The Best Trip of my Life
Submitted by Erin Pizarro ’95
I have so many fantastic Centenary memories I could write about, but I'll write about the best trip of my life. In May and June of 1994, I went on the first May module to Lille, France, with Dana Kress. We flew Dallas to D. C. and then to Brussels. Since this was 1994, there was a smoking section in the back of the plane which seems crazy now. From Brussels we were driven to Lille.
We went to Université Catholique de Lille Monday through Thursday for class. After class we hung out around town and usually in the square with Dana. We drank beer everywhere we went, and we always had the best conversations. I remember in the bars there was American music everywhere. Dana introduced us to Chimay, a beer brewed by monks. Thursday afternoon through Sunday we were able to travel by ourselves.
I stayed with a family in their three-story house. The house was what we would call a townhouse with other houses right next to it, but it was a house in Lille. I was on the third floor, and my room had a shower and sink but no toilet. The family lived on the second floor, so when I had to use the toilet, I had to go to the first floor. It was so far away compared to an American toilet. For breakfast I was introduced to Nutella with baguette bread. It was so delicious! And we drank coffee from small bowls. I rode the metro and walked to the university every day. We learned to ride the metro fast, and it is not easy to do. On the metro one day, a French person said under her breath about us, “Quelle chaussures!” (What shoes!). We all spoke French so we knew they were criticizing our shoes. They didn’t realize we thought the same of their weird French shoes.
Our first day at university we went to the cafeteria for lunch. The food was disgusting to us, and people were talking about us too since we were Americans. After that we ate lunch at a school café called Café Tartine. They had sandwiches and our favorite Dani yogurt. This was our new lunch stop.
The first weekend we all went to Paris with Dana and took the TGV, Train à Grande Vitesse. It went 175 miles per hour! Paris was quite an experience. We stayed in a nice hotel Dana had gotten for us all. There was a bathroom in our room, but the toilet was in a closet one floor down. We went up the Eiffel Tower and ate Dani underneath it. Then we rode around the Arc de Triomphe in a car. In the car we were stuck in the Place de l'Étoile circle. It was like Big Ben/ Parliament to us. We drank beer at McDonald’s which shocked us all. We went to an underground bar. On Friday night when we were out at an upscale restaurant, one girl on our trip said it was her birthday. We ordered real champagne to celebrate with her which was super fun. We ran home across the Champs-Élysées. When we got back to our hotel room, this girl called her parents and said it was her birthday. They told her that her birthday was the next day.
The weekends after we were allowed to travel by ourselves and in our own groups. The second weekend some of us went to Bruges with Dana and saw bricks streets and everything medieval. We climbed the Belfort tower which continued our trend of going up anything we could. It had a spiral staircase which was hard to walk up with people coming down. Kim Chance Pizarro is in the picture with me in Bruges and is now my sister-in-law which is crazy. Then my group went on to Amsterdam. We went to the Van Gogh Museum and Anne Frank’s house, which was heartbreaking. We saw tulips and tons of people on bicycles. Bikes were parked everywhere. One night we got lost in the Red Light District, but we didn’t know that was where we were for a long time.
The weekend after Amsterdam Kim and I went to Florence. We went to the Uffizi and the outdoor market where I bought a biker belt. Kim Chance had met a random stranger on the train who told her to go to a restaurant by a church. We walked around Il Duomo randomly and found a restaurant. The waiter was singing and it turned out he spoke everyone’s language. The food there proved to be some of the best we had on our trip, and they brought after dinner drinks for free.
In the street in Florence, I ran into one of my childhood friends, Kim Cassibry. Kim was there on the LSU Florence trip. That night Kim Chance and I met Kim Cassibry and my other childhood friend, Margaret Sale. We went out in Florence where we met some crazy Italian guys who could write English but not speak it. Then we got gelatos which was fun.
A sad thing we realized on our trip was that every time we got off the train, other people getting off had people waiting for them to arrive. There was never anyone waiting for us to arrive, and it made us really sad. The trip was fantastic, but that was a sad moment for us all.
The last weekend on Thursday Kim Chance went to Munich by herself to stay with her cousin who lived there. That Thursday Dana rented a car and he, Kelly Interbitzen, Kim Vetter, and I drove south of Lille to see the sights and the ruins of a really old monastery. Dana didn’t have his driver’s license so I got to drive! We saw the statue of Ferdinand Foch and ate a picnic lunch in the grass. The coolest part was an old castle with gargoyles, alligator drains, and huge rooms with big chandeliers and wallpaper everywhere.
When we got to Munich without Dana, Kim Vetter said, “My dad (a Centenary sociology professor) would just kill me if we didn’t go to Dachau.” So, we went. That proved to be enormously tragic and emotional. Everyone went into the museum there except for me. I stood outside staring at the Never Forget twisted sculpture. After that, we met up with Kim in the square. I bought my first pair of Birkenstocks that I still have today. In the square we met some U. S. World War II veterans who were there for the 50th anniversary of D-Day in 1994. We drank beer and talked with them about the war which was awesome. That night we went to the Haus der 111 Biere (the House of 111 Beers) and met another American guy. I have a picture of him with a half yard of ale in a wooden container. As Kim and I were in the train station leaving Munich, an American ran up to us and said, “Have you heard about O.J.?” We had missed that historical event.
Kim and I took a train to Brussels and spent the night in the airport which I hope never to do again. We flew home to Dallas. And that was the best trip of my life. Thank you so much Dana Kress and Centenary College.
