A present from strasbourg

The train from Calais was plastered with names. Strasbourg – Basle – Innsbruck – Salzburg – Vienna – Budapest – Bucharest.

I stood outside my carriage and looked at the placard, thinking how timeless the Grand European Expresses are. The whistle blew.

I had a meal in the dining-car and returned to my carriage. It was full of French people. They were reading Paris Match and Figaro. I fell asleep and woke up into night. All the French people had gone but there was an old man with an enormous ginger moustache. In the rack above his head was a huge wooden box. An undertaker? A florist? Did the box contain a body, a bomb, or begonias? However, he looked a sober, careful man, smoking a pipe. We nodded to each other. Somehow I was glad to see him, to fix my thoughts on him. After all, I thought, examining his beautiful moustache, I was a European, too.

“Where are we?” I asked in French.

He took out his pipe and shook his head.

I tried my poor German. “Are we in France, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary or Romania?” I asked.

“We are still in France,” he said. “Shortly we will be in Strasbourg.”

“Are you from Strasbourg?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I live in Douai. I am going to the Strasbourg Fair.”

“But you are German.”

“Yes. But that is another thing. It is in the past. Now I breed certain small animals for the Strasbourg Fair. The Strasbourg Fair is a wonderful thing; it must be seen to believe. Particularly the section of the small animals.”

I looked up at the box above his head.

He smiled and nodded. “Rabbits,” he explained. He brought down the shiny, ancient box and opened it and out sprang the rabbits.

We fed them with lettuce and carrots and half an old sandwich, and then they were packed in the box, the train slowed down and it was Strasbourg. “Good luck with the rabbits,” I said, shaking him by the hand.

I slept again. Suddenly I was woken up.

Officials stood in the bright light.

“Where am I?” I asked in Spanish.

“Switzerland,” said an official. “Have you anything to declare?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“No cigarettes, spirits?”

“No,” I said.

“Is that your bag? May we open it?”

“Yes,” I said.

They opened it and somebody whistled. “A rabbit,” he said. “A really first-class rabbit. So, dutiable, Herr Kapitan?”

I jumped up and stared at the rabbit. “It’s not my rabbit,” I cried. “It’s for the Strasbourg Fair.” I explained my story.

“You have a British passport?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Then it is in order,” said the captain. In the Grand European Expresses, if nowhere else, the Englishman is a gentleman above reproach.

“Thank you,” I said. He gave me a sheet of paper and signed it.

Hours later, the lights were on again. A tall man in a green suit came in the carriage. “Good morning,” he said. “Welcome to Austria. Have you anything to declare?”

“A rabbit,” I said. I felt I would like Austria.

In the afternoon I arrived in Salzburg. I felt terribly tired. I found myself a guest house quite near the station. “I have a rabbit,” I told the proprietor’s wife, opening my bag.

“It is a fine rabbit,” she said admiringly.

“It would make a fine pet,” I said. “I present it to you.”

TASKS

Task 1. Answer the following questions.

1. What kind of train did the author of the story travel by?

2. Whom did he see having woken up into night? Describe him.

3. Was the man German or French?

4. Where was he traveling to?

5. Whom did he transport in the box?

6. What questions did the officers ask the author?

7. Why didn’t they impose a duty on the rabbit?

8. What happened in Austria?

9. Where did the author stay in Salzburg?

10. What did he give the proprietor’s wife as a present?

Task 2. Say what you can remember about:

a) the author’s travel;

b) meeting with an old who bred rabbies;

c) customs control in Switzerland.

Task 3. Answer the questions.

What documents are required when traveling with pets?

Why are pets to be vaccinated before traveling abroad?