dries up all the bites. The poor child looks like she's getting over a bad case of chicken pox. She has inherited this ability to attract stinging insects from her grandfather, Daniel Cameron. My father was the neighborhood gauge for insect bite control when I was a kid. When Dan started slapping at his arms and legs it was time to go in the house, the bugs were coming out. |
| Some more folks have joined our group. Gerlinde is a teacher with Ralf at Rebecca's school. She has brought along her husband, Bodo, and her 13-year-old son Lorenz. Our group has now grown to 8 adults and 9 kids. Normally, we are spread over four campsites, but this morning it rained and all seventeen of us squeezed under Ralf's tarpaulin. Some of us played a board game, some of us knitted on our various projects, some of us tried to translate a Dr. Seuss book into German without losing the rhyme, meter, or (non)sense. We managed to get to page 13 before our brains were complete mush. It rained just long enough to cool the air and make us appreciate each other's company, but not long enough to make us irritated with each other. |
 Rebecca as a mermaid |
The kids had a lot of fun at the beach. We ended up there almost every day. Since we were in Le Gurp for more than 3 weeks, we had a chance to see the effect of the tides on a daily basis. It was interesting how the high and low tides came at different times every day. We got to witness almost an entire cycle!
The tide washes in all kinds of interesting items from the ocean. Several times we arrived on the beach to be greeted with a fishy stink: mounds of rotting seaweed washed up with the tide. We tried to see how many different kinds we could identify. At some point we found a particularly large bundle which looked like it could be used as a wig. Most of us tried it on, but it fit Rebecca best. We decided that she could pose as a mermaid - complete with seaweed hair! |
Alex getting a ride |
Several times during our stay we hitched a ride with Ralf or Thomas and went into Montalivet-les-Bains (the "town"), about 9 kilometers south of our campsite. There was a large "market" there where we could buy fruit and vegetables and cheese and wine and olives and garlic braids and goose-liver pate (yuck!). There were some intesting clothing stands too, including several which sold antique French underthings (Karin and Sam had a go at those). The market also had other stands selling all kinds of bric-a-brac which attracted the tourists. It was good to get out of the campsite every now and then, but the crowds of pushy tourists on a buying spree and the oppressive heat of the "town" quickly drove us back to our cool, cozy, quiet neck of the woods.
It was interesting to note the number of trailer parks along the road from Soulac to Montalivet. Concrete, treeless, dull, with the trailers so close to each other that you could look in your neighbor's window and see what we was watching on TV. We were so glad that we hadn't booked one of those! Camping in tents may not be luxurious, but it certainly has its advantages. | 
Rebecca posing in a French manner |
Alex with his friend, Janosch |
...I need to write some more here... | 
Maxx and her friend |
| The kids decided to sleep outside under the stars last night. This morning about 6 AM, we awoke to the pitter patter of rain sprinkling on our tent. Oh, Dave thinks, I need to close the tent flaps. As he staggers out of the tent he sees the kids all over the ground sleeping peacefully as the rain plips and plops on their heads. We woke them all and got them into their tents. All except Nate. We couldn't make him understand that he didn't really want to stay sleeping in the rain. He seemed to think it would be okay to just pull his head into his sleeping bag like a turtle. Eventually, we convinced him that since his sleeping bag wasn't made of turtle shell, this was not a brilliant plan. |
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After we got the kids all into their tents and the wash off the line, it
began to rain in earnest. It was pouring, actually. Buckets.
Cats and dogs. Mucho agua. It was then that we found out how
important it is to pitch your tents on the highest points of your site
(which we had done) and dig trenches around the tents to deal with any
irregularities in the lay of the land (which we hadn't done). So
we found ourselves digging emergency trenches around the tents with Alex's
plastic beach shovel and a Tupperwar™, serrated-edge, barbecue spatula.
I highly recommend the Tupperware™ spatula for digging small trenches.
The serrated edges cut through small plant roots easily and the rounded
triangular shape acts like a plough for a straight and true trench line.
