Journal, Diary, & Blogging / Thoughts From France #1
Arriving in Paris was a blur. I was completely jetlagged and seriously grimy. My initial plan was to tote my luggage from the arrival gate to the RER and go to my stop early to catch the TGV to Biarritz. In my mind I had given myself enough time to do all this plus find a quaint little Parisian café where I would sit and read and sip a strong coffee and taste une asiette de fromage while dropping les bons mots all the while. ‘Voila l’americain culture!’ the Parisians would cry, raising their demi tasses high in the air. My actual experience was a little bit different than that. In the first place, I didn’t find Charles de Gaul airport to be as accommodating to my understanding of the language as my textbooks had been. Signs seemed to point everywhere. I knew to follow the signs to the gare, but I couldn’t understand if I had to take the bus to the gare, as some signs indicated or if I could walk, as other signs indicated. I walked through three terminals and then back again to the place where I’d originated, nary a gare in sight. I asked a woman behind the information desk where the gare was. She pointed in the direction I’d walked and told me it was all the way at the end. I told her I’d been there and back. She must have heard this before, as she slowed her speaking down and raised the volume and said, ‘Marchez, marchez, marchez.’ She became, for just a moment, the French Jan Brady. So back I went. At this point I was so sweaty that my skin felt like a block of room temperature Velveeta that had been rolled around on the basement floor. I was wheeling two heavy suitcases that seemed to be behaving like two large dogs that wanted very much to cooperate but just couldn’t. My overnight bag (laptop inside) was slung over my shoulder and kept slipping down and crashing into my side and the various people I was pushing through. I finally found the entrance to the gare (a long pedestrian habitrail tube) and thought: ‘Voila. I am but steps away from my first truly French experience.’ Okay. Do you know that scene from Brazil where the camera is tracking the fated letter from office to office? There are hundreds of people, carts, machines and such wheeling about in rapid confusion all to the tune of Brazil. This is what I saw when I descended down into the gare, except it was sans music. It seemed every sign, exit, passageway and queue led to Paris, but with so many different colors and typefaces that I couldn’t tell which was TGV and which was a taxistand. I went to stand in one line that seemed to have something to do with trains. The woman at the counter had a hard time understanding me, and I her. She got that I was going to Paris, though, and handed me a schedule with train departures. I knew I had to get my actual ticket printed, but I didn’t see any sign that said, ‘Voila Eric! Imprimez-vous votre billet ICI!’ in slow, bold print. I went to another line and then another, and was finally pointed in the right direction of the SNCF, where I could get my ticket printed and confirm my reservation to Biarritz. By this time my perfectly enunciated French had degraded into single words and sign language. I think at one point I may have even done the whole ‘chugga chugga chugga chugga woo woo!’ thing but as I said, it was all a blur. The nice man at the SNCF window understood my predicament and spoke slowly enough for me to understand him. He printed my ticket, circled the parts of the ticket marked ‘voit’ and ‘place’ and said I could either take a train, a bus, or a cab to Paris. A bus would be 1.5 euros and departed on the fourth floor. I had only $12 American on me, knowing full well that there is an ATM on every street corner in France and that you get the best exchange rates by using them. After an exciting interlude I discovered that no ATMs were working. Other travelers were discovering the same thing and we were able to console each other only by a facial expression that was half panic, one fourth jetlag and one fourth pity. (I have come to understand this facial expression rather well now after two weeks in France. Imagine my pleasure to be able to help newcomers with simple tasks like hailing a cab or pointing out a pharmacie.) I ended up trading my American dollars for a few heavy coins. I seem to recall seeing Jesus charging in with a scourge, turning over tables and shouting something about his father’s house but it might just have been a local artiste who had had enough of the tourist trade.
On the fourth floor I found a bus, but it was going to a town I’d never heard of before. I asked the driver if he stopped at Montparnasse, and he smiled and shook his head and pointed across a few lanes of traffic. On my way back to the elevator I found a waiting taxi and decided it was time to use my credit card. The cab driver was a very nice Cambodian man. After exchanging a few basic phrases I lurched into trying an actual French conversation. It went pretty well: we talked about the weather, the plants growing on the side of the roads, and how things were in Cambodia these days. We talked about Bush and the few political arenas I felt I could converse intelligently in. He volunteered his opinion of Bush and the war in Iraq and I wholeheartedly agreed. (I felt silly nodding my head and crying oui! Oui! But they really do say oui here, and nodding your head works in many different places) He then asked if I was from Switzerland. I was delighted. I wanted to be able, if possible, to hide my Americanishness. (As the weeks in Biarritz went on I was asked if I was from England, Russia, Norway, Switzerland, but mostly Germany. Apparently, the accent with which I speak French is German. I have not the slightest idea why. I met four guys from Paris in a Biarritz park and they all agreed that I sounded just like a German. They said it had something to do with the cadence and rhythm of my speech. I’d be happy to continue to speak French with a German accent, but I hope I can progress with my pronunciation and comprehension so that someone, some day, will ask what part of France I’m from.) He dropped me off at the Gare Montparnasse showed me where my train would leave.
