26 DEC 1989: I am up early to organize for the trip to Paris. I wander down to the ship’s Disbursing office and turn a semi-worthless check into a couple thousand francs. I pack my bag, to include formal wear, for the journey to Paris. I have pain et brie frommage for the journey. I have to rouse the Lutt-homme to pass down information on the Campaign Plan to cement victory in the Mediterranean, should we be commanded to enact it.
I pile into the Staff car with Mark and Moose. Mark is going to chauffeur me to the train station and Moose out to the airport to greet his wife Paula who is flying in from America. We drive through Marseilles and get stuck in the massive jam that goes along with the annual France to Ivory Coast cross-country road race.
The crowds are horrendous. Suppose I don’t get on the train? There is a vast throng of Frogs inside the station and on the platforms. I start to get apprehensive about getting where I need to be…Trouble at the ticket window…There are no reservations possible today, Monsieur….”
“Yike!” I say in fluent French. “Well, sell me a ticket anyway. “Maybe I can ride in the bar car……and so began Altogether New Adventures on the TGV….The Tres Grand Voiture high speed train is a thing of wonder. Bullet shaped, it is the railroad from Tomorrowland. I sneak into the bar-car and stake out a place with my New York Times to hide behind. It is a long four-hour ride in the bar car as I anxiously await the moment when the conductor will bust me. When the awful moment comes I use the American defense:
“Pardon, Monsieur, je suis Americain.”
The conductor goes away and I am not fined (which I later discover I should have been) nor am I thrown off the train. The 200KM scenery is spectacular as we roll across the green fields of central France. The sunset highlights the chateaus and villages that dot the landscape, and which slide by at incredible pace.
I alternate between gazing out the window and the New York Times. I actually finish the paper for a change. Darkness and the approach to Paris…I debark in the Gare de Lyon with the usual big city disorientation….I haven’t a clue as to where I am going and the darkness isn’t helping matters a bit. My map is suitable for urban house-to-house fighting, but the detail is too small to find where I am going.
I bite the bullet and do what I normally do when I am hopelessly lost. I hailed a cab. After some initial language problems (I have the name of the hotel spelled wrong) I am hurtling through the streets en route the Hotel de Morny….it is pure Gallic madness as we careen through the Place de Bastille, where I am convinced my driver should be confined, if it were still there.
My driver is an Arab with the clear idea that his martyrdom will translate him immediately to paradise. I am not laboring under the same delusion and my knuckles get white as we swerve around pedestrians…My terror begins to subside as we arrive alive in the Rue Liege to find a modest, but fabulously expensive, hotel.
The elevator is slightly smaller than a shoebox and I don’t quite get stuck with my bag. The room is quiet and clean and has double beds. I turn on French TV and the gentle babble in the background is soothing as I sit with my charts and guidebooks. Having safely negotiated the first portion of the odyssey I feel a wave of agoraphobia coming over me, but beat it down.
Paris is out there waiting. I get directions to the Metro from the woman at the front desk and then sortie to the streets. I discover I am located just around the corner from the 42nd street of Paris; the Moulin Rouge is three block away, just up from the Place Pigalle. The red windmill is incongruous among the sex shops.
Hawkers prowl the pavement in front of their establishments, pawing at me as I walk along. I see a very tall gang of transvestites, surrounded by an admiring group of short Oriental males. The weirdness quotient is very high. I have a beer at a little standup bar and decide it would be easier to just get a bottle of Schweppes Dry to pour some vodka in and go to bed. I think this is going to be an adventure of unprecedented proportions.
Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
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