I’m going to try not to check emails more than once a day on my little phone, and have told people to text rather than call. It will take a day or two to get out of my usual habits but I think doing a long and challenging trip like this is a good thing. I mean to observe people and describe what I see, rather than indulge in deep introspection.
Later, at the hotel - Whew, privacy at last; my carriage on the train was afflicted with braying adolescents ALL the way to London, then the confusion of finding the hotel, but now I’m here and have eaten some little tiropittas (Greek cheese pies) I found in Marks and Sparks in Euston and can catch up. I’ve been comforted by the number of OTHER people I’ve seen looking lost and bewildered and it’s made me feel less timid. I’m VERY glad I printed out a map of where the hotel is, this part of London is a madhouse.
Ouf. Good to get out of my clothes. It really is a conundrum and problem, this How To Travel Light. My bags aren’t uncomfortably heavy but are still a bit unwieldy and awkward and I feel I’m lugging too much. Clothes I chose to travel in are just right, however, so I haven’t got everything wrong. There’s nothing like a pair of perfect jeans when you come right down to it, even if they’re black and not denim.
Hotel room’s just a bed in a box, really; no phone, no hairdryer, etc. Not surprising it’s ‘only’ £50 per night. Tiny balcony so I could escape if there were a fire. Bed’s nice though and I only need somewhere to sleep. The square outside is quiet and leafy and quite different from the chaos of King’s Cross/St Pancras just a couple of blocks away. When I checked-in the man at the front desk was one of those people who make you feel strangely intrusive with their unwelcoming, slightly resentful air of being put-upon, and as he’d already checked-in someone else (mistakenly) under my name he was in no mood to be welcoming to me. But I didn’t bother over it, just took my key and escaped up to my room. Breakfast apparently is served in the basement, that’ll be interesting.
4th May - Breakfast in a sort of basement, but they had really made an effort with it; walls painted to resemble pale marble, ceiling rag-painted to look like sky, and every bit of the tables and breakfast settings spotlessly clean and shining. There were some rather hysterical-looking abstract paintings on the walls which at first glance looked hopelessly naive but with study began to reveal some real effort at 'effects'. I wouldn't want to look at them every morning over my breakfast. Two of the - I suppose they were waitresses - sitting at the other end of the room were chattering away over the radio which was just barking-out more election stuff. As I went out I asked the younger one what language they were speaking and she told me it was Albanian. I said how do you say thank-you in Albanian and she told me 'A-tchoo'. (I think I learned and forgot this once upon a time somewhere else as it sounds familiar) They were all friendly smiles when I left, despite, or perhaps because of, my not having opted for a cooked breakfast.
Am considering walking from Gard du Nord to Gare de Bercy; on my little map it seems to be do-able and after all I have got hours and hours between arriving in Paris and getting on the sleeper. Carrying my bulky-but-not-too-heavy bag yesterday didn't seem too bad...I'll see. My map is the one I got on my first visit to Paris in 1971, so hopelessly outdated, but I get a sort of pleasure from making-do with it. It's so small and neat and I doubt if one this size would be easy to find these days. And of course the main thoroughfares won't have changed. But the Gare de Bercy isn't even on it, apparently it was built later to accommodate the sleeper services to the South. I looked up how to find it on Google before I left home; I even 'googled' it at street view so in a way I've already walked the last bit, between the Gare de Lyon and Bercy.
Later - in Paris. The Eurostar station at St Pancras is probably quite easy to understand once you're familiar with it, but this morning I felt totally bewildered and it took me ages to work out the logistics. I had a letter I wanted to post before I left the UK, and couldn't find a postbox anywhere outside the station. I asked a girl at a news kiosk inside if there was a postbox somewhere within the station but she didn't know, and when I asked her if she would be so kind as to pop my letter in a box herself at some point in the day, she drew back as if I were asking her to deliver it by hand, and said she couldn't possibly do that. Asking other officials, I was finally told there was a postbox on the counter at Information. Getting up to the counter was almost impossible since there was a huge crowd waiting to board just at the gate in front of it, but suddenly their train was boarding and I managed to struggle through. The 'postbox' was a strange grey, almost unmarked box the size of a large shoebox and looked like a play postbox. I slipped my letter in the narrow slot with grave forebodings that it would still be sitting in the bottom of the box when I returned in a month's time. (In fact, the letter was delivered perfectly normally. So much for unnecessary anxieties)
It was a nice smooth journey under the Channel - it always takes nineteen minutes in the actual tunnel, and then there is that wonderful moment when you come out into the light again and it's France. Coming into the Gard du Nord I was struck by the graffiti along the walls on the approach, and said to the two young men across from me (with whom I'd carefully NOT talked during the journey) that "it could be Paddington". They turned out to be delightful Americans from California, students travelling with a group of others, but agreed about the graffiti as if they were familiar with Paddington too, or perhaps it was just generic graffiti they meant. When they told me they were American, I said, before thinking, "I'd never have guessed" and then thought oops, but they were delighted to have been mistaken for English.
