20 April 2010

Pelouse Autorisee says the sign.  I’m in the Luxembourg Gardens because 1) it’s a sunny day and 2) I read that some of the parks in Paris are now wifi enabled and I thought what a lovely idea it would be to sit in the Luxembourg Gardens and write.  Not that I couldn’t have done it the old fashioned way – and many times I have.  But somehow Mr Netbook who I purchased especially for this trip has an insistent idea that it has become my pen, notebook and sketchpad combined and I’m going along with it – for a while anyway. 

But first things first.  Am I not in Paris?  The same Paris where it is strictly forbidden to walk on the grass let alone sit?  As a young man I came here and enjoyed the anarchic game of sitting on the grass along with a multitude of Parisians of all ages until the gendarmes came and swept us off the pelouse, then they left and we all went back onto the grass until the next wave and so on.  It was one of those lovely cat and mouse games that Parisians were (and are) so proud of.  So along comes the Ken Livingstone of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe, who not only facilitates free internet access in the parks but also rescinds the law forbidding people to walk on the grass.  What fun is that?  (I had written an entire children’s book based on that premise.  Now what am I going to do?)     

Once it became legal to sit on the grass with a sign that declares it such everyone is doing it.  In fact entire classes of children are picnicking on the green.  So there’s hardly a space to sit.  When it was illegal, plenty of people sat on the grass but there was always room.  Now it’s legal and there is no room.  What does that tell us? 

Actually, I did find a little plot as lunch was coming to an end and the children were packed up and marched off, hand in hand, to indoor school.  So I found a place, sat down in the glorious sun, took out Mr Netbook and turned it on – or tried to turn it on, that is.  Nothing happened.   I think the gods are trying to tell me something.  But whatever it is, I cannot hear.  Bloody gods.  Bloody Monsieur Delanoe.  Bloody Mr. Netbook. 

Then I think, it serves me right.  Technology just gets in the way of good sense – and probably good writing.  What were pens and paper invented for anyway?  I will just go to a stationary shop and buy a proper notebook and that will be that.  Except I’m a little disappointed.  I bought the netbook especially for this trip and the whole idea was being multimedia and being able to combine words and photos and stuff into an amazing blog (whatever that is and why would anybody read it – but that’s another story, isn’t it?)  So, yes, I’m a little disappointed.  Why didn’t it turn on?  Maybe the battery is dead, I thought.  But I used it last night plugged in, so the battery should be fully charged.  It has now become an intriguing mystery.  The reason I bought this thing a month before leaving was to give myself a chance to break it in and get used to it  I read somewhere that if a computer is wonky you usually find out in a matter of days.  If you use it for a month without problems, it’s probably OK.  Except then there was the Hungarian who swabbed it at the train station when I left London – so he’s probably to blame.  Most likely there was something in that noxious stuff he spewed over the keyboard that created more problems than the full stop not working anymore unless you stomp down on the full stop key.  He was a sweet young man but sweet young men have been known to do terrible things  Now I’m so pissed off I decide to go back to my studio to see if Netbook works when it’s plugged in and if it’s only that the battery is wonky.  So I take the RER from Luxembourg to the Gare du Nord which is the quickest way home (a term I used advisedly). 

The RER is not the Metro – though within Paris you can use the same ticket.  It is somewhere between a commuter train running workers into the central city from the suburbs and a (supposedly) inner city rapid transit system.  The problem is that it doesn’t go many places and you have to know the entire system of tunnels and connecting labyrinths – otherwise it’s probably faster taking the Metro.  But the Luxembourg Gardens are only serviced by the RER so, if you’re going from the Gare du Nord, it makes sense to take it. 

However, it does not make sense taking the RER to the Gare du Nord unless you are a masochist or an intrepid explorer or both (usually they are one and the same).  I’ll tell you why.  But first …

Northwest Paris is black both in the British sense of everyone being black except blue eyed, blond(e)s and in the American sense of people whose immediate ancestors originated in Africa.  The RER line B is a fascinating social anthropological model of what’s happened to metropolitan Paris.  If you get on at Gare du Nord, you could probably count the number of pale white faces on one hand (I don’t include myself in that category).  But after Les Halles, you could count the number of black faces on the same hand and come up with change.  If you closed your eyes when you got on and then open them ten minutes later, the car you’re travelling on would be just as crowded but it would seem as if a digital trick had been played and a positive print had been turned into a negative (or the other way around). 

Paris has always been a city of immigrants.  If you’re travelling east to west, there’s not much further you could go without falling into the sea.  So, in that sense, France is like California.  Similar in its absorption but different.  You don’t really find black ghettos in Paris like you do in the inner cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco (the banlieu is different).  But there is a curious dividing line that seems to separate the French-French from the immigrant French speakers – though I’m not really sure what or who the French-French are (and France is probably not that sure either).  During WWII the Vichy government tried to make a distinction between the native French Jews and the immigrant Jews, suggesting that it was the later who should be rounded up and sent to the gas chambers.  But that broke down when it became unclear who actually was an immigrant and how far back you were prepared to travel.  Also a good many French-French are swarthy enough to fit into the British definition of ‘black’ so I think we’re getting into angels on pins territory here.  The point I’m making, I fear, was lost several sentences back.  It does have something to do with travelling on the RER, however.

I was going to say why it was more difficult taking line B back to Gare du Nord.  The reason has to do with the subterranean world of that particular station which ranks with Les Halles-Chatelet as the most infuriating rabbit warren in which to take a wrong turn this side of Lewis Carroll.  Following the signs that say ‘sortie’ does absolutely no good.  You must know exactly which sortie you want and if you don’t then you might as well sit down and wait for the CRS police armed with submachine guns to sweep you up in their net for at least then you might find the light of day without wearing out a pair of perfectly good shoes in the process.  I blithely figured one sortie was as good as another.  It isn’t.  And I know Paris – sort of.  But when I was eventually spewed out into the light of day, I had no idea in the world where I was.  Nor did anyone I asked.  Because no one spoke either French or English.  Wherever it was, Gare du Nord was nowhere in sight.  I must have walked for thirty minutes before I could find someone to ask the directions to Rue Magenta.  By then I was suffering from dehydration.  My feet were as swollen as they would have been after a forced march through the Sahara. 

I did make it back eventually to my cosy little nest that seemed very cosy indeed after this unwanted adventure. 

I plugged my netbook in and it worked.  So did the battery.  What do you say about that Monsieur Delanoe? 

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.