Dave and I were busy having fun in the dark and the rain, digging in the
mud, slipping in mud, and falling on our butts. Poor Dave was worried
that I wasn't enjoying this experience, but I told him I was having a great
time. He gave me one of those looks. You know the one.
The one that wonders at the fragile state of my sanity. But I really
was having a good time. I had never done this before. I don't
know why. It just had never occurred to me to go out in a summer
night's rainstorm and flop around in the mud. If you're in the mood
it can be a wonderfully tactile experience. I guess I was in the
mood.
Eventually, the Frenchman at the next campsite came over with a real military-style trench-digging spade and dug us some serious fortifications. We thanked him and he said no problem, he borrowed the spade from the Dutchman on the corner. So during this mini-state-of-emergency there was a mini-UN-humanitarian-mission going on here. If this kind of international cooperation can work so well on a personal level, why does it seem to fall apart on a global level? |
| We went to visit the Dutchman on the corner who turned out to be South African. His wife is Dutch, however. We thanked him for the use of his trench-digging shovel and had a lovely time, drinking wine, talking about South Africa and wine and kids and politics and Europe and America and heaven knows what else. I wish we had met sooner. They were leaving the next day to go home. |
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Well, it seems our Dutch/South African friends left in
the nick of time. It rained all day. We fortified our fortifications.
Later that night I awoke to see that Dave was missing. I found him
outside, his raincoat on over his pajamas, crawling around looking at the
the tent with a flashlight. The conversation went something like this:
L: "What are you doing?"
So, he went to bed and the fortifications held and we didn't float away in the night. |
 Liza packing Step 1: Rolling |
It stopped raining after Dave's floating away nightmares and it didn't rain again during the rest of our stay. We packed up and it seemed like we had lots more stuff than we started off with, but somehow we managed to pack it all up and get ourselves to the train on time. Seven people, seven knapsacks, seven sleeping bags, 5 shoulder bags, one rat and his house, a cooler full of food and drink, 85 pounds of beach sand, and assorted interesting rocks and seashells. We headed off to Bordeaux, sat around in the train station waiting for the next train. Some folks looked at us and were about to offer us charity until they realized we weren't soliciting, we just looked that scraggly. I think the pity factor went up when they realized we weren't homeless, we were just a family on vacation. |  Liza packing Step 2: Stuffing |
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I noticed something strange at the train station in Paris. People
were jumping the turnstiles. You need a ticket to get off the train
platform. So these folks hadn't bought tickets and they were nonchalantly
jumping over the turnstiles. Normal looking people. People
in business suits, old ladies, regular folks who didn't look like thieves.
Amazing. In Germany, you ride the train on the honor system.
You buy a ticket and you get on the train and you ride. Sometimes
a conductor comes by and checks tickets and sometimes not. In seven
years of riding the trains in Germany I have seen less people get caught
without a ticket than I saw that day jump the turnstile from one incoming
train. I don't know what that means, but I thought I'd mention it.
We managed the Paris change of train stations and the Metro much better than on our way to our vacation. It wasn't rush hour. And, now that we knew where the train car numbers were hidden, we settled into our compartment and went to sleep without trouble. Maxx slept so soundly that she fell off the third tier of bunks at about 2 AM and didn't skip a snore. We checked her for broken bones, but apparently sleeping children are made of rubber. We put her on the bottom bunk and Dave spent the rest of the night trying to share a narrow sleeping bunk with Maxx, who grows limbs in her sleep and can manage to poke you with eight of them at once. Luck was with us when we arrived at the Hainstadt station. Our neighbor, Dee, happened to be driving by when we arrived and noticed us getting off the train. We were very difficult to miss. He piled all our bags in his jeep and drove them home for us. We had to walk from the station since there was no room in the Jeep for us. |
| All in all, it was a fun vacation. It had all the requirements of a good vacation: Travel, new sights, good food, good folks, leisure, excitement, adventure, catastrophe. I found out that I like camping. I also found out that I need an air mattress if I decide to go camping again. (My back was the only part of me that didn't like camping.) And I will fill my air mattress before the trip and sleep on it one night to make sure it doesn't leak when I get there. Thank you, Thomas, for teaching me that. |
Last updated: 12-February-2006