[ SUNDAY TRAVEL ]

Strange and twisted tales
from a European vacation

---

Story and illustrations by David Swann
dswann@starbulletin.com

Armed with a Eurail Pass and the right attitude, you can easily see some of the most beautiful and interesting places on earth while backpacking through Europe.

On the other hand, you may also find yourself in awkward, weird and downright frightening situations.

My wife and I had our fair share of these moments on a recent trip through five countries. For your enjoyment, here are a few.

A Most embarrassing night

The small Austrian town of Portschach near the border of Slovenia is a pleasant place to spend a few nights. It's also the center of the apple-growing region that produces the unique apple-cider beer called Most, which is about 8 to 10 percent alcohol and tastes like spiked cider.

When we checked in to a family-oriented bed and breakfast, my wife and I joined a group of German and Swiss tourists for a hike to a farmer's house a few miles away for a traditional Austrian meal. Once there, we all sat down in the farmer's guest area for the food and plenty of Most.

Now, I normally don't drink, but the Most tasted good, and everyone else was drinking mugs of it faster than I could count. So when I downed a few without passing out, I was feeling pretty confident. But then a German 2-year-old named Anna, sitting next to me, proceeded to down three mugs of Most in the time it took me to blink, and then began to mock my pathetic attempts to keep up. She grinned at me and grabbed another mug, slamming it down as everyone looked on.

I feebly took another gulp. I knew Europeans started drinking early, but this was ridiculous. Worse, I began to feel pretty toasted as the evening wore on, grimly aware that I was losing the contest with a toddler.

Finally, I threw in the towel and went outside to get some oxygen for my Most-soaked brain. Anna's victory was complete. As I sat in the cool evening air of the Austrian countryside, I watched the cows in a nearby field and realized it wouldn't be every day that I was out-drunk by someone who can't even tie their own shoelaces -- even when they're sober.

Fort Stinky historic tours

During World War II, the Germans built countless gun emplacements along the western coast of France in hopes of defeating the Allied invasion on D-Day. Some remain in Normandy and have been made into memorials to the war. We visited four of these cannons at Longes-sur-Mer in a remote part of the Normandy countryside.

If you saw the film "Saving Private Ryan," you may remember what the gun emplacements looked like. Basically, they are large concrete boxes with enormous naval guns sticking out the front. They could hit targets 15 miles away, and the shells were as big as huge anvils. Being a history buff, I was eager to get inside one and look out toward the ocean.

My wife seemed to be inspecting the cannon barrel, so I walked around to the rear entrance. It was dark inside, but I could see light coming from around the sides of the gun. As I peered out at the ocean, I tried to imagine what it was like on D-Day.

But suddenly I realized something was wrong. It was ... the smell.

I looked around me, and as my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I realized what it was. I was standing in a room full of, well, let's just say that bumper stickers say "it happens."

I put my hand over my mouth and ran out of this makeshift public toilet as quickly as possible.

In my haste I cracked my head on the low concrete doorway, but I barely noticed. The fresh air hit me, and tourists looked surprised to see me run out of the bunker making gagging sounds.

My wife walked over while I desperately scraped my shoes in the grass and asked what was wrong. "Nothing, dear," I croaked, gasping for air. "Just getting a little taste of European history."

Skeleton crew

St. Stephen's Cathedral in the heart of Vienna, Austria, is almost 1,000 years old. It was built during the dark Gothic period, and this was noticeable as soon as we walked through the entrance. There were plenty of gargoyles and devil statues that created a decidedly creepy ambience.

After wandering through the huge and chilly church for an hour or so, we decided to head out for a pasta-and-salad lunch. But just as we approached the exit, a large blond man appeared and said, with a thick Austrian accent, "Anyone vant a look at za catacombs below, come vit me."

We joined a small group of about 10 tourists who followed the man down a dark flight of stairs. As we walked, the man began to give us a brief history of the church.

Then he told us about the bodies that had been buried under the church during the Black Plague in the 1600s.

These bodies eventually began to smell so bad that no one would come to church. So the bodies were dug up, the bones were scraped of skin and they were thrown back into the pit. The huge hole was just below where we stood.

