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.

5-9-2010 - Train to the Midi

Later…Guido drove me to Milano Centrale to catch the train to Marseilles. We arrived early and said good-bye, and now I await the posting of the rail for the train to Ventimiglia, where I will transfer to Nice and from there to Marseilles, where I have (hopefully) a reservation at The Holiday. This will begin the “organized,” or commercial part of my trip.

From Milano to Ventimiglia… I showed my ticket to the conductor and this seems to be the correct train.  I’m in a compartment with (so far) five other people.  The train is underway and the surroundings of Milano are passing by quickly.  Wild poppies grow in patches along the side of the tracks.

I believe we just passed over the River Po beyond Pavia, going towards Genova.

We are now traveling along the Mediterranean Sea, still in Italy, approaching, I suppose, what can be considered the Cote d’Azure.  I hadn’t realized that the land here dropped so precipitously toward the sea.  The train has traveled through many tunnels and I have been wearing a mask after I started having breathing troubles in one of the earlier ones, before Genoa.  The sea is on the left, and mountains and hillsides rise steeply on the right.

In the train compartment with me are two American couples; now the whole compartment speaks English and is riding Eurail since two Italians left at Genoa.  Two of my compartment companions are American soldiers from Iraq on R & R.  They spent the past week in Rome and have another week before they must return to Iraq.  The other two, from Alaska, are celebrating their 25-year anniversary with a two-week trip to Europe.

Later, I’m on the train in the station, about to depart from Nice to Marseilles.  I hope I’m sitting in the correct seat and car. 

The trek from Ventemiglia to here was dreadful.  There was no lift (elevator) or even escalator in the station at Ventemiglia; there was no information on trains in the station; and the loungers in the station seemed deliberately ignorant.  Perhaps it is local sport to watch the tourists trying to navigate the obscure and difficult passageways in this out-of-the-way - but essential - transfer stop between Italy and France.  I had to bump my bags down the stairs from our arrival track, one at a time.  Then I carried the smaller one to the top of the stairs (uscita & vaggia), and was hauling the larger bag up one step at a time when a policeman (caribinieri) came down the stairs and carried it the rest of the way up.  The policemen also didn’t know anything about when or where the train to Nice departed from the station. 

There was also a claque of 10 – 15 sports fans, half full of booze: yelling, and singing, and beating on metallic drums, and blowing noisemakers.  It was almost impossible to ask questions or to understand answers in the station’s echo-chamber.  The ticket teller directed me to information; the lady there said that the train to Nice departed at 15:37, on Track 1, thankfully right next to the atrium of the station.  Indeed, there was a sign along the track indicating that a train left at 15:37 for somewhere like Crassa (no indication of Nice).  However, several others hanging out by the track seemed also to think that the train was going to Nice, and some of them spoke English.

We are now passing along the Cote d’Azure of southern France.  I don’t think I’d want to live here.  It’s too crowded with houses and apartments and hotels - rather like Miami.  The big difference is that the houses crop out of steep hillsides rather than rising from marsh and tidal flats.  Here’s an amazing patch of countryside, now – crumbling sandstone hills and mountains rising like dolomites or western badlands, a few houses collected in a valley.  Now here, again, the hills are tamer and houses grow out of them everywhere, like mushrooms in rainy season.

Roman arch in Marseilles

Berlin to Lausanne

5/1/10

On an ICE (intercity express) train from Berlin to Basel after four days and five nights with Maria and her family in Berlin.  She handles things amazingly well – two children almost ten years apart in age, and she is nearing age 50 with a three-year-old in tow. But she still looks like she’s thirty! They have a family life that more-or-less suits everyone. Michael has a great deal of help with her logistical support and her editorial assistance, and she has an interesting and varied (and prestigious) life as the wife of a journalist who travels a good deal. She and the children go with him perhaps half the time. She also seems to get a great deal of satisfaction from her role as mother, and is great with the boys. Harry is developing into a good-natured, independent person. Gabriel is a bit whiny and demanding, but some of that is probably because he was sick when I arrived and was not completely well when I left. Maria bends and weaves gracefully to accommodate the others' whims, so it all seems to work out. 

Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedaechtniskirche

The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Chuch was built by Kaiser Wilhelm II and dedicated to his grandfather, Kiser Wilhelm I in the 1890s. Kaiser Wilhelm II, urged the Austro-Hungarian empire to retaliate in Serbia, thus setting off World War I. He was the last emperor of Germany. The church was bombed and damaged irrevocably during World War II in a 1943 Berlin raid. After the war, it was decided to leave the damaged hull of the church standing, as a reminder of the destructiveness of war. Another modern church was built around it.

We are passing through the German countryside – mostly fields – green or brown (plowed) or yellow (rape-seed for oil?) and huge windmill farms here and there, their arms flapping lazily above the green and yellow.  Off to the left (I’m traveling backwards) is a village (Dorf) of quaint houses with steep roofs.  On the train, is a young boy, four or five years old, facing forward on a window seat next to his mother.  He’s enthralled with everything he sees out the window, and I understand essentially everything he exclaims to his mother about “gleiss” and “Kuhe,” u.s.w.  At our first stop he asks, “Steigen wir auf, jetzt?” which must be the German equivalent of “Are we there, yet?”  “Noch nicht,” says his mother, who offers him a coloring book and some colored pencils.

Later, the train is about to stop at Freiburg and my three elderly companions (a couple and her cousin) have left the table and will depart the train here to meet a daughter (& niece).  The train was very crowded between Kassels and Freiburg.  Young people sitting on the floor at the ends of cars, almost all the seats reserved.  I happened to snag one that was unreserved at a table where the other three seats were reserved by pleasant, low-key Germans about my age (must have been children during WWII).  This south-western part of the country is where I’ve spent most of the time I’ve lived and worked in Germany – first in a work camp near Deggingen, between Stuttgart and Ulm, in the summer of 1957, then visiting Lis in Freiburg when she was a student there in 1997, and then in Heidelberg, Kaiserslautern, and Wurzburg during my year in Europe with UMUC (2003 – 2004).

We’re far enough south now, that vineyards flank the railroad tracks.  The sky is overcast, and it has rained for the past couple of stops.  We’ll be coming to Basel, soon, but I won’t be able to spend any time there (as I hoped I might), because I need to get on to Lausanne to meet up with Mauricette, with whom I will stay a couple of days. After that, I go on to Milano.

Train to the Continent

4/25/10

Sunday morning, St. Pancras railway station. My train is scheduled to leave in an hour and a half.  I nearly got the departure time wrong, but checked at the ticket sales counter and straightened it out.  Good thing, too; I might have missed my train!  What an awful beginning to the European leg of my journey that could have been.  People-watching at the station is marvelous!  So many stories to watch as they play out, I hardly want to write.  Is it a spider that looks like a hairball or a hairball that looks like a spider skittering across this mottled floor?

Later.  I’m in the “waiting room” – through check-in at the train station – and find that my train has been cancelled.  Apparently, the one I was scheduled to take was one of those “add-ons” because of the volcano and the air traffic disruption, and it has now been cancelled.  But without telling anyone.  Even when I stopped at the ticket office to check on departure and arrival times, the clerk at the counter did not tell me the train had been cancelled.  If I had actually checked in earlier (instead of sitting out on the concourse people-watching and journal-writing), I might have made the earlier train, which was just leaving as I walked through the check-in gates.  The trains – at least the international ones here in London – have a baggage-screening process quite similar to that for airlines, except you don’t to have to take off your shoes.  And they must be willing to pass a Swiss-army knife, because I have one in my tummy pack.

14:35. Now on the train to Brussels, and from there, I hope it’s an easy transfer to Koln.  I’ll apparently arrive after 9:00 PM, and will have to stay the night in Koln.  We’ll see what’s available there when I arrive.

The train is passing through the green English countryside: rolling hills and vast expanses of fields and pastures, sheep grazing in some of them, and now cows.  A town, almost all newly built – townhouses squeezed together with tall, pointed roofs. Now we pass a huge power station.  Trees and bushes brushed with shades of green, yellow, and orange, some trees laden with white blossoms.  It’s amazing to see this extensive, thinly-populated countryside after the human density of London.

