Day 1 - Departure and Arrival

19 April 2010

The journey begins!  We are gliding out of St Pancras after a much easier boarding than I had expected since all the news has been about the many hundreds –if not thousands – of people who were stuck because of the cancellation of their flights due to the volcanic eruption in Iceland.  Of course the train is filled to capacity as any spare seats were quickly sold to those multitudes queued up outside the ticket office.  Even so, an announcement as we left said that as this was a direct train to Paris, anyone was free to exchange their seat for an empty one.  Since there are no empty seats in our carriage, that isn’t an option.  Never mind.  We’re off!  And as adventures go, this one had a rather shaky start as, over the last few days, the news had been full of frenzied travel stories – 150 or 200,000 Brits stuck around the world trying desperately to get back to their families, their jobs, or just because home was beckoning and they were tired.  Because chaos was in the air, that was the expectation.  But maybe the chaos had been played out in great orgiastic waves over the prior days so people were now resigned to their fate whatever it was

St Pancras was not the frantic scene of displaced travellers that I thought would await me.  In fact, there was a certain serenity upstairs where I had gone to photograph once more the Brief Encounter statue and to have a drink while I waited for my hour to cometh.  I had pictured (in my minds eye) starting this journey with a last drink at Carluccios where their outdoor seating juts up against the statue; but it was filled with their lunchtime crown.  Curiously, the pub on the other side of the statue, which had just as nice a view of the Eurostar boarding platform, was almost empty.  And since I only wanted a beer, it suited me fine.  So my last drink was at Betjeman’s, a fine writerly name for an unpretentious pub, rather than the trendy Carluccio’s which trades on its Italian ambiance and inflated prices while the Betjeman is laid-back British (no one bothers to come and take my order so I have to go inside to collect my drink from the bar).

After reading the rest of the Guardian (all about travel insanity and Nick Clegg – not that the two are related, though they might be) and taking some photos and film clips of the Eurostar platform just within reach but separated by a translucent barrier – I go back down to the main rotunda where the International waiting room is located.  I’m an hour early but it’s just as well to go inside as I’m somewhat fearful that the crowd will descend and I don’t want to be rushed or hurried.  Besides, I’ve printed out my ticket on the computer and there’s a wonky smudge that’s not exactly a barcode but seems to serve the same function. You’re supposed to scan it at the gate to allow entry – but I don’t believe it will work because it looks more like a pigeon dropping than a proper bar code sort of thing.  Fortunately there’s an attendant outside the automatic gate who takes it from me and scans it herself.  And, lo and behold, it does let me in.  Then on to the luggage inspection where I manage to lift the dinosaur of a bag (more on this later) up to the conveyor belt without rupturing anything organic.  Nothing whistles or buzzes when I go through the body scanner so I think I’m in the clear – but, no, I am waved aside by a pleasant young man who apologetically tells me that I’ll have to open my bag for inspection.  If he wasn’t so nice, I would have considered it a bad omen but he’s friendly and chatty and when he asks me where I’m headed and I tell him that Hungary is one of my destinations, he perks up saying that he’s from Hungary himself and have I been there before?  And when I say not since 1970, he informs me that things have changed somewhat since then.  He says this while swabbing my computer keyboard for traces of explosives (and I suddenly understand why I was pulled over because you’re supposed to take your computer out of your bag for the xray machine to scan and I hadn’t).  As those things go, it was fairly good natured and since I was so early there wasn’t any concern about delay.  The main thing was repacking my bag and making sure everything was put back inside – which is always difficult when there’s a queue of people behind.  It went smoothly though and then going through passport control I found myself in the waiting room and lo and behold there was a long counter with powerpoints and notices of free internet connection.  I was happy to take advantage of the opportunity and again unpacked my computer and hooked up to the St Pancras public wifi network only to find that, yes, I could get onto the Internet, and, yes, I could get into

Google mail but, no, I couldn’t open any of the messages even though I was still connected.   It was quite frustrating as I could see there was one from Olivier and I was waiting for his response to see if he would meet me at the station.  After several tries I gave up, thinking that since I hadn’t expected I’d be able to connect there really wasn’t any loss.  So, instead, I walked over to the waiting room café and ordered a beer.

As I said, it was an anticlimactic departure.  After all the hoopla of the  exploding volcano and the similar eruption in the  election campaign following the first debate when Nick Clegg suddenly became the British Obama, my leaving in a atmosphere where everyone else was trying to get home seemed like plunging into the eye of a tornado.  But now it’s happened I’m feeling quite relaxed about whatever lies in store.  I dust off my antennae to enable my sensors again.  There is a shift going on that has yet to be analyzed – if it ever will.  And I want to record this remarkable time – if not for posterity at least for myself. Whatever is happening, it’s making people reconsider the world they live in.  Everyone knows there is something unusual taking place, socially, economically, spiritually.  How this will affect people’s daily lives is not at all clear.  But they know change is upon them – that’s why they are so eager for it.  If they didn’t think it was happening or if they didn’t think it was possible, they would simply go on the way they did for it’s both easier and more comfortable to allow the status quo to continue even if it’s boring, even if it hurts.  But when change is in the air, you don’t need a weather reporter to say which way the wind blows.

There is very little to distinguish one side of the tunnel from the other -  the same flatness, the same scraggly trees, the same fields of hesitant green, the same concrete highways, the same boxy warehouses of corrugated steel.  But every once in a while on this side of the tunnel you see something Gallic - a church spire perhaps or a rustic farmhouse - but you have to look closely for we’re in the Eurozone of Sameocracy.  I want to see a Vache qui Rit; instead there’s just miles and miles of pylons and connecting wires to electrify this overcast world.

The train ride to Paris is smooth, quick and uneventful – more like a proper commuter run than the start of an International Adventure.  When Eurostar works well, it works very well.  When it doesn’t, there’s hell to pay.

We sail into Gare du Nord like a sleek successor to a glamorous coal-fired queen.  I let people off before me so I can descend without hurry, gracefully (if you can tug a dinosaur that way).  So I am the last one off to walk the very long platform that leads to the hurly-burly circus-like world of this outlandish terminus.  It’s an entry into delightful, head spinning anarchy after a quiet transition through the euro birth canal.  And in the distance I am pleased to see my old friend has come to greet me.