We gazed at our feet and mulled this fact. The man said, "If you vant to zee za bones, have a look!" He dramatically pointed toward a large hole with steel bars across it in the ground. We slowly stepped over to the hole and peered down.

As our eyes began to adjust to the gloom, we could see leg bones, arm bones, ribcages and skulls. Lots of them. Thousands, in fact. This was an ancient pit piled many feet deep with thousands and thousands of dismembered skeletons. My wife muttered one word: "Yuck."

When we left the cathedral, the bright light of day suddenly made us wince. I told my wife that instead of pasta, I suddenly had a craving for ribs and sauce. Oddly, rather than laughing, she sucker-punched me in the stomach.

Tag team on tenacious tot

The Paris Metro station is a dirty, confusing, humanity-packed freak show. On top of all this, it's a haven for pickpockets and thieves. Gypsies roam in packs, nipping at purses, watches and anything not tied or bolted down.

We managed to avoid roving bands of gypsies for the most part, but our luck ran out when we tried to put money in the wall-mounted ticket machine. Immediately a boy of about 6 was at our side, reaching in to grab our change. My wife told me we had only enough change for two tickets and no time to make more change from large bills.

I had no choice but to grab the kid's hands and wrench his tiny little fingers apart to get our coins back. He screamed like a banshee, so I shoved a couple of chocolate bars in his hand, desperately hoping this would appease him. He instantly threw the bars down in disgust and demanded cold cash in broken English.

My wife then put the rest of the money in the machine and said, "David, don't let the sucker grab the ticket -- he'll use it as a hostage." Sure enough, when the ticket popped out, the kid grabbed at it like Shaq on a rebound. "Nail him!" my wife yelled. "Our train leaves in five minutes!"

I was forced to grab him again and then pry his fingers open a second time, fearing that a hundred of his little friends would show up at any minute. I finally jerked the ticket out of his hand and started running with my wife to our train. As we ran away from this tiny terror, I looked back to see him, the crazed 6-year-old following close behind, screaming insults at us that I was glad I couldn't understand.

The tunnel of doom

The Swiss train ride up the side of the Eiger mountain to the Jungfraujoch costs $80 per person. The payoff is an 11,333-foot view of the Alps in five countries.

But several hundred yards into a long mountain tunnel, our train jerked to a stop. We sat there in the frigid air for more than an hour at a steep angle while crewmen nervously tried to repair the problem. There were a few more jerks, throwing people onto the floor, and then dead silence.

The lights went off. Everyone under about 12 started crying with real enthusiasm. Small children shrieked in fright, and I thought I might join in just on principle. Everyone else was jittery and full of nervous laughter, and when I saw that even the frantic crewmen clutching flashlights and tearing open fuse boxes had quivering, unlit cigarettes in their mouths, things got more tense. I thought, "We paid $160 for this?"

The clincher was when smoke started coming from the ventilation system. There was a distinct electrical burning smell in the air. On cue, people began to go nuts, jabbering in 20 different languages while grabbing at the window latches. I opened the nearest window and began working on plans to get my wife and myself out as I imagined fireballs coming our way.

A terrified Japanese couple with a baby pressed themselves next to our window. "Don't worry, it's OK," I said, trying to reassure them. They shot me a look that was the international expression for "Yeah, right. What you're really saying is that at any second, the train is going to come unlatched, and we'll all go flying down the mountain at 250 miles per hour." I admired their mind-reading abilities.

Somewhere around that point in the festivities, I began wishing I was on any beach on any island in Hawaii and off this godforsaken train and out of this equally godforsaken tunnel.

As I made a mental note to never, ever get back on any mountain train that goes through anything that remotely looks like a tunnel, the crewmen somehow managed to slowly back the train out of the tunnel and into the bright sunshine.

Dazed, we all got off amid the snow and ice and re-boarded another train to head back down the mountain. All my wife could say was, "Now that's what I call fun."

At the main station, we were offered another ride up, but we opted for the refund. The view could wait -- possibly forever.

What we really needed was something relaxing, something that would help us let off some steam. "Teletubbies" in German always made us hysterical at the end of a long, hard day, so maybe that would do it. That, and about 10 mugs of Most.