The train has passed through a long tunnel to Calais (France).  Two military men with guns (rifles?) pointed downward stood on each end of the quay, reminding me of one of the chief differences between travel in the present and in the past (before 9/11/2001). Then travelers were expected to be ordinary people, not terrorists intent on disrupting a foreign (read feared and despised) culture that they could not – and would not try to – understand. If the 20^th century can be considered the century of World Wars and the Cold War, this 21^st century may be viewed by history as the century of Global Terror and Terrorists.

Fields, some green and some brown, are visible above the whitish limestone gravel along the railway embankment.  Again, mostly empty fields, although here and there a canal – for barges or irrigation – reflects the sun with a silver glint.

Train to New York

4/18/2010

On the train north from Charleston, SC to New York.  We’ve passed the trailer villages and the back sides of strip malls in North Charleston and Goose Creek and are heading through freshly forested swamp lands toward the Pee Dee.

I’m very tired.  Got to bed about two o’clock last night and set the alarm for 5:30 this morning, barely giving me time to finish all I needed to do before leaving at 8:00 AM. It was closer to 8:30 when I finally left the house, for the second time, after turning around and going back home to turn off the hot-water heater.  I had a water-heater leak disaster just a week before departure, which put me back two or three days in the trip preparation process.  It was one of those old “photo-finishes,” which become more difficult as I get older.

So this is my last “big trip” as I’ve been telling friends, and I do think it’s time to put the Wanderlust behind me.   I’ve seen almost everything in the world I’ve wanted to see.  And the stress of ripping myself away from the sedentary pursuits of everyday life feels much more unpleasant than in the past.  I was probably mildly addicted to intermittent stress, but I’m sure not feeling a high from this latest round.  I hope I’ve paid my dues in grief for this trip and can truly enjoy it.

One of the stressors and detractors of the past two or three weeks is that I have also been trying to close on a house in West Ashley, which will give me more room than I have in the condo.  It’s a cute little house where I’ll have more space for friends, like the women’s group or the UU book group.  The living room and the dining room are connected, so there’s an open space for company.  The house has a screened-in back porch, great for the plants and for sitting outside when the weather’s O.K.  But negotiating the purchase has been time consuming and frustrating.  Although I have an excellent credit rating, I’m also heavily leveraged for my income. But I have a lot of liquid assets and a good deal of equity in the four properties I own.  So we’ll see how that all shakes out.  My daughter, Briana will be the limited power-of-attorney for the transaction.

This trip should be fun!  I’m hoping to reprise some of the sense of adventure I experienced traveling around Europe on my own in years past, while also saying good-bye to some of the places I loved then and will not see again. 

In New York, I’ll spend a couple days with Arlene and then fly to London, where I intend to spend three days at the British Museum. This is a bucket-list item; I've never visited it before.  From there, I’ll take the train to Berlin and spend nearly a week with my daughter, Maria, and her family, then go by train to Switzerland for a couple of days, and then on to Italy to visit Guido’s family.  After that, I’m signed up for an organ tour (through NPR), which begins in Marseilles, with scheduled stops to see and hear pipe organs throughout the south of France (le Midi).

Following the organ tour, I go back to Heathrow Airport to catch a plane to Kiev and will hook up with a Grand Circle Travel tour of Ukraine, western Russia (especially waterways) and the Baltics (Estonia and Finland).  That trip will last for three weeks or so. Then I’ll fly back to the U.S. from Finland via Heathrow.

Later…I tentatively constructed an itinerary for the Eurail portion of the trip. It looks like I’ll have to make reservations (and maybe even pay supplements) for more than half the legs of this centipede-like journey.  Ten trains in all.  It’s a good thing I love to ride the rails!

Right now, the scenery outside the window seems like a foreign country.  The back-sides of buildings with their trash bins, the weeds thigh-high, Virginia creeper crawling up downspouts toward the eaves.  A mound of metal trash rises roof-high in a fenced yard.  Two boys stand beside a trestle painting still another layer on the graffiti-festooned cement.  A small graveyard sits in the midst of a cultivated field, at the edge of which tilts an off-kilter, rusted tobacco barn.

Fan-tracery ceiling, Unitarian Church, Charleston