Report # 3

8/12/2002

Hi Everyone,

Ah, Paris. Our scouts are incredibly bright; they mastered "le metro" in no time at all.  Almost everyone got to see the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Arch de Triumph, and the Lourve.  Most had a meal in a French restaurant in the Latin Quarter where they sold fixed price dinners for 12 Euros.  During the day people bought their meals all over town at authentic French McDonald's, Pizza Huts, and KFC establishments.  However, Aaron, Mark and Jimmy decided to buy lunch out of a sandwich vending machine.  Aaron had quite an experience as he put his money into the machine, a Parisian Hobo stepped up and pressed the buttons.  Since Aaron didn't want the meal that the bum had ordered, he pushed the guy away and cancelled the order to get the sandwich he wanted.  Jimmy, feeling sorry for the bum, bought him the sandwich anyway!  Actually, the choices were fairly limited: cheese, ham, or ham and cheese.  As in London, these three fellows decided that taxi's were reasonably priced at 2.00 Euros for the base fare.  This time the cabbies' jabber made no sense.

Many of the boys commented on the Mona Lisa. Josh, for example, could not understand why the painting is considered great.  They did like some of the other works of art though. The Lourve has a painting of a monkey painting on a canvas like a master artist. They boys thought this was really great art!

Another group of our scouts, the older guys, Jeremy, Peter, Chris Bond, Josh and Keegan were buying postcards when a lady with her small child approached them.  She started a conversation, the jist of which, as best they could understand, was to ask them to adopt or buy her baby!  They told her they couldn't take her baby because they were Boy Scouts, and they would be leaving France soon.  These guys spent 3 hours in the Lourve, a portion of which was sleeping on a bench in a room with very relaxing great art.

Matt and Sean got to sample the delights of desert crepes, ad wound up having really good French steaks for dinner.  Bobby and Jeff walked down the Champs Elysee looking for a store that sold anything under $500 in price.  They never found one.  All of the boys liked French bread but thought it was a "pain."  Jeff found a great bakery near our hostel, and almost everyone had some pastry, fruit tarts, éclairs, etc.

We had some time Sunday morning before leaving Paris to see a few other things.  Michael and his dad went to Mass in a local church.  Gary found a Reform church, but none of the other scouts wanted to go to services.  I opted not to force them because I knew we would have a chance to go to services in Kandersteg.  We left Paris after lunch and drove east across France to Strasbourg.  After dinner most of the scouts left the hostel and walked into the old part of the city.  During the summer, Strasbourg has street entertainment and a light show in the old town and by the river area near the great church.  We got to see people on a high net doing a comedy show, and we saw the light show and heard the musical selections at the church.  The church is newer than Notre Dame.  Its architecture is incredible.  It has intricately carved red sand stone construction, hundreds of figures, saints, gargoyles, knights on horse back, and an almost lace like texture up to the top of the single spire steeple.  The light show highlighted sections of the facade of the church, and helped direct your gaze to some of the details that you miss when you look at the whole building in daylight.  By the river, we watched tour boats go through locks to circle the island that the old part of the city is on.  The clearances are only a few inches, and the skill of the boat captains is remarkable getting through the tight space.

Our hostels in France have all been very nice, clean and comfortable.  In Normandy, we had a building to ourselves almost.  There was just two other people in the place, a couple from Ireland.  In Normandy, we had a substantial French breakfast in a really old building with a timbered ceiling.  In Paris and Strasbourg the hostels were somehow associated with UNESCO, the United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organization.  Both of these places had very nice facilities, but the hostel in Strasbourg was almost equivalent to a hotel.  We had private showers in rooms for two or three people.  The only thing missing in the rooms was a TV!

We left Strasbourg after breakfast and headed south to Kandersteg arriving about 2:00 p.m.  Our first order of business was to check into our rooms.  The scouts occupy two rooms, one has 18 boys and the other has seven of the older boys.  It seems to me that the chalet has had a significant face lift from when our troop was here three years ago.  Each room has a variety of plaques and other scout memorabilia on the walls. Everything is made of fresh pinewood paneling.  The staff was very helpful with our program planning.  We have four overnight hikes planned, but we're going to acclimate for a day and a half before we start hiking into the mountains.  The older scouts are going to learn ice and snow climbing while the younger scouts are going to cross a glacier.  Both groups are going to sleep in Alpine huts.  I'll let you know how these work out when we return later in the week.

We went into town, about a mile from camp, to get Swiss Francs, drink hot chocolate and look around.  When we returned to camp, we enjoyed a Fondue dinner.  The young female staffer explained that the traditional practice is to kiss the person to your left for good luck before the dinner.  Not a single one of our scout complied; that's because we're Americans, not Swiss.  Tomorrow, we're taking a chair lift up to the rodelbahn, a toboggan like sledding course, and then we're going on a short hike to an Alpine lake called the Oeschensee where the guys will get a chance to take a dip in some very cold water.  Everyone is well and in great spirits as we start this next phase of our trip.

Philip Sternberg