Long, long ago, in a land far, far away...

I got one of those e-mails today that asks a bunch of random questions. One of the questions was something to the effect of where is the furthest place you have ever travelled. Man, the answer to that brings up probably the funniest travel story I have.

Back in 2002, the in-laws gave us an incredible Christmas present. They took Shelly and I, along with her brother and his wife to France for 10 days. They wanted us to see Paris with all of the Christmas lights up. I must say it was incredible. The trip involved a few days in Paris, a train ride to Strasbourg, and a couple of days back in Paris before returning home. While in Strasbourg, we thought it would be fun to go to Germany for the day. Perhaps we could go to a place with some mountains and see some good scenery.

Well, we headed down to the train station mid-morning, and proceeded to discuss our plans with the guy at the ticket window. Ok, we know very little French, and the ticket guy knows some English, so we might be able to make something work. Here's how it goes - Bro-in-law is our tour guide for the day. He's negotiating the tickets with the train station guy. He goes up there, discusses a destination, travel time, and price, then comes back to us. After a couple of back and forths, the ticket guy is getting a little impatient, and he's less willing to speak English. Oh, and we want to be back in Strasbourg by dinner time.

Finally, it is decided to head to Lahr, Germany. He tells us that we'll love it. It's very picturesque, with nice mountains and snow, and only an hour or so away by train (maybe 2 hours, it's been a couple of years). Ok, we hit the train, and we're off to see the German countryside. Well, we're riding this train, eagerly anticipating getting into some mountains, when we pull into a station and realize we are in Lahr. What the HELL? There are no mountains, and definitely no snow. We've ridden the train for a couple of hours to get to the German equivalent of BFE. Picture leaving Houston and taking the train to Jasper, only not as nice. Well, to be fair, Lahr did have a small hill. Very small. Man, that guy hosed us. Bad. We laughed our butts off about it. We even made up stories about what happened to the mountains (centuries of strip mining). Bro-in-law will never live it down. I even managed to find a Lahr ashtray on eBay to give him that Christmas (proof that eBay has EVERYTHING).

We get a good laugh about it every few months, but I bet the one that will never stop laughing is the train station guy. He probably wrote in his blog about the day he hose a crowd of Americans into paying a bunch of money for a train ride to BFE to see the pretty scenery. Touche, Frenchie. If you are ever in the USA, look me up. I'll show you the beautiful white sand beaches of Holly Beach, Louisiana, often referred to as the Cajun Riviera. You'll love it. Trust me.