They nobly decided to give it to the concierge in the middle of the night to return it to its rightful owner (even though they'd drunkenly taken it, which was a dumb idea in the first place, but anyway). Nevertheless, the French police were waiting for them in the morning with the taxi driver whose jacket it was.
The driver wanted to press charges and the police wanted to take the guys for questioning, so things got really tense. Jen managed to appease everyone, though, by giving the driver the 20 Euros that he insisted was missing from his wallet, and we were finally able to get on our way.
The French seem really clueless when it comes to crime, both in preventing it (burglar bars, for goodness sake!) and in identifying it. Coming from a country with a high crime rate, I can tell you that criminals don't willingly give things back. The Aussies may have been foolish because they'd been drinking, but they hardly needed a trip downtown for it. The police should spend their efforts getting that other poor girl's passport back (the one robbed in her hotel room!)
Anyway, I must say that I'm quite surprised that the guys allowed Jen to fit the bill for that one. It was their mess, after all. Chivalry may well be dead, at least in Australia. I hope that they thanked her, at the very least. That's all I will say about that for now.
I tried to use the drive through the French countryside to catch up on my blogging, but goodness I was feeling lazy! I fully intended to get my blog done by our lunchtime stop so that I could use the wifi to post it, but then I couldn't focus long enough to think through our very busy Parisian day.
At the lunch stop, I also couldn't get the wifi to work, which was super frustrating. Wifi wasn't even available at our late afternoon stop. I thought I might go mad. I genuinely am an addict. It has been really frustrating for me to have such patchy and limited connectivity.
At our first stop, Nicole and I had a very delicious lunch of a ham and cheese baguette with a little pastry dessert. We shared a flan and a raspberry tartlet. That meagre meal totaled R100 per person! Nicole tells me to stop thinking that way, but the bank smses me every time I swipe my card, so it is thinking that way for me...
Nicole and I tend to sit in front of the bus, since we actually are not doing much sleeping on the coach, and that way we can get some great views on the drive. One such view actually included a car accident. A car ahead of us smashed quite hard into the back of a truck. The driver climbed out of the car, so it seems that he was ok, but the windscreen of his car was completely smashed and the front bumper was in pieces on the highway.
That's as dramatic as the drive itself was. Otherwise, I spent it lazily trying to blog without getting too much done very quickly. Chatting to our travelling companions and enjoying the rural French countryside with all its chateaus. Everyone also got the opportunity to introduce themselves to the bus over the microphone system and choose secret santa names out of an envelope.
We didn't do any sleeping on the bus, but we figured we'd be having an early night in Switzerland. Boy, were we wrong about that! Jen had organised for us to do a pub crawl through Luzern. The Swiss pub crawl? Why had none of my inlaws ever taken me to do that when I've been here? It is so much fun!
It's just expensive! At each bar, we were given a welcoming shot, which was something super sweet and cordial based. At the first bar, the speciality drink is a cocktail called Gema, which has nine shots in it and simply described as "surprise surprise." Nicole and I shared one because they cost R250 each! One Australian dropped hers and it spilled everywhere. At that price, I was tempted to lap it up off the floor!
The Aussies do not handle their booze well at all. A drink that had no effect on us already had them tipsy and giggling. On the one hand, I guess that makes things cheaper for them. On the other, though, it seems a little bit lame that we can effortlessly drink them under the table when we clearly aren't as big drinkers as they are (at least, Nicole and I don't ever go out to get completely smashed, which they seem to do a lot).
At the second bar, where there was a very cheerful and colourful disco ball, Nicole and I opted for a glass of wine each, since that was the cheapest thing on the list, costing us *only* R60 each. The glass is only half filled with a little measuring line on it to ensure that you receive exactly what you pay for: no more or less. Nicole then impressed everyone with her amusing rendition of the Ganham Style dance moves. Much to her delight, she got hit on by a very stylishly dressed white British guy.
We left him behind at closing time to go to our third and final bar of the evening, the Roadhouse. There, we shared another cocktail, Sex on the Beach, that was half the price of our first drink of the evening. We also got to hit the super crowded dance floor, which was fun. The clubs in Luzern play a much nicer selection of music than those in South Africa. It was hard to leave!
Eventually, though, a song came on that we didn't really recognise, so we took that opportunity to escape the addictive fun with a couple from New Zealand who also didn't want too late a night. We caught a taxi outside the train station that was driven by an African man from a country we've never heard of. Amusingly, when we asked if he had ever been to South Africa, he replied that he hadn't because it is too dangerous! Even other Africans are afraid of us...
Our trip home set us back another R200, but it sure as hell beat walking all the way up the mountain. It was about midnight when we got back, so we went straight to bed (well, after I did a little washing). We didn't sleep too well, though, because as the Aussies started coming home in drips and drabs, they made an incredible noise! It was like an elephant parade.
One even went from door to door trying to open them all to find his room. Luckily, we sleep with our door locked because Nicole and I were both sleeping in our undies since the rooms are so unbearably hot. If he'd walked in on us in that condition, it would've been somewhat awkward. Helps to be South African and paranoid after all!
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