The Exhilaration Begins (ie, the Suffering)

At 9:00 in the morning I finally arrived in Paris, or really rather outside Paris at Charles de Gaulle. It was only 2 AM in my local timezone but without any sleep I was just starting what was to be a very long day indeed.

I have to admit to not being terribly impressed with the beauty of the airport in the city of romance. Charles de Gaulle looks like a monstrous structure built in the 1970s and not much cared for since, which is in fact what it is.

Fearing all sorts of interrogations at customs I had brought a whole sheaf of papers proving my financial viability and the virtues of my employer, every kind of identification and all sorts of other documents, certificates, credentials, records, deeds and titles. In the end the guy just stamped my passport without a glance upwards and said bonne journée.

And so ended the easy part. Next I gathered my 150 pounds of luggage which I had only packed the night before, and quickly realized that unless I could pull out a can of Popeye spinach I was probably going to be doomed rather quickly. Even though I had only brought a small fraction of what I thought might be needed for a three-month trip, I discovered that I had brought many fractions more than was actually practical.

Next began a torture routine complete with sleep deprivation that would have been the envy of the drill sergeants at Parris Island (the Parris in South Carolina, not France). From Terminal 1 I took the shuttle to Terminal 2, or maybe it was 3, since some hieroglyphic signs indicated that might be the one where I could catch the train to Paris du Nord (the train station in downtown Paris).

This terminal looked like a level from Donkey Kong with multiple floors and escalators hither and fro, not all of which were operable. I found an area with probably 40 SNCF terminals where you could theoretically buy a train ticket (SNCF is the national train service in France).

Unfortunately these terminals assumed I  had some kind of Navigo card which I did not, and wouldn’t let me proceed past the first screen without one. I managed to ask someone who spoke some English what I needed to do and he said I needed go to the SNCF ticket counter instead.

So I got in line at the counter and after an eternity went up to the window to some lady who spoke zero English. She made known to me somehow that I needed to go back out to the machines and speak to mes collègue. I tried to tell her that her colleague had already sent me to her, but got nowhere.

I decided to take the shuttle to Terminal 3, or maybe it was 2, not because I thought the trains were better there but because I hoped I would find someone who spoke better English there. Off we go with my huge Army seabag on my back and two wheeled duffles in a long train behind me.

At the other terminal I went again to the SNCF ticket counter. This lady spoke some English but she said I couldn’t get a train to Amiens from there for some reason I couldn’t understand, but she said she could get me a ticket to downtown which I agreed to, since I sort of had understood from the internet that that is where I needed start from anyway.

She gave me a very small ticket like the kind you get at the the amusement park. After much fumbling and looking bewildered I found I could insert it into a hidden slot in a turnstile thing and two tiny doors would spring open to let you through, if you are quick. I got through the doors but they closed on my bags trailing behind me, which were in any case pretty much too wide to fit through anyway. This was bad enough but of course as always I had twenty people behind me who all immediately groaned and grumbled at their horrible misfortune to be stuck behind such an idiot.

So not for the first or last time I found myself in a pickle that was not only bad for me but had inconvenienced all of the rest of France too.

A tall Nigerian behind me kicked my bags and I pulled as hard as I could until I finally got through, luggage and ego in tatters.

The train ride to downtown passed through some rather bleak surroundings. Of course along the train tracks perhaps is not the most beautiful area, but this was hopeless – crumbling buildings, graffiti, trash. I wondered if I had accidentally landed in Mogadishu. I didn’t see the Eiffel tower or any of the other famous Paris landmarks but I comforted myself with the thought that Mogadishu probably doesn’t even have any ancient buildings to crumble, and so on we went.

Paris Nord is a gargantuan facility. There is the main train terminal but also several others surrounding it accessible by rat tunnels, dark and unmarked service corridors and yet more broken escalators on at least three different levels. In rather short order I was able to get a ticket from a different kind of machine, but unfortunately the ticket it spit out was a big piece of paper and all the turnstiles took the small ticket like I’d gotten earlier. This didn’t stop me from trying to cram it in anyway, with no effect. I waved my paper at various peoples and kept getting told to go somewhere else; never a specific somewhere else that I understood, but just over there, or upstairs, or the other area, or là-bas, or basically anywhere besides where I was already at. I walked around for about two hours back and forth and got nowhere.

A peek outside Gare du Nord

About this time I was beginning to hallucinate and had come to the end of my physical strength from hauling so much weight up and down stairs. I was also desperately thirsty and began to fear I would become nauseous.

At one point I went to some kind of glassed-in service desk to ask for help but the lady wouldn’t answer my questions, she just kept saying something about votre sang. I then saw that I was bleeding from my left hand all over the ancient marble counter. I tried to wipe it off with my other hand but just managed to leave a huge smeared bloody mess while ten people behind me looked on in disgust. Mortified, I slinked away and if she told me anything helpful I don’t remember it, but she was more busy scouring her little cube for medical supplies which she apologized to me that she couldn’t find.  

