Mon Dieu! Paris est un pain! I don't know if that sentence is correct, but let me tell you - navigating from the Charles de Gualle Airport is awful! I allowed myself 3 1/2 hours from landing time to get through (i.e. stroll by) customs and take a train ride that was supposed to amount to 1 hour. Well.... everything went wrong the moment I picked up my luggage. First, the ATM at the airport did not work. Then, I walk to the shuttle-train that was to take departing planers from CDG to Paris, and an announcer informs everyone that, due to a downed wire, the train will not go past the Gare du Nord station. I check my map and see that this does not present a problem for me, since I can switch at Gare du Nord to the 4 train line which would take me to Montparnasse Station, where I was to connect for my train to Bordeaux.
After waiting 40 minutes and asking an American couple if I was doing the right thing, the train finally came to take us to Gare du Nord. Alas, we never even got close. I'll tell you one thing - French trains allow a lengthy ~4 minutes at each station waiting for passengers who may be on their way. So this seemed to cause my commute to Montparnasse to proceed at a crawl. After that, our train stopped at Aulnay Sous Bois station, still far north of Paris, where the conducteur announced something faintly in French over the loudspeaker. A mass exodus of French speakers occurred, and I was left standing with a couple from Boston and my 60-something retirees who were on their way to Aix en Provence. We sat for what seemed like too long of a time considering nobody else was getting on the train, and it sure wasn't going anywhere. FInally, I ask a few people if they speak English, and once I find somebody who does, I ask them about our train.
I find out that it's not going any further. So, back to the drawing board. The translated message told us to change over to platform 2... down 2 big flights of stairs, and then back up. Did that. Then we waited some more. And once another mass exodus was about to begin, we decide to 'act like lemmings' and follow the crowd to a hidden train, behind construction and sadness, which was going to Bondy. Well, finally. A train that was going somewhere. I ran to this train just in time for the door to close on a teenaged French smoker who exhaled his last puff into our now shared train space. This train left at 10, and my train to Bordeaux leaves at 11:30.
Luckily enough, a girl walks on after me named Sarah, who attends Princeton and is going to Montparnasse to catch a later train to Bordeaux for an anthropology class. She speaks French, which is enviable considering I could have wasted a lot less time had I known what the conductors were saying all morning. We decide to travel together to Bondy and beyond. At Bondy, we rush off the train with hundreds of others to catch our train which - thanks to the French train way - still had its doors open... but not for long.
Again, we with suitcases and luggage were forced to thunder down 2 flights of stairs, across the under-platform and struggle our ways up the stairway to heaven. Halfway up, a gentleman helps carry my bag as I'm considering leaving it halfway there. On the platform, I see a frenzy of 6 or so men holding the doors open for us stragglers. They take my (overweight) luggage and help me in. Whoever said not to "take the Frenchman's shit" never had their trains cancelled with the French. I loved these guys.
As the doors shut, Sarah and I look at each other and both ponder the same thing: are we even going the right way?
By now my face is wet, my lungs hurt, I have a rope burn on my arm from my oversized swinging Vera Bradley death machine, and my panting sounds inappropriate. Alas, I think the French are used to those sounds. At the first stop, Noisy de Sec, we realize that we are, in fact, going the right way. But at 10:23, we still have to catch the 4 train at the Gare du Nord Station to Montparnasse, followed by another marathon to the expensive TGV express trains to Bordeaux and beyond. A few stops later, at 10:37, we hop off the E train to find the 4 train. Yes, another search. Up more stairs. Then down stairs. We determined that the handicapped must not be tolerated in France since we didn't see any escalators or elevators. We got on the 4 train without any issues, and actually got to sit down until we were at Montparnasse station.
At 11:06, we get off the 4 train at Montparnasse and start the seemingly neverending trek to the TGV trains. Oh, and on the plane earlier that morning, I realized that I forgot to print out my $120 train ticket to Bordeaux.... so at 11:17, I get to the information desk and they tell me they cannot print out my ticket. Super. So they tell me to go upstairs and talk to someone else. And those people told me to go somewhere else. Finally, I am sent to billing, where a nice man printed out my ticket and told me to run. I barely got to shout goodbye and thank you to Sarah for her help before booking it to Voie 1 (platform 1). Again, I hopped on the train with the help of those nearby just as the doors sounded that they were about to close.
I did not get to sleep on the train since all the seats were taken and my suitcase kept falling down. All in all, in the last 30 hours, I have had only 3 hours of sleep. Jill - I don't know how you do it. I started writing all that on the train and then started to get sick from going 180 mph. So I'm finishing it here, at the beautiful house of my host family. I will write more about Bordeaux later, but until then, au revoir!!
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