While stationed in West Germany, my wife and I planned to visit all of Europe.
We began to fulfill that dream by visiting Paris over Labor Day weekend.
Having completed what the Army considered a two-year hardship tour of duty at Fort Knox in Kentucky, I was rewarded with an overseas assignment to West Germany in 1987. My wife and I planned to see all of Europe while stationed there. She and I accumulated a pile of European travel brochures and poured over them each evening.
In 1987, Labor Day Monday fell on September 7th. Commensurate with our plan, we parked our car on the Ramstein Air Base on Friday, September 4th, and boarded a tour bus for our first of many weekend excursions. On this Friday evening of a three-day-weekend, we were off to Paris.
The bus crossed the border during the night, and we got our passports stamped by the French. We would eventually run out of room for all the temporary visas we collected from the twenty-eight countries we visited, some repeatedly, over the next three years.
We were in France. I grinned at my wife and said in my limited German, Willkommen nach Frankreich, meaning “Welcome to France.”
She responded in her fluent French with, Merci beaucoup, meaning “Thank you very much.”
The French auto route, similar to the German Autobahn, or an Interstate in the United States, passed by Nancy, Metz, and Rheims. We arrived in Paris in time for a French breakfast, known as a petit dejeuner, and a French breakfast was certainly petite; only orange juice, croissant, and coffee. Then we were off to explore the city. And we did it all.
Later that day, we looked from our Holiday Inn hotel room down onto the Place de la Republique. A huge rotary encircled the plaza, and seven lanes of French automobiles simultaneously merged into three lanes around the rotary, with horns blaring. There were no lane markings. I glanced at my wife as we enjoyed a pre-dinner drink, observing French gridlock. I asked somewhat facetiously, “Have you ever seen anything like that?”
She chuckled and said, “I don't know about seeing anything like it, but I've never heard anything like it.” We both laughed, as the monumental level of horn-honking infiltrated our room.
I asked her, “How did you enjoy our first day in the "City of Love," Liebling?” Liebling was German for “dearest.”
She said authoritatively, “It's the "City of Light," darling.”
I arched an eyebrow and said, “When we return from the Moulin Rouge, my love, we'll see whether our room will fill with light or love.” A hug and a kiss ensued.
My wife's face brightened the room as she said ecstatically, “Wow. What a whirlwind tour. The Eiffel Tower; the Arc de Triomphe de l'Etoile and the Champs Elysees; and the Louvre, to observe Winged Victory, Venus de Milo, and of course, the Mona Lisa.”
I sighed as I said, “I never realized the Mona Lisa was so small.” I held my hands up to indicate its size. “When it's behind that glass partition with about a thousand tourists craning their necks to look, we were lucky to get even a peek at her.”
She grinned. “Ah, but tonight we take a Bâteau Mouche down the Seine to view the left and right banks at night, under the lights, in the City of Light.”
I smiled as I nodded, “And after the boat ride, we'll be treated to a typical tourist's French dinner before heading off to Pigalle for a tour of Montmarte and Painter's Square before attending the midnight show at the Moulin Rouge. When will we sleep?”
She kissed my cheek. “We'll sleep all we want when back to our house in the tiny village of Bann, West Germany. Right now, we're in Paris, the City of Love.”
The following morning, a few bleary-eyed members of our group made it to the bus on time. Our tour guide grimaced as she said grimly, “We'll have to leave without them.” She motioned the driver to move on to the Versailles Palace. If late on a Sunday morning, we would end up about a mile back in the line of tourists.
That afternoon, while we were on our own, we walked the streets of Paris. Rilda spoke fluent French. We stopped at the Café de Paris, an out-door café across from the Opera House. My wife asked the garçon, “Veuillez nous apporter le chèque, s'il vous plaît?” She asked our waiter for the check.
When presented with a fifty-franc check, I almost fell out of my chair. I said incredulously, “Ten dollars for one beer and one coffee? How do Parisians afford it?”