Eventually through some miracle I don’t recall I found myself back where I had first disembarked and found a train conductor in a fancy hat that told me right here is the train you need sir, and it’s leaving in a few minutes. I hadn’t needed to lug my body and baggage all over creation after all! Of course even then there was no sign I could see anywhere that even mentioned my train or that this was the platform it was at. I took his word for it and got on, and was grateful he accepted my too-big ticket and randomly punched some holes in it.

I also pulled out the emergency bandaid I had carried in my wallet for about 20 years and congratulated myself on my foresight so many lifetimes ago. Of course if I’d had the same powers of foresight 20 hours ago I wouldn’t have brought so much luggage or torn my hands to begin with.

Of course by this time I had missed two different trains and the one I was now on had a stop in Creil. The train app on my phone told me that at Creil there was a section à pied to get to the connecting train, which filled me with dread. But the only other trains to Amiens were even later in the evening and I didn’t dare wait for them since the French train workers were going on national strike later that very same day as I was constantly being reminded of by signs and announcements everywhere. (These announcements kept flashing on every screen in the various train stations and I suspect obscured a lot of the crucial information I was looking for.)

At Creil my worst fears were realized when it became obvious that the platform I had been deposited on was not the same platform that the final train was departing from, and to get to the other one I had to go down a long stairway into an underground tunnel, then across and back up another flight of stairs. No escalators. And I only had 7 minutes to make it.

With no physical strength left going back up the stairs was excruciatingly slow. Fifty pounds on my back, one hand on the rail to help me pull, and the other hand being wrenched out of its socket holding on to an additional 100 pounds of weight behind me, one very slow step at a time. An illogical fear took hold that I might simply not be able to make it and I would be stuck on that staircase in the dark, a humiliated failure that would somehow never be able to recover.

After about 8 minutes I made it to the other platform just to see my train pulling away. I was the only person left and it looked like I was in the middle of nowhere.

At least there was a functional TV screen that showed another train coming, but which was also late. It had started to get quite cold and I rummaged in my bags and found a coat, then I collapsed on the ground amidst of heap of luggage.

Stuck at Creil

By this time I would have given a thousand dollars for a drink of water. In a surreal twist I was texting my family in the States who were looking at the train station on Google satellite view, and they kept telling me that Criel has a real nice station with shops where I could surely get une bouteille d’eau.

In one direction I could see nothing but empty tracks, and behind me an idle train that blocked all further view. Perhaps if I braved the tunnels again I could find these refreshing shops spoken of in legend on Google Earth, but I didn’t have the energy even to contemplate such an attempt.

No water-bottle shops in sight.

The next train was quite late and I spent close to two hours on the platform, shivering uncontrollably. When it finally approached the TV screen updated with the final insult – it would arrive back at the original platform. Back down the stairs I went for a final time after what already felt like was for sure my final time.

Back at the original platform I could now see the station and “shops” yet another platform away, but they looked closed and deserted so thankfully I hadn’t bothered trying to reach them.

The shops don’t look too active.

This final train was already standing room only by the time I boarded with my forty bags. I stood the entire hour-long trip in a small hallway next to the bathroom annoying once again everyone in France.

We arrived in Amiens just as the sun fell beneath the horizon and a thick fog set in. My hotel was only a block away from the station and I just wanted to go and collapse but I had also rented a car for the first few days and the rental office was about to close so I schlepped my stuff there instead.

Exiting the Amiens train station.

Thankfully the guy at the car place spoke English. He handed me the keys to what looked like a glorified go-kart and we barely managed to fit my bags into the backseat and the “trunk” which was not a trunk. The bags took up so much space it displaced a lid thing in the trunk-but-not-a-trunk area such that I had zero visibility out the rear window.

I don’t know what back-area they pulled this car from but when he gave me the keys it was already parked between a lamppost and a street sign with about three centimeters to spare, so just getting on to the road without crashing in the first few seconds was already a challenge. In case I forgot to say, the car was also stick shift. Thank goodness I do know how to drive stick but I haven’t in over six years so I was anything but proficient.

As soon as I got on the road I felt I had maybe gotten myself into yet another pit of despair. The French drivers have no idea of space or traffic rules, if there are any. The roads are ridiculously narrow and none of them straight. Worst of all, I saw cars, cars everywhere but not a parking spot in sight.

I drove around the area for close to an hour and wondered if I would be destined to live out my days stuck in a car with never any escape. Eventually I noticed a parking sign right next to my hotel with an arrow pointing down, but I could see no parking. I circled several times before I finally mustered the courage or stupidity to follow the arrow straight onto the sidewalk, where I barely squeezed past two metal posts set into the ground that appeared deliberately placed to keep cars out, but which after getting past them revealed a steep ramp into an underground garage.

After more than a day of travel I’d finally made it. Was I tempted to flop straight into bed? No, I couldn’t resist walking out to find the cathedral, which I did, shrouded in fog. It was closed but the exterior was still perhaps the most unbelievable thing I had ever seen with either one of my eyeballs. I got lost on the way back to the hotel and my phone died and I wandered around for another eternity, completely out of my mind with delirium. But then I did flop straight into bed.

The cathedral found.

