Rouen is a city located around 140 kilometers North West of Paris-another nicely constructed and maintained city. Cities in Europe as a whole can never match our cities in terms of size and population. They call it a city based on the number of people living there. This number may not even match with the population of my village Olavaipe sometimes!
A lot of space is allocated to public transportation, parking and pedestrians. No big buildings are built but whatever built are built beautifully. I could hardly see high rise buildings in the cities I have so far visited except in Frankfurt. In Frankfurt city we can see so many high rise buildings and sky scrapers. In the cities like Paris, Amsterdam or Vienna, I could not see any tall buildings that may have more than 10 or 15 stories. In Zurich also, there are restrictions on height of buildings. Of course there are two or three high rise buildings in Zurich, one among them is Swissotel, a 32 storied luxury hotel.
I stayed at the 25th floor of this hotel for two nights. I had to pay around 520 Swiss francs ie, equivalent to around 390 Euros to spend two nights there. When I entered the room, there was a nicely printed slip waiting for me in the room. It was a left by the hotel management promising me to spoil me in comforts. But the experience was not so comforting. All through my stay there I was feeling breathlessness inside the room as it was almost filled with cigarette smoke- the smoke that gained entry to my room through the gap at the bottom of the door.
The positive thing of my stay there was that, I could see the ice covered Alps from my room, a beautiful scene that hangs like a Ravi Verma painting at one of the corners of my heart. A bird’s eye view of the city of Zurich was so amazing from the windows of the room.
The highlight of the Rouen city is that, river seine is flowing through it. In Paris too Seine flows all along many monuments like Eiffel Tower, Norte Dame, Orsay Museum and so on. In Paris, there are many tourist boat operators that take us around in the river. During this journey; we can see all major monuments of Paris. The tour operators charge something around 50 euros for the trip. There are tourist bus operators too. One day city round trip also costs between 40 and 50 Euros.
In Rouen, I took a stroll along the Christmas market. During the Christmas season, we can see so many Christmas markets in every cities, towns and villages. These markets sell from winter wears to curios to red wines to food items. These temporarily built shops are nicely decorated that gives enchanting looks to the markets. One interesting thing I could observe in Europe was that, during Christmas, no houses were decorated with a star hanging at the courtyard. Their decoration is mainly using the Christmas trees inside the houses.
All along my journey from Paris to Rouen by train, I could see a number of villages. Villages are also nicely built. Houses in the villages are built just like that in cities. Single and double storied houses with slanted roofs thatched with tiles are seen all over. A village may consist of a few tens to maximum of hundred houses. As the train runs, these villages pass by at irregular intervals. I had opportunity to visit a few villages in Germany during my stay there.
In Rouen, I could visit a house – a European house. There live a young man and a young woman. They are yet to get married. They are just friends for now. After living for some time (perhaps for a few years), they may decide if they need to get married or not. This, as all of us know, is a usual practice in western countries, which we abhor vehemently. The house was an apartment in a large building. So, it was not a traditional European house as such. The interior of the house also were just like what we see in a posh apartment in our country. I could not see any difference. The ‘friends’ live happily in the house owned by the girl.
There was some plumbing work going on in the house and a few men were working inside. The young woman was alone in the house as the man was with me on official duty. As is wont in many European families, here too I found a pet dog. They look after pets like their children.
In many countries, pets are allowed in restaurants, hotel rooms shopping malls and so on. In trains, pet dogs can travel. The master has to take ticket for the pet’s journey. The pets walk on the roads in the chilling climate without wearing any winter clothing! Forget about winter cloths, they were nothing. Still, I have not come across any news about sex related crimes among these animals!!! The probable reason behind this is that there are no news reporters and media personnel among the animal communities to report any incidents of violence in their society.
From Rouen, I travelled to Dieppe to see the English Channel. Dieppe is another town around seventy kilometers away from Rouen. While standing on the shores of the English Channel, images of the brave people who swam across it flashed though my mind. So far around thousand people had crossed the Channel by swimming. I too wished, I could do it, so that I could meet my long lost friends in England. I almost forgot their names as we do not have any contact for long. Half a dozen friends are living in England. They sat with me in the same classroom twenty years back. From Dieppe, there are ferry services to England. Cars and other vehicles are also transported in this ferry. It takes 4 to 5 hours to cross the Channel to reach England from Dieppe
“The English Channel, often referred to simply as the Channel, is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates Great Britain from northern France, and joins the North Sea to the Atlantic. It is about 560 km long and varies in width from 240 km at its widest, to only 34 km in the Strait of Dover. It is the smallest of the shallow seas around the continental shelf of Europe, covering an area of some 75,000 km2”
Getting better and better, keep it up
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