I'd not bothered to get Metro tickets at St Pancras (the French call it "San Pong-CRAH") - you can buy a book of ten or twelve at the Eurostar desk - and as there was so much time to kill, I decided to see if I really could - bags and all - do the walk from Nord to Bercy (which on the map seemed to be at the other end of central Paris). I went slightly wrong at the Place de la Republique - not my map's fault, I misread a street sign and took a turning too soon - but that didn't matter as it brought me out on the river a little sooner so I walked along the Seine and got a glimpse of Notre Dame behind some other buildings. If my bag had been lighter I'd have wandered more; Paris is easy to decipher. I'm VERY glad I chose to walk, it was very nice to drink in all the atmospheres, busy in the big open squares and then quiet in the smaller tree-shaded out-of-the-way corners. I even stopped to have my tiny bottle of vin blanc (bought in Penzance and stashed in the bottom of my rucksack) and the pain au chocolat I'd bought at San Pongcrah, in a little park along my way. It had a metal, thigh-high fence with a gate I couldn't at first open, and a group of Chinese people sitting just inside the fence kept gesticulating at me about how to open the gate, but I couldn't understand what they were trying to tell me until one of them got up and opened it for me, and I realised I’d mistaken a section of the fence for the gate and was trying to open that instead. Feeling like a prize idiot, but not caring very much, I thanked them and sat down. After the vin blanc I felt even less bothered. Fortunately it wasn’t a large bottle and I had no trouble finding my way for the rest of the route. I didn’t feel at all out of place in Paris, in a way my lack of fluency in French almost makes it easier to get along - you have to be more alert. (Not that it helped me understand that gate) At one point I felt I was walking through the Wardour Street of Paris, as in London, there were lots of shops selling wholesale exotic trims, beads and buttons, silks, and so forth. Merry-go-round in Place de la Republique, boat trips on the Seine. V. breezy and rather overcast but dry. I’m really proud of myself for walking it.
Just paused to reflect that if I'd flown, I'd be in Santorini by now and perhaps even on the way to Naxos on the ferry. But I would have then missed getting the 'feel' of it - and that walk across Paris. Plus yet to come, the Bologna/Bari trip, the ferry across to Patras, the battle to find my way to Athens/Piraeus (this is the one bit I wasn't able to reserve and I'm not yet even sure whether I'm going to go by train or by bus. All accounts say the train is far nicer, but the bus takes half the time and is more direct. I think a lot about which to opt for, but haven't yet decided) It's really only just begun.
Later: at Gare de Bercy, waiting for the sleeper to start boarding: discovered the down side of the cross-Paris walk: very sore feet and the consequent nervous and fidgety legs. It's a long and tedious wait even in the deluxe upstairs waiting room which I remembered I was eligible to use, after waiting for about an hour amongst the hoi polloi downstairs. (It was a true mix, from noisy school parties to businessmen and bag ladies, plus lots of almost-tame sparrows.) Only an hour more, and I daresay we board in plenty of time to get settled before we leave.
On the train: nail-biting and very personal drama when I sat in the three-person sleeper and waited to see with whom I would be sharing. Time went by, and went by, and finally as 18.52 (departure time) came and went I thought, YES, got it to myself, then immediately thought (as the train had actually not yet left) that it was hubris to dare to rejoice until I was totally sure. That was wise, as by and by the conductor/attendant came in and with a mixture of officious dictation and shamefacedness simple pointed down the carriage and said "number eleven". I, gently stubborn, said "but this is my reservation", and he (not speaking much English) said with more exasperation, "Is just the same, only two." And when I still hesitated (so reluctant to share when I'd been so painfully near to having my own compartment!) he said with a helpless frustration "only I have a problem in the next car" at which I admitted defeat and came quietly. My companion turns out to be a stout elderly lady going to Rome who speaks no English. We have established both this and that I speak no Italian, though when I said my only bit of fluent Italian, which means, 'my grandmother was Italian, she came from Naples, and my name is Julia', she looked at me a shade askance but warily said "bravissimo". Since then we keep to our separate seats and read our separate books. She’s wearing - though quite a substantial person - a flounced denim skirt with a colourful blouse in oranges and greens, her hair is a sort of (probably assisted) auburn and she has a look of my Aunt Adelina about her, which is not surprising because Aunt Adelina was my Italian grandmother’s twin sister (though they were not identical and she doesn’t look at all like my grandmother). I doubt if I need worry about my...
