Vacations 2010 - Part I

I hope to write a blog diary about the travelling, as I did for Morocco, Argentina. Just a few quick points now, to be (perhaps) extended later.

Written from an internet cafe in Brugge, 10.7.2010; post for days 3.7. - 10.7.
2.7. - 8.7.: with father and sister
8.7. - 10.7.: alone
sleeping:

• 2.7.: outside, in Germany
• 3.7.: Etap hotel, Verdun
• 4.7.: Etap hotel, Fountainebleau
• 5.-7.7.: Etap hotel, Paris
• 8.7.: outside, somewhere between Rouen and Amiens
• 9.7.: along a road, near Brugge

cities visited (not just going through)

• Mainz - a huge cathedral, didn't manage to go in; the historic center mixed with modern buildings (because of WWII bombardment)
  
• Trier - a city seemingly owned by a archbishop; a huge cathedral, having very strong atmosphere inside
• Going through and seeing Luxembourg
  
• Reims - also a huge cathedral, but much weaker atmosphere, as if mirroring the decline of Church in France
• Verdun
  
• Paris: very lively (like Buenos Aires, unlike London - comparing to big cities known to me); visited the usual monuments (Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame,Louvre, Versailles, Sacre Coeur, two day-long walks in Paris); also some "less usual" ones - Fointanebleau, one castle near Paris); very tourist overcrowded (but just the most known monuments, the others are just fine); a lot of rich people, a lot of poor (and homeless) people
  

• Arras (9.7.) - 3 big squares, seems like a German city
• Brugge (10.7.) - brick houses, canals everywhere, visited a local market (and for 1.25eur (rather cheap...for a food here) eaten a smoked herring - a local specialty - wouldn't mentioned it, but it was very... special - try yourself!!!
  

passing through (selected ones; Iwill hopefully make a map of the whole trip, some day) :

• Rouen, Amiens, Lille
  

Some remarks:

• a lot of hitchhiking mistakes made in these first few hithchiking days - one ended in an encounter with a French police
• French people are obsessed with credit cards
  
• France - ordering food via Internet; just collecting the prepared food afterwards; the prize being the same as for a supermarket (the concept is "known" for other goods, yet I have not seen this in CZ in the case of food - not for a good prize)
• I thought this trip will be somewhat like (sleeping in the wild) - unexpectedly (for me) the hitchhiking makes it much more difficult; and unlike Morocco, I am not bound (by having ordered the transport back in advance) to stay for a fixed time - so maybe I'm back in CZ in the next week??? (hopefully not, still I have very intense swings of mood - I remember this to be already the case of Morocco)
• it's very hard to find a place to sleep in wild in Belgium - there is no wild, it's so populated (and agriculture is so common), that almost everything is someone's (and fenced with a barbed wire...)
• First encounters with speaking Dutch myself almost refuse to - some Vlaams people seems very happy to see someone learning the language, some of them automatically switch to English (and almost refuse to speak Dutch to a foreigner, or seem rather annoyed.)

That's all for now, I've been in the cafe for almost an hour, don't want to stay here a whole day. It was quite hard to find, so maybe I won't write for a few more days.