Day 8 Tuesday 21 February 2012

Paris to Carhaix-Plouguer, France 587 km/365 miles Cumulative total 1441 km/896 miles

So goodbye to Paris, under glorious sunshine, city of romance and lousy wifi connections. My almost daily trips to Mc Donalds just weren’t enough to keep on top of things. I thought there might be wifi on the TGV, but apparently not. C’est la vie.
For a moment there, we must have passed close enough to a hotspot to be recognised, but it’s gone again, it never connected.
Through woodland now, rows upon rows of tall skinny winter trees, they must be some kind of plantation as they are in such neat lines, but all are infested with mistletoe. Ah, that’s the French for you!
At the hotel in Paris, after the experiences with the Wardrobe (and the Paris metro even without the wardrobe), I’d decided to get a taxi to the station. I got the Wardrobe into the lift, then down to reception, and dragged it out again.
I didn’t recognise the guy on reception, but asked him:
‘Can you arrange a taxi for me to Gare Montparnasse at 10.30?’
‘Taxi?’ he said helpfully. ‘You can get a taxi from Place de la Republique. There is a taxi station there’.
‘Oh. Can I leave my bag here?’
I struggled the Wardrobe into the storage place at the back, and set off with my backpack for McDonalds. The way from the hotel was onto the Place, then over about 3 junctions, skirting the roadworks. I kept a look out, but couldn’t see anywhere that could be a taxi rank, although there was a sign for taxi parking only along one stretch, which was cut off from the traffic by the roadworks.
I knew the Metro station was in the middle of the Place, having arrived there on Saturday (and my one abortive attempt to use the Metro since), but between McDonald’s and the hotel junction there wasn’t any way to get over there.
I went into McDonalds to check an email from my sister, to try to find her phone number. She hadn’t responded to the one I sent last week giving the train details. And what with swapping around sim cards, I seem to have lost the contacts from my phone, or some of them, So I don’t know whether she will be there to meet me at the station and I have no way of contacting her.
In Mcdonalds, there doesn’t seem to be a breakfast menu, so yesterday I just had a coffee. Then I realised that the breakfast menu (such as it is) is one of a number of electronic displays that rotate around, so I only have a few seconds to read it then wait for it to come back again. All I can see is that there are three options, a 1 euro, 2 euro and 4 euro. The 4 euro option seems to consist of large coffee, orange juice and 2 ‘douceurs’, but I can’t work out what that means – muffins? Cakes? Desserts?
I reach the front of the queue, and ask the boy at the counter, who looks confused, but finds a young woman who can interpret my Franglais.
‘It’s an egg Mcmuffin and a pancake’ she says. That sounds fair enough, in fact pretty good for €4, so I go for it. There are no tables, so I go to the bar with the stools, set up the laptop and start eating my Mcmuffin.
On the other side of the counter, and to my left, there’s a man, also with a laptop. I don’t take much notice until I realise he’s speaking to me. Then I shake my head. ‘Don’t understand…’
‘Aah, English! How are you finding the wifi?’
I glance back at the screen. ‘It’s not started yet’. I open Chrome, the tabs I had open last time all re-open, all with the green McDonalds screen. I hit ‘j’accepte’.
‘It’s OK. It’s working now’.
‘I find it’s very slow’ he says. I pull a face.
‘It’s slow everywhere in Paris’ I say, with the benefit of three days’ experience. I focus on the screen. I need to get onto Yahoo to find the email with my sister’s phone number. I know they don’t have wifi at the farmhouse so I’ll be dependent on McDonald’s for a week, and not in walking distance. I have to check my emails to see if there’s anything from the Bloody Woman. Check my horoscope. Check the map. There must be other things I need to do.
I concentrate on the laptop. But I feel bad now. He’s a good looking guy, he seems harmless. Young, but not too young. I should have made a bit more effort to get into conversation, not bring down the shutters. Why do I always do that? I have to start being a bit more open.
He says something else, I can’t remember what, but I respond, smile, we get into conversation. He’s staying in Paris with his sister, but he’s travelling, trying to find a good place to be. ‘I think maybe Amsterdam, what do you think?’
‘I don’t really know it’.
‘Everyone wants to go to London, but I think it’s a bit hard’.
‘Hard? Well, it’s expensive, definitely’. I wonder if he means ‘unfriendly’.
