From Toulouse to Paris

So my blogging hiatus is over now, and you've had plenty of time to check out the book, "Korea, Are You at Peace," which has been blatantly advertised on this site for the past two months. You can still order it by clicking on the image to the right of the blog.

Now, let's get back to the travel adventures of the summer of 2010. Some may remember that this was the European Odyssey where I basically saw and did everything in Europe that I still wanted to do before I die (the bucket list). It started out with three days at the British Museum,  http://solowomenathomeandabroad.blogspot.com/2012/03/british-museum.html
 followed by train trips to Berlin and Milano to visit family (and pseudo-family), and then a wonderful tour of organs in southern France. Let us pick up the thread again from my journals.

5/21/10

On the TGV (tres grande vitesse) train from Toulouse to Paris.  The countryside truly does whiz by on this train, but the ride is quite smooth.  It seems to list and squeak a bit on the curves, but all in all it is a very satisfactory ride.

 

There was some seat snafu here (as on a previous train). I thought I was in Car 5, whereas I was actually in car 6.  So after having settled in, a couple came in and bumped me, and when I came to the correct car, there was a young woman sitting in my seat, and she seemed to be (claimed to be) deaf, so I took the seat across the aisle, which is perfectly O.K. unless someone comes along to bump me again.  Passing another train going in the opposite direction sounds like a couple of seconds in a wind tunnel.
 

I had essentially NO time on the organ tour to record events and impressions, nor to finish up on the Italy trip, so I’ll try to do as much of that as possible on this train trip and for the next couple of days.  I will fly out of Heathrow (God willing and the ash-cloud doesn’t return) on Monday morning for Kiev.  Hopefully, on that trip, I’ll have more time to write as we ply the rivers and canals of Russia.

On the TGV, we stopped at Bordeaux and are now passing over the River …  In full view is a large, gothic cathedral with a huge tower and spire.  That is a cathedral I’ve never visited.  Rivers and canals seem to criss-cross this entire countryside;  occasionally, a canal will run alongside the railroad tracks.
 

Later… I got into Paris (Montparnasse) about 3:00 PM and spent the next hour scouting the train station for a map of Paris and getting to the Metro, line 4, that would take me to the Gare du Nord.  After looking at a map of Paris and realizing how far Gare du Nord was from Montparnasse, I decided not to take a taxi, especially after having gotten ripped off by the taxi driver in Marseilles.  He claimed I owed him 41 euros after quoting a price of 21 euros, which was already probably twice what it should have cost from the train station to the hotel, as confirmed by someone else in the organ tour group.  

So I schlepped my two bags up and down escalators and staircases, sometimes with the help of a young, gallant Frenchman, sometimes by myself.  The strategy (especially with escalators) was to take one case down, then climb the stairs and bring the other one down.  Eventually, I developed a strategy (going up) of turning both cases sideways, holding them with my left hand, and grabbing the handrail with the right.  It was awkward, but it worked.  I even did that once going down, though it took me a little prep time, and the guy in front of me kept looking backwards, probably glad I was a good ways behind him, lest I and my bags should come tumbling down upon him.  And of course, the folks behind me were no doubt holding up access to the escalator, although no one came and offered to help.  One fellow did offer to help as I was getting ready to do the double-bag up an escalator at the Gare du Nord, though, a sturdy young black man with a perfect French accent.  There were no elevators that I could find at either train station. 

 

I 'm now at the Mercure Hotel, across from the Gar du Nord in Paris.  My train for London will leave from there tomorrow morning at 7:30 AM.  It’s about 8:30 PM now, and I’m going to bed soon because I have to get up at 5:30 AM.  It feels pleasant and comfortable here in Paris.  Perhaps I should have planned to spend an extra day here rather than in London.  Ah well, what is, is.  I’ll try to begin writing about the Pipedreams tour tomorrow.  Now, I need some sleep.

Travel-Lust

Moving into the “new” house has forced me to sift through a lifetime of accumulated things: furniture, dishes, books, records, photos, mementos, and travel supplies…ah yes, travel supplies and travel books and travel mementos and travel writing.

I have traveled as often as possible, and for as long as was reasonable, since age ten when my father took me to the big city of Chicago from the one-stoplight town of Waterford, Michigan, and my eyes were opened to the wonders of the wider world – indeed the wider universe - through the museums and planetarium that dotted Chicago’s south shore in the late 1940s.  They’re there still, although I have not been in that part of the country since my brother moved away from Chicago in the late 1990s.

But I have traveled to many other parts of the country and the world since then.  My first "independent" travel was on a boat (could it have been called a ship?) to Niagara Falls from Detroit when only fifteen years of age.  A friend, aged sixteen, and I decided that we wanted to go to Niagara Falls, and our parents gave permission; indeed, my folks drove us to the boat docks in Detroit.   We each paid for our trip with money we had saved from summer jobs car-hopping at the Dixie Spot near Clarkston, Michigan. I sacrificed new fall school clothes for that trip. After discovering that we had no parents with us, several kindly couples took us under their wings, but we were basically free to go and come as we pleased.  I loved the trip.  I loved the magnificent grandeur of the falls. I loved the sense of freedom and the thrill of unfettered exploration I experienced then. 

But it has not been just the sights of awesome places, the scenes I might try to capture on film, that so stirred my travel-lust. It was also sounds, smells, the feel of the air on my skin, the slant and hue of sunlight., the aura of a place as it penetrated my inner being.   Years later, I taught Anatomy for a semester at the University of Buffalo, and almost every week-end, I went to see The Falls.  They’re still awe-inspiring and stunningly beautiful; I never tired of experiencing the rush of water, the dreadful, thrilling sound like droning thunder as water plummeted and crashed onto boulders below, the mist glistening on rocks and tree limbs and cooling my lungs with each deep breath.  These were mystical experiences, like being in love; I always felt transformed as I left.

In 1956-57, I spent a year studying in Paris, long before it was fashionable for American college students to go abroad as part of a well rounded education.  I studied history and language in French; I spent mornings sketching and painting at the Atelier Julien. I wandered the streets of Paris, taking a new route each afternoon from the Left Bank across the Seine to my room with a family in the 19^th arrondissement near Gare St. Lazare.  I stopped at coffee shops along the zig-zag meanderings of those afternoons.  I visited the Louvre frequently.  I crossed bridges and walked through cemeteries and sat in small parks beneath trees under statues of unknown Frenchmen.  When it was about an hour before dinner time, I would find a Metro station and travel underground to Gare St. Lazare. 

I can still see and smell and feel the streets of Paris in some deep recess of my memory.  Someday I’d like to live there again for a month or two.  But that probably won’t happen.  It’s like home or love; you can’t go back.  And I have also traveled to - and lived in - many other places with sights and smells and auras that were loved and left, but not quite lost.

Perhaps the value of a person, place or thing might be measured by the pain we feel as we leave it or lose it.