As I sat in the waiting room for TGV passengers I noticed how many people had dogs. Little dogs, mostly, quiet and mopy things whose coats looked dingy. This surprised me. I figured the French would bathe their dogs and clip them into an artistic frenzy. I also noticed that everybody smoked everywhere. One in a series of a thousand proud American exports. (As I sit here and type on the Paris-bound TGV, my two wonderful weeks in Biarritz having tumbled by, I wonder: should I visit McDonald’s in Paris? Euro Disney? There is even a Starbucks in the Louvre. I feel torn between curiosity and disgust.) As the hour approached I went to ‘voie 19’ figuring that that’s what ‘voit 19’ on my ticket meant. No train. It looked like there was no train coming there any time soon. The nice man at the SNCF window spoke no English at all, but indulged my halting French and told me the aisle of departure would be announced 20 minutes before the train arrived. I waited and listened carefully, watching the board where the aisle numbers were posted. And voila: le TGV est arrive. I went down the three sets of stairs (the elevator was broken) and hauled my luggage into the first train car that didn’t look too full. I couldn’t see any sign that clearly said, ‘Voila Erique! Place 25 est ici!’ So I sat in a single seat near the window. ‘Josh was right,’ I said to myself as I settled in, ‘Second class is perfectly comfortable enough for me.’ I said ‘bonjour’ to the monsieur seated across from me who looked up from his Figaro as I sat down. I was awakened by the conductor announcing ‘Mesdames, messieurs, vos billets s’il vous plait.’ I produced my ticket and showed the nice man with the curling moustaches. He looked at my ticket and he looked at my seat and then he looked at me. I saw then that he wasn’t a nice French man at all. He said something withering that I couldn’t understand. A horrible thought occurred to me. ‘Am I in first class?’ I said. The conductor rose on his toes an inch and said simply, ‘En français.’ I struggled through a few past tenses and managed to convey that I thought I was in second class. The conductor pointed to the back of the car. ‘Which car?’ I asked. But he had nothing more to say to me. As I got my baggage out and said ‘au revoir’ to the monsieur smiling to his Figaro I realized the conductor was a dead ringer for Hercule Poirot. (I was told later on that conductors on French trains frequently resemble Hercule Poirot.. I don’t know if this was actually true or not, but my French friends in Biarritz seemed to enjoy the story)
Well. TGV may not stand for ‘tres grand vite’ but they do go awfully fast, rendering the most agile traveler passing through the train cars into a lurching oaf. I’m not very agile, plus I had my very unwieldy baggage with me. I threw my sweating American body into a seat next to a horrified lady who told me the seat was occupied. I stumbled my way through seven cars until I realized that ‘voit’ on my ticket meant ‘car’ and that I had many more voitures to stumble through to my assigned place. And there was no guarantee that I would be seated so that I was facing the direction the train was going, or that there wouldn’t be an entire smoking family of 5 in the seat next to me or a cadre of loud and unruly backpackers. So I dumped all of my baggage in the little space between two cars and sat on a tiny fold-down seat. People passed through the space constantly, going from train car to train car. The right-left motion of the train made it necessary for me to hold myself in place with either an arm against the door or my leg muscles flexed very tight. Some people who came into this space came there to smoke. Others came there to make phone calls. Some came to calm squalling babies. I seem to recall a pen of chickens and a bleating goat there too, but perhaps my memory is being a bit fanciful. What I do know is that the conductor passed through this little space with his assistant. I feigned sleep – actual sleep being impossible due to the athletic requirements of remaining seated – so I wouldn’t have to face the conductor. My French comprehension is not that sharp, but I am fully sure that he said, ‘This is that guy I was telling you about who tried to sneak into first class.’ To which his assistant replied with an all-knowing ‘Ah!’
The journey passed without much further incident. I had a few brief conversations with polite people. Upon arriving at Biarritz I hailed a cab to my hotel and was delighted to find it clean and comfortable with all components in full working order.
I now know that ‘voit’ means ‘voiture’ and that paying for the first class upgrade is worth it on the TGV. I am currently paused at the Bordeaux stop, seated in air conditioned comfort at a table in a ‘silent’ car where cell phones and loud voices are not allowed.
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This 48 word review has not been unlocked.
This was an enjoyable read, so please take this a positively as I mean it.
For many Americans, this will be very interesting; for seasoned travellers, however, this will not be anything new. What you need is more of your own personality here. We all know (those of us who live in Europe) these tales of train travel. We need more of the humor you definitely can bring to these stories. I just read something else you wrote, so I know you have it in you.
I’ve flown into Charles de Gaulle many times and have witnessed this type of frustration. The bus to the train station is a weird step the first time.
Proofreading notes:
Charles de Gaul = Gaulle
mopy = mopish or mopey
the story) (terminal punctuation missing)
air conditioned comfort = air-conditioned
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The French Jan Brady<-priceless.
Haha. Party crasher!
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