EXCITEMENT AND SPEED
The excitement I wrote about yesterday and said I would report today was about both Susie and I getting our expensive iPhones pickpocketed. Several days ago on very pleasant Rue des Martyrs Susie put her phone in her pocket and then sensed something so turned around and saw a guy on a bike looking at an iPhone. “That’s mine,” she said and grabbed it. “I just found it and picked it up,” he said in good English. “No you didn’t,” she said. “That’s my dog Ruby’s picture. And you are a thief.” He rapidly bicycled away.
On Friday we were coming up out of the metro on the escalator when someone pushed by me and bumped hard into me. This had happened to me once before in Barcelona. I instinctively grabbed the guy (luckily not very big) by the collar and called him a thief before being sure that my phone was gone. I looked down and there it was bouncing along at the top of the escalator along with the battery charger I had attached to it. He had dropped it when I grabbed him. I shouted at him again, loudly, that he was a thief and Susie kicked him on the shin. He tried to pull free but I wouldn’t let him while someone came up and took his photo on their cell phone. There were no cops around, but we attracted quite a crowd. So finally, after ripping his collar, I let him go. That was my excitement for the day.
It was all over very quickly and we still have our cell phones. I had secreted my passport and credit cards on a waist packet under my belt and my wallet was zipped in an inner vest pocket, I thought I was safe, but for a minute I had put my iPhone into an outer vest pocket and he had been watching. I’ve been robbed several times when traveling overseas and am wary, but apparently not wary enough. My brother in Paris when going through the turnstile to the Metro was blocked for some reason so turned around and saw the man behind him holding his wallet in his hand. He reached out and took it back. But I was determined not to let this guy get away that easily.
On the Saturday I took Susie to the airport since there were were lots of steps in the Metro and she wasn’t allowed to pick up anything heavy. She got off all right after both of us had had a great time in Paris.
After lunch I took the Eurostar for the two and half hour ride from Paris to London. I was excited at the prospect, another dream come true. We would loop right under the English Channel and I would get to see rural France and then rural England as we flew along.
Alas, another expectation unmet, as happens so often with travel. The tunnel under the channel, which I somehow had felt would be stupendous in some way turned out to be like sitting in a well lighted train car in the dark being shaken for twenty minutes with no sensation of movement. I couldn’t tell if we were going forward or backward or even going at all and then suddenly we were in broad day light again.
And the part about seeing rural France and England didn’t work out, either. We were going 322 kilometers an hour at top speed, 200 miles an hour and anything closer than 100 yards was a blur. If we had been 100 feet in the air I would have had great views of fields and villages, but most the of the time we sped along with high banks on either side and couldn’t see anything at all. I was facing backward, but that wasn’t the problem, everything was a blur.
That made me wonder about speed and my glorification of speed. In Paris the fastest way to get around was by Metro, but we could see nothing out the window but graffiti. Someone gets down there in the dark and paints up the metro walls from one end of Paris to the other. Amazing. A much better, but slower way to travel in Paris, was by bus, with so much to see. But the even better way to see Paris was to walk as Susie and I did for miles each day. She figures she walked about 140 miles in Paris, I walked less, but enough for me. We happened on all kinds of things, often just by walking into open doors to see what was there. That is how we discovered the architecture museum or the beauty of the huge Abbey of Saint Germain de Pres. We just walked in an open door.
But even flying, where you see nothing because you are so high up, or the Eurostar, are slowed down at both ends. I couldn’t see any reason that I should arrive at Gare du Nord to catch the Eurostar at 1:15 p.m. when it didn’t leave until 3:15, two hours early for a two and a half hour train trip didn’t make sense. But Susie had been told to be at Charles de Gaulle for her Delta flight to Atlanta three hours early, which we couldn’t make because the Metro didn’t run that early, but she was there two hours ahead and there was a long line. But after going through the line with her and then going to security I came back past Delta and there as a line at least 50 yards long. Airlines may be fast in the air but on the ground they are very, very slow. And the same with the Eurostar. At an hour and a half early there was already a long slow line. First we had to be cleared by the French, who had a machine that was supposed to confirm that your face was was the same one as in your passport and even with six tries, each taking more than a minute, couldn’t do so for me and transferred me to another line where a man confirmed they were the same just by looking at me. And then we were cleared by the British which had a similar machine which took only three tries to recognize me. All of that face recognition took forever and the line moved very slowly. It took an hour to check into the train and then we waited in a lounge for another 45 minutes before being allowed to board.
Even though it was a train ride, from checkin to arrival it felt like a plane ride. The seats had slightly more legroom but were very high so that if felt as if we were boxed in. And we couldn’t see much more out of the window. I have wondered that the Chinese and Europeans could have bullet trains while ours in the United States were so slow. But if I make my round the United States Amtrak rail journey this summer, for which I already have a refundable ticket, I will be glad that we have no bullet trains at all and that we will meander along at a leisurely pace.
I think back to all of the train rides I’ve taken in India, much slower with so much to see outside the window and so interesting with all kinds of vendors passing through the train and so very comfortable with a berth with sheets and blanket and a towel only $20 for an overnight comfortable sleep and during the day the chance to step out on a platform at the constant stops to get hot chai in a clay cup or a helping of hot puries and curry. Slower turns out to often be much more fun. Today, Sunday, I am somewhere in the outskirts of London am going to slow down and do nothing at all.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 