Travelogue, Part II: France

A view from the train enroute from Paris to Caen

I took a cab to the Haupt Bahnhoff (the main train station) and,

at about 7 AM, I boarded a TGV (Totally Great Velocity) train for Paris. My first (mis)adventure occurred when I tried to locate my assigned seat in a second class car instead of the first class car. (This was not a solitary error; I seemed to have trouble identifying the first class cars throughout my travels. Actually, I could identify them, I just couldn't seem to find them.) I asked the folks who were sitting in "my seat" to check their tickets and they directed me, with no little teasing, to the proper car way at the other end of the very long train.

By this time I was no longer early for the train and feared that there would not be enough time to retrieve, lug and load my luggage into the distant car. Thus I abandoned it with fear and trembling and raced to my seat. My laptop was in one of the bags and I was practically paralyzed with worry.

I decided to recover my belongings at one of the several stops during the four hour journey. This required no little advance planning as the European trains run very fast, very much on time, and have extremely short intermediate stops. This is doubly true in Switzerland! With the help of a sympathetic train official I established that there was one ten minute hiatus in our full throttle hurtle toward Paris and I retrieved my baggage, providing comic relief for the porters as I did so.

I arrived in Paris at about 1 PM and commenced my adventure through the subways (the Metro) to change to another of Paris's six train stations for my connection to Caen in Normandy. The Metro stations are warrens of tunneling crisscrossing multiple tracks via dozens of half-flights of steps. Charming, unless it is 97 degrees out and you are lugging two big suitcases and a backpack. I was red-faced and exhausted by the time I reached Gare St. Lazar and boarded the train for Caen.

It took me an hour to cool down, but I had a luxurious little compartment to myself in which to do it. Once I'd caught my breath and touched up my heat-blotched face, I planned my next step. I decided that if the connection was as easy as it seemed from the timetable, I'd go on from Caen to Bayeux, a journey of about 20 minutes. Sure enough, all I had to do was cross the platform at Caen and I boarded the train to Bayeux.

Bayeux was hung with banners proclaiming "Welcome to our liberators." This gave me goose bumps. I trudged around town looking for a room with no luck, finally ending up at the Hotel Notre Dame across the street from the church of the same name (see photo below). The proprietress invited me to cool off in the lounge until 6 pm, at which time she would know if by chance any of her room reservations would go unclaimed. No such luck.

I trudged back to the station, lugging my (so aptly named) luggage. I hopped the last train back to Caen figuring that rooms would be easier to find farther from the coast. In Caen I saw what I took to be an advertisement for a hotel in the train station: Hotel de Ville, the sign proclaimed in huge letters. It sounded expensive, but I was hot and tired and had plastic in my wallet, so I called, after laboriously working out the precise French phrasing for requesting a room.

The man who answered the phone at the Hotel de Ville claimed that they didn't rent rooms. I was confused, frustrated and a little angry. I tried in vain to figure out how to get a bus up there so I could ask for a room in person, but I was stymied by the complex time tables. Finally, I consulted a young man at the ticket window in the train station, asking him to call the Hotel de Ville and reserve a room for me.

The young man-Luc-was very kind and for the next ten minutes, between transactions with travelers paying their fares, he tried to explain why I could not have a room at the Hotel de Ville. He had some English (more than I had French), but did not know the translation for what sounded like "marry" to me. For a few loony moments I thought he was trying to say that I couldn't stay at the de Ville unless I had my husband with me!

As a surge of customers approached the window for the last trains of the evening, he jotted the word on to a scrap of paper. While he sold tickets, I looked it up. "Mairie . . . town hall." ("House of the city," in essence.) I had been trying to rent a room at city hall!

This is very funny now, but I was desolate then. Luc told me to wait and I did, biding my time until after the last trains left with a mixture of anxiety and certainty that all would be well. I speculated that, if nothing else, this was a cunning way for the powers that be to arrange that Molly Gordon should learn how to accept help instead of doling it out. (As the oldest of eight I have a long history of problem solving, crisis management and independence. Letting somebody take care of me is not my long suit, though I will admit it has its points.)

