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| Point of departure - London, Thames |
What I really like about travelling, apart from the unmitigated delight in seeing places other than the ones you are accustomed to seeing every day, is the fact that your routines and habits will be altered, they will be broken up, picked apart, you will of necessity have to act in different ways, you will be faced with unpredictable choices and challenges, you will be required to be alert, to think on your feet, and along with that, there will be opportunities, equally unforeseen as the challenges. Travel changes the flow and patterns of your energies, which is a part of your own self, depending on how much you identify with them. Travel is about new experiences, how you meet them and interact with them. If these experiences are all hugely positive and fun then that’s a bonus but most of the travelling I have done involves a mixture of the joyous, the challenging, the tiring, the painful, and the disturbing, where you are often confronted with unknown situations, and have to rely on intuition when making judgements about unfamiliar places and people.
To travel with faith, for me, that is essential. You have put yourself in an unfamiliar, unknown environment, so you will be required to surrender control, to trust in your own capacities and in the basic decency and goodness of human beings and of life itself. Travel then is also achievement. To arrive at a goal is an acclaimed success. This is a large part of the fun of travel, for me. You made it, you survived!
The first part of this journey is by coach from London to Paris.
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| Arrival in Paris, the Seine |
Paris Bercy coach station was much as I remembered it (from a visit in 2018). Few comforts, hard benches to sit on, unappealing toilets, but it is extremely central. Outside, in the Park Bercy, I dragged my suitcase and self up a long flight of steps, and from there took the passerelle to the other side of the Seine. I notice a couple of tall glass-fronted skyscrapers and don’t remember ever seeing them before. It is always fascinating the way places change, they are on their own journey as Dubravka Ugrešić pointed out. You have a vague or even very clear image in your mind, your imagination has mixed in with actual memory, and here you are confronted with something that does not correspond to your inner image, and this can feel disconcerting, even destabilizing, so your experience is décalé, the inner and the outer are not properly joined together, they are out of synch.
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| Train station building - old |
and the super modern just next to it
I was heading for the gare d’Austerlitz which I remembered was not far away. That turned out to have changed too and it was actually further than my memory extended, and I was annoyed because I had forgotten to bring a map of Paris with me. But I asked directions from a passing friendly woman, and soon arrived at Austerlitz, which would be my point of departure to Toulouse, in the evening. My plan was to shed the burden of my suitcase at the consigne so that I could wander freely around Paris, at least as far as my tired self could manage. This turned out to be a little more complicated than I expected. Only coins were accepted, so I had to go and buy a newspaper and coffee to get the necessary coins. Then all baggages had to be screened in the kind of scanners they have at airports. And I too had to pass through a metal detecting doorway. I was then shown to the box where I placed my suitcase, and shown too what to do with the ticket when I returned. This had to be repeated a couple of times, as I was still adjusting to the sound of the French language, as well as suffering from lack of sleep.
But now I was free to walk in the bright sunshine of the Paris streets! A kind official at the station found a map for me, and off I went, with no clear goal in mind, but remembering that there was a cafe not far away which had won an award for the best croissants in Paris. But that was 4 years ago, would it still be there? It was, showing that some things do not change, just across from the Metro Maubert-Mutualité.
And so I walked slowly from Austerlitz to the Boulevard Saint Michel. The vision of Notre Dame surrounded by scaffolding was not surprising, as it is being renovated after the fire of a few years ago. But everywhere in Paris is being rebuilt, renovated, smartened up. There are scaffoldings on facades, sounds of loud drilling, the sirens of the sapeurs/pompiers. There’s the clashing of metal – scaffolding that’s being dismantled, banging, hammering, drilling, and the sounds of traffic, accelerating cars, buses, scooters, and car horns. Paris is awash with the frenetic activity of restructuring, demolition of old stonework and woodwork and repointing, replastering, replacement of old wood with new, scraping, cleaning, washing, painting. Most of the station of Austerlitz is screened off, hiding the work of renovation, though not the noise. Many large notices indicate to hapless passengers, where to go, for different platforms, where to buy tickets etc.
I knew that my favourite bookshop, Gibert Jeune, had closed its shop on boulevard St Michel but I was pleased to find that the other bookshop, a short distance further up, opposite the jardin de Cluny, Gibert Joseph, was still there. I could have bought several books, but it was weight that put me off. So I only bought one, l’Axe du Loup, by Sylvain Tesson, a travel writer and favourite of mine.
Then I went to sit in the jardin de Cluny, found a bench in the sunshine, and watched a young teacher organize her class of 12/13 year olds. It was lunch time and people were tucking into healthy snacks of fruit and salad. And believe it or not, dear friends, it became so hot, that I had to find another bench and sit in the shade.
Blossoms in the Jardin des Plantes
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