‘Expensive, difficult to find work, difficult to find a place to live’.
‘That’s true. I’ve just come from Brussels. I like it there’.
‘I haven’t been there. How is it?’
‘Very friendly, very open. Very comfortable, for me, but I’ve been lots of times. More comfortable than Paris, but that might be because I don’t know Paris very well’.
‘Paris is beautiful. I lived here for twenty years’. But not now, now he’s just passing through, staying with his sister. He’s Italian originally, ‘from Milano’, but he has a French passport too. He pulls them both out and shows them to me, along with an id card. I see his name is Marc. On the French one, his hair is cropped, on the Italian, up in front in a quiff, on the id card, he points out: ‘une barbe’, stroking his chin: ‘what do you say?’
‘Beard’.
‘Ah yes, beard’.
I tell him I’m going to Brittany.
‘You must go to the Mont St Michel. Very beautiful. My girlfriend told me to go there and see it when I went to Brittany. You must go’. I hope my expression hasn’t changed when he says ‘girlfriend’.
I fish around in my backpack for my passport to show him, then, a little panicked, to convince myself I haven’t lost it. In the end I look again inside my small handbag, the first place I looked, and there it is.
‘Ah, it looks the same as mine! Not special for England?’
‘No, it’s a European passport, just like yours, except it says “Great Britain” on the front’.
‘England seems a strange place, not really part of the continent, but not really anywhere else. How is it there? And Ca-me-ron’ – he separates the syllables – ‘do people hate him? There is big change there I think?’
‘Well I don’t like him’ I agree.
‘Nor me. I preferred the other one, Tony Blair’.
‘I didn’t like him either’ I said. Not towards the end, anyway.
‘But not Thatcher?’
‘No definitely not Thatcher!’ I agree.
He is looking at my passport.
‘Ah your name is Linda, that’s a lovely name’.
‘Thank you!’
‘And you were born in 54. My mother was born in 54’.
‘Well thank you again!’ I say laughing.
‘Ah, I am sorry! French men are not very polite!’ So now he’s French.
So how old is he? I wonder. His mother? It’s depressing. He doesn’t look THAT young, especially with that irresistible touch of grey in his side burns. Hey ho.
He gives me back my passport, we shake hands, say good bye and good luck.
‘I will go to Amsterdam’.
‘I’ll probably be there on the way back, maybe July’ I say.
‘It’s a good place, a friendly place, and you can get the drugs. Not bad drugs, the sweet drug, the one that helps you sleep. Enjoy Bretagne’.
‘You too. Enjoy Amsterdam’.
When he goes, I start to panic about the time. What do I need to do? What emails, what do I need to check, before I close down the computer? How about getting a taxi? Where from? How am I going to get to the station?
I’d sort of planned to keep going clockwise round the Place till I found the taxis, but it’s such a mess, with road works and everything, it all seems too complicated and it’s 10.30 already. Anyway, I have to go back to the hotel to pick up the Wardrobe, so I’ll ask the reception guy for explicit directions as to where exactly the taxis are lurking.
When I get there, it’s the usual guy on reception, and when I mention taxis, he picks up the phone and calls for one straight away.
It’s a beautiful morning and a beautiful drive to Montparnasse. The first time I went to Paris, with Hubby 8 years ago, we stayed in a hotel there, but in my last two visits I haven’t been over to that side of the city. Marco told me it was beautiful, and I see what he meant. We drive from the hotel down past the Place de la Bastille, where I walked on Saturday afternoon, then over the bridge and up through Montparnasse. When we arrive the fare on the clock is €16.70. This seems a lot, but I had no idea if it’s fair or not, I don’t think I have any choice.
The drive took longer than I thought, so I’m glad I allowed plenty of time. I need to orient myself inside the station, I walk around the ground floor looking for an ATM. There are lots of machines around, but they’re all ticket machines, confusingly. When I find two cash machines, they are both out of order. After forking out for the taxi, I only have about €20 left, and I don’t know what I need to buy lunch on the train.
The mainline trains leave from upstairs. Luckily the escalator is working. I check out the platform I need then find a seat in the waiting room.
There’s a notice on the wall with ‘Waiting room’ in several languages.The Spanish is: ‘sala de espera’.
‘Espera’? Doesn’t that mean ‘hope’?
‘The room of hope’. I like that idea.
It’s better to travel hopefully…