Day 1: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Cars are pulling up to the curb alongside the terminal, and as always, the city's finest are shooing them away -- no stopping, standing, or parking.  It is April 1, and the brisk Spring air in the city is refreshing tonight.  As I absent-mindedly reach into my coat pocket for gloves I know aren't there, I find and pull out a small strip of paper.  I can't explain why this makes me smile, but I show it to my wife, and then stash the paper back in my pocket.  Just a short while ago, those small subway tickets were an integral part of our lives. But now we are standing on the curb outside Arrivals at the international terminal; at this familiar airport in this familiar city, it is 6PM in Chicago. We began this morning's journey 18 hours earlier on the rue Descartes, in the heart of Paris' Latin Quarter.  But now, we're at the airport waiting for a taxi to take us the last three miles home.  Somehow, in my mind, we are still at Departures, and we've just boarded SAS Flight 944 from Chicago to Paris via Copenhagen.

Flying to Paris through Copenhagen overshoots our destination by more than 600 miles.  But even seven months before the departure date, it was by far the best airfare option.  Our descent over the Scandinavian landscape on our arrival was striking for two reasons.  It was late March, and the ground was covered with snow.  And as we approached for landing, I noticed how little ground there was.  We were surrounded by water.  Copenhagen is on a large island separated from the mainland of Denmark.  And the airport itself is on an island separated from Copenhagen.  If one takes a wrong turn out of the airport, it is just a short drive through a tunnel and over a bridge to reach Sweden.  But this time, we were to see neither Copenhagen nor Sweden.  We waited by the gate for the flight to Paris, and wondered what makes so many Scandinavians tall and blond.

The flight from Chicago to Copenhagen was a bumpy ride, adding to the difficulty of sleeping while sitting upright.  But Copenhagen to Paris was great.  A relatively short flight, and smooth.  We landed at the Charles de Gaulle airport shortly after 5PM local time and found our baggage.  Although Paris is on the itinerary for the end of our trip, we front-loaded the heavy travel for the first day and have one more segment of our journey to complete.  We grabbed our bags and made our way through the space-age conveyor belts to the train station connected to the airport. 

Charles de Gaulle: Space-age pedways

Through some fractured French and a few kind people, we found the right place to wait for our 7:30PM train departure.  When traveling someplace new, the first day I am usually hyper-sensitive to new sights and sounds, like removing sunglasses on a bright sunny day.  I couldn't resist ordering a vending machine espresso while we waited, and asking more people than necessary for directions.  I had just spent five hours a week for the past seven months trying to learn French, and I was determined to give the language a try with native speakers:  Directions to the train station?  Men's room?  Postcards and stamps for international delivery?  Is this the platform for our train?  Must we validate our tickets?  Will the train be on time?

The TGV is France's high speed train (Train à Grande Vitesse).  We were taking the TGV -- traveling more than 200 miles in 2 hours -- from the Paris airport to Lyon, a city in central France near the eastern border.   The train arrived at the Paris station, and we trundled aboard with our bags in tow.  Unlike standard commuter trains, the TGV trains have assigned seating.  We crossed three cars with our bags to find our correct seats before settling in for the two hour journey.  By this point we had been traveling 13 hours and slept very few of the past 30 hours, so we put our tickets on display for the conductor, and dozed in an out of sleep as we could.  The other passengers on the train were surprisingly animated in their conversations, with many of them being business travelers returning home on a Friday night from a trip to Paris. 

One young woman across the aisle from us found her seat among a trio of businessmen.  My French isn't advanced enough to know what they were discussing, but everything seemed pleasant enough until the conductor came to collect tickets.  There was a bit of a commotion at their table, and the businessmen started laughing.  The conductor was talking to the woman, and eventually the occupants of the seats behind us started joking and laughing as well.  It took a while for me to catch what had happened, but I eventually realized that the young woman had boarded the wrong train -- headed for the wrong destination.  One reason the TGV is able to get to Lyon in just two hours is that there are no stops.  The train would arrive in Lyon at 9:30PM on a Friday night, and that was not where her boyfriend was waiting.  I don't know what happened from there, but I still think of her today and wonder.



Train station:  Gare de Lyon Part-Dieu

But in the meantime, we were speeding toward our destination.  We had made arrangements to stay in Lyon with the family of a student we had hosted the past summer.  She and her parents had invited us to visit France, and while at the time they may not have realized we would take them up on the offer, we just couldn't resist.  Our previous experience in France was a very short trip to Paris thirteen years earlier, and we were anxious to dig deeper into the true France, and to experience France like locals.  The train pulled into the train station (Gare de Lyon-Part-Dieu), and we gathered up our bags.  We found Mlle just outside the train waiting for us.  She helped us find a taxi, and the five of us squeezed in, and enjoyed catching up during the 15 minute drive to her home.  We discussed prom (an American tradition her school in France is trying to adopt), and jazz (the cab driver's favorite music), and all the neighborhoods we were passing through.

The family lives in a two-story penthouse of an apartment complex on the north side of Lyon, in a neighborhood called the Croix-Rousse.  Her family was waiting for us.  It was now late, but they had postponed their dinner for us, and after we had eaten they kindly brought out some white wine and a delicious spread of French cheeses.  It had been a long day of traveling to arrive in the heart of France, but it was already worthwhile.  And, it did not take long to fall asleep.