Border Crossing

Saturday, 9 August 2008

European Adventure Travel Day 7
Lausanne, Switzerland to Paris, France

Y'all need another train pic. Breaking train rules (not allowed to put feets on seats! shhhhh) and giving J the stink-eye. Probably sweaty and gross from climbing unnecessary stairs.

What?

S dropped J and me off at the train station in Lausanne; J to catch a train to Zurich and her flight back home, and me to Paris. After a week spending every moment with someone, it's a strange thing to be alone. Fortunately the ride from Lausanne back to Geneva is short, and I had a three-hour wait at Geneva's La Gare de Cornavin until my train left for Paris. Loads of people were milling about the station, and there were many eager young people with coolers hanging from straps about their shoulders foisting small cartons of ice cream on passers-by. Didn't mind a bit.

I wandered around downtown Geneva for a bit, but there was a festival going on and it was very crowded. Believe it or not, I have very few pictures of Geneva. However, I present to you La Cité du Temps, which of course means the City of Time, an exhibition center focused on time. It's located at Pont de la Machine 1, which may be the best street name ever... well, bridge really. Pont de la Machine has been a Geneva landmark since the 1840s, when it was built to supply water to the public fountains. That's it in the center, behind the bridge. I know it's a terrible picture, but it was really bright that day. I needed that ice cream in the train station!

If you want a better look, just google "Cité du Temps," but I can't promise any other bloggers will have my scintillating wit. ;)

I never saw blue like that before... on the Pont de la Machine

I bought a Swatch watch. It's really big... I think even Sabit would be impressed (Yes, it has been six months and I still haven't reset it to PST. I'm running on Parisian time. Don't judge.).

FINALLY the train came to take me to PARIS!

A word to the wise: if you go to France or travel by train in France, BOOK EARLY! They fill up fast and then you get terrible seats. I took TGV from Geneva to Paris (TGV stands for train à grande vitesse, which is just fancy talk for "high-speed train," top speed of 200 mph) and it was much more claustrophobic than the Swiss trains. I had a seat to myself until just over the border, when I got myself a seatmate, a Senegalese naturalized Swiss by the name of Ace.

Ace kept me company. For awhile I tried to read, but Ace talked to me about Switzerland, Paris, Senegal, America, prices of things in all four places, and anything else he thought about. We were on a night train that was due in Paris around 11pm, so the view wasn't much, but as we drew closer I began to get nervous about navigating the Paris metro to my friend L's flat. She wasn't due back from her Tunisian vacation for two days yet, but she had given me detailed instructions to find her place from five different train stations in Paris. Not included in this list was our destination of Gare de Lyon. I'd heard the Paris subways closed at midnight, (which is not true) so I was really worried about not making it there in time, so Ace started talking me through it. An Indian man across the aisle was sitting by himself, and perked up his ears when I started talking about Boston. By the time we'd moved on to my fear of the Paris metro, he was obviously interested in our conversation, then surprised us both by pulling out a metro map and handing it to me.

Do you see now why this was daunting?

As it turned out, Ace walked me into the metro, helped me buy a ticket, then guided me to the 14 line (purple) in the direction of Châtelet, where I was to change to the 7 line (pink). He made sure I'd be fine on my own before he caught the 14 in the opposite direction.

Oh, the kindness of strangers.

For the record, the metro only looks scary on a map. Very easy to get around in, even if you don't speak French. I had the added challenge of being alone, under Paris at night, on the verge of being sick, but I made it to The Aubergine. A bit of fumbling with the strangely shaped key, wiped my feet on the Chelsea mat(haha), then fell into bed.

In Paris!