...I was just going to write ‘my money’ (this had concerned me about sharing with strangers, I had planned to sleep with my rucksack between me and the wall so no one could get at my papers and money without waking me). But just then an Italian version of my daughter’s boyfriend (I love the way Italians so beautifully pronounce their words, I could almost understand what he was saying) came in and took her away to another compartment - so in the end it seems I am sole ruler of this new compartment after all. The first conductor, the one who had been so stressed about it all, looked in over the shoulder of the new conductor as the lady left and gave me a thumbs-up sign. She herself said “Arrivederci” and “Va bene” to which I replied “e lei” (and you).
It must be a perpetual nightmare keeping everybody happy on these sleepers. I shall all the more appreciate my solitude now that I know how precious it is. We are travelling South in the falling dusk - in the morning, very early, I will be in Bologna. I shall watch the land go by. I’ve just booked dinner in the dining car - someone came by and handed me a menu and wanted to know right away if I wanted dinner, so I decided it would be silly not to make the most of the experience.
Later: Well worth it! I was put at a table with three other ladies, all travelling on their own, and thought to myself, ok, just do your best. Two of the ladies were reading, one very stylish oldish lady reading a magazine about the couture collections, the other lady looked a lot tougher and was reading current affairs I think. Anyway both were amiable enough when I said hello. The current affairs one spoke to me in French and I replied with my usual line, “Je suis Americaine, j’habite en Angleterre, et je ne parle pas beaucoup de Francais” She commented something like “But you DO speak French?!” (in French) and said to the others that my accent was so good. (This is always getting me into trouble of one sort or another). So I dredged up enough to say that my teacher had been French (lie). Anyway that won me over to her and for the rest of the meal I smilingly listened to her saying stuff I simply couldn’t understand, though towards the end she began to speak of how much she liked Turkey and Africa, which I could follow a bit better. The stylish one I expected to be less friendly, she looked as if she might be more judgmental, but though she spoke mostly Italian with a little French and no English, she warmed to the rest of us during the meal. But the one who held us all together was the lady I sat next to, who explained that she was English/French - her English was perfect - plus a bit of German. She said she travelled to the UK a lot for her work, also all over Europe (she was involved in ‘selling medical test kits’ she said). She told me that these night trains were being phased out and that because of this the facilities were poor at best, since it wasn’t in their interest to spend money on maintaining them. She talked about memories of her childhood, travelling in England on English trains. I did a lot of listening and asking questions. She was going to a conference in Florence and had booked to arrive a few days early so she could enjoy the city before starting work; she said she had nearly missed the train in Paris because she had been trying to get to the bank and had hardly any cash on her - she said she hoped the waiter would accept a credit card for her meal payment (he did make a fuss but in the end she managed to persuade him). I had tortellini with tomato and basil, and an orange, though I could have had meat and potatoes and a big plate of vegetables if I’d wanted; I don’t like eating too much when I’m travelling. The ‘sturdy’ lady - the current affairs one - kept arguing about what food was on offer and kept getting cross because the waiter would only speak Italian and pretended (she said) not to understand her questions in French. Meanwhile the stylish one, who spoke mostly Italian, managed to get for herself something not on the menu at all - mozzarella with Parma ham - that really got the sturdy one’s back up. (my seatmate and I kept exchanging looks). But by the end we’d all become really friendly and when I left we all wished each other a sincere bonne nuit. I wouldn’t have missed that - it was a real exercise in human character study.
Quarter past ten - time for bed. When I got back from dinner both of the bunks had been lowered and made up for the night. I’ve bagged the top one. I have to be up around five in the morning I think, as the train only stops for a few minutes in Bologna for us to get off and then goes on into Italy. Part of me would love to be going on to Florence. I must put it on a list of future trips perhaps. Bologna to Bari tomorrow and then tomorrow night a deck place on the ferry. How will that be? Had better get all the sleep I can tonight.
Sign on the inside of the door of the sleeper compartment: “In the event of declenchment of audible alarm evacuer the compartment without precipitation and come into contact with the crew.”
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