Le Chariot

I have been extremely fortunate to get an apartment located in downtown Amiens and literally across the street from a grocery store. However when you first move into a new place there are always some items you need that you can’t get at a small store, so while I had the rental car for a few days I’ve made several trips out to the suburbs to Auchan, which is more or less the French equivalent of Super Target or Fred Meyers.

The store itself (in Dury) is reached from the inside of a mall, far at the back. I walked all the way in but when I got to the store I could find no carts. I made some questioning grunts and gestures to the police officer at the entrance (there are police all over the place here, which I guess is reassuring), and he said à l’extérieur!

So I walk all the way back out but I don’t see any carts near the entrance. I go back out to the parking area which is actually multi-level and on the top level I find a rack of carts.

Malheureusement pour moi, they are all chained together with a little lockbox on each handle where it looks like you might have to insert a coin.

In the US the discount food chain Aldi’s has a similar system. I went to that store once with my little sister (it was too scary to go alone) and I didn’t like it for several reasons, but the stupid cart thing was one. At least in my home state I really don’t know how big an issue it is for homeless people to walk off with a grocery cart out into the wind-swept prairie. Even if that were a problem I don’t see how even an indigent ne’er-do-well couldn’t scrounge up a quarter to overcome the high-tech Aldi’s cart security system. 

Be that as it may, that single trip to the land of dirt people had given me the crucial piece of hip street knowledge unknown in the rarified social circles of which I am a certified celebrity, and now I could put that knowledge to good use. I even happened to have several euro coins on me which seemed very fortuitous.

Try as I might however I could not get the dang thing to take a single coin of any shape or denomination. At this time an employee who was returning several more carts approached and I asked Comment ça marche? (How it works?) He said nothing but with a look of disgust on his face inserted a special key which unlocked a cart. I thanked him and thus learned the entirely wrong lesson.

The next day, still lacking various necessities for my person (I feel sorry for any French people trying to translate this), I returned to Auchan for a second time.

Now I was an old pro. I would stand outside in the rain at the top of the car park and wait for the friendly munchkin to arrive as if by magic with his clé.

Of course, no such assistance was found to be forthcoming. Finally some elderly women approached and with a slight of hand I couldn’t detect managed to free a cart.

Again I asked in some sort of butchered French “what the hay!?” They rattled off some words of which I only understood un euro. So the dang thing needed a coin after all.

Having learned the wrong lesson the day before I had decided to leave all my euro coins at home. I’ve never been in the habit of carrying around loose change anyway, although in Europe I’m learning it’s kind of a necessity since the smallest paper bill is 5 euros. Just because I don’t like clutter I had already thrown away a bunch of euro coins before I realized some of them were half-way valuable.

(Diversion: and yes, France is a first-world country that takes credit cards, but America is a apparently another-world country obsessed with security to the point of absurdity. Already in one week I can’t remember the number of times my cards have been declined because my bank decides to block the transaction since who else but a crook would be stuck at the exit booth of a parking garage with fifty people honking behind him, trying to pay for his parking? And yes, I notified all my cards of my travel before-hand. They still decline willy-nilly but actually not even willy-nilly, only when you are bleeding at the train station trying to buy a ticket or are in some other critical predicament. So I have begun to use cash. END RANT.)

Anyway, back to l’intérieur. It’s Sunday and most of the shops are closed, but I find a fancy upscale café that is open. I quickly look up the French word for grocery cart which Google assures me is definitely chariot. I speak to the man at the counter with my flawless French accent: Excuse moi monsieur, mais j’ai besoin un euro pour mon chariot.

I get a look of considerable annoyance and he says, Chariot?

“This is a first,” I think to myself. “I’ve had a lot of people who can’t speak English but this guy is working at a fancy restaurant and he can’t even understand proper French which we all know was written by Google.”

I make a pushing motion with my hands and say “cart” and he immediately understands. Now he starts to smile and I no longer get the vibe he wishes me dead. He happily changes my bill for coins and helpfully points out which one is the single euro coin. It ended up being a positive interaction and I look back on it with warmth even now, since most of the rest have ended in tears and heartbreak.

Ok, back out to the parking garage all over again (I trust the dear reader by this point is getting the idea that every little simple task takes about three hours to accomplish and in such a way days go by packed with activity but very little to show for it). Even now with the correct coin and the correct knowledge that stupid thing did not want to go in. I had to Jackie-Chan it before I finally freed myself a chariot.

It goes to show that when you have no clue what on earth you are doing, and in short possess zero contextual knowledge, even simple things become nearly impossible and you are very easily misled down pointless rabbit trails even when your first instincts were correct.

Don’t know what the lesson is in that. I guess make sure you know what you are doing before you do anything.

Le Chariot, Part Deux

Just this morning I was at a store and I saw a lady trying to hold about ten items in her two hands and reaching for an eleventh. She then mentioned to her small daughter who was with her something about needing to trouve un chariot (find a cart). Aha! Here was my evidence in the wild, by a real native speaker, that indeed chariot is the correct word for shopping cart.

I guess the guy before must not have been confused about my choice of words, but rather why I was inside The White Pub on Sunday morning asking for a shopping cart…

The White Pub at Aushopping Amiens Sud