Luc's window is the first one on the left. If you happen to be in the railway station in Caen, please be sure to say hi for me.

While I waited, Luc called his friend, Amelle, who also worked for the railway as an information operator. She phoned every conceivable lodging place in the area and came up with nothing. Nada. Zip. I was by now sitting with Luc behind the ticket window and the station was closed. No return to Paris. No where to go. It was after 9 PM and I had been traveling since before 7 in the morning. Again, I knew it would be okay but I certainly didn't feel very chipper. In his limited English, Luc indicated that he had a possible solution and said we should wait for his friend to show up.

At 9:30 Amelle came in. My minimal French was entirely gone, I'm not sure I could have spoken English at that point. Somehow I understood that she was willing to put me up for one night and that we would walk to her apartment. Luc and Amelle carried most of my luggage and did their best to reassure me as we made our way to her building. (The tall one at the center of the photo below.)

As it turned out, Amelle put me up not for one night but for two. She and Luc were extraordinarily kind: they pored over timetables to plan my sightseeing itinerary for the following two days; they phoned my hotel in Paris and changed my reservations so that I could check in there a day early. Amelle gave me her bedroom (she slept on the futon in her living room) and fed me breakfast each morning.

The first morning Amelle took me on a whirlwind pedestrian tour of Caen, including the Hotel de Ville (!) and the Abbeye aux Hommes (men's abbey) where William the Conqueror is buried.

We ended our tour at the train station where I went back to Bayeux and braved the lines to see the famous Bayeux Tapestry. The tapestry, which is 85 meters long by 60 cms wide (approximately 31 yards by 24 inches), depicts 58 embroidered scenes centering on the oath of Harold Godwinson (brother-in-law of Edward the Confessor) who at Bayeux in 1064 swore to leave the Throne of England to William Duke of Normandy on the death of Edward. Legend has it that it was created by Queen Mathilde, William's wife, but all that is known for certain is that it was accomplished in the 11th century and that it was created in something under 11 years (the time which elapsed between the Battle of Hastings and the unveiling of the tapestry on July 14, 1077).

From Bayeux I boarded a train to Pontorson, a small town near the Normandy coast from which point I boarded a bus for Mont St. Michelle. The huge wheel at left is part, as I understand it, of the mechanism whereby huge stones were lifted as the abbey was built.

I made a world record ascent and descent of the island haven as I had only two hours before I needed to return to the train station. (You can imagine that I was determined not to inconvenience Luc and Amelle by missing a train. So thoroughly did they look after my comfort and safety that Amelle provided me with her own Tele Carte, the magnetic card needed to operate French pay phones, so that I could call her or Luc if I was held up. She would not hear of my buying my own phone card.

The lower reaches of Mont St. Michel were packed with postcard and souvenir stands, pubs, fast food hovels and assorted tourists of the most appalling and profane sort, but the vulgarity only accentuated the sacredness and magic of the place. As I ascended the Mont the crowds thinned and the vistas over the tide flats grew broader. I drank in the old stones, the ancient carvings, the way the light fell through the arches of the cloisters. And then I left, utterly enchanted and grateful for the sharpness of the experience.

The following day I left Amelle's apartment early, though not so early as to miss breakfast. To my amazement she had gotten up and fixed me coffee and laid out milk and yogurt so that I could eat my daily wheat-free muesli. Knowing that she works the swing shift and usually keeps late hours I was again struck by her incredible kindness.

I left Amelle's apartment and caught the train to Lisieux, home of Ste. Therese and site of her fabulous basilica. Lisieux was in the direction of Paris, and I was to return to Paris that day, but Amelle and Luc did not want me to be hampered by my bulky luggage while sight seeing, nor to be stuck on a slow local train for the longer journey. Thus they'd arranged to carry my bags to the station themselves later in the day (Luc started work at noon) where I could pick them up and catch an express to Paris.

I arrived in Lisieux in the early morning and walked from the station up to the Basilica. The air was still moist and misty from the cool night and it lent a dreamlike air to the building. I had hoped to attend the Mass of the Carmelite nuns (would you believe that, until I was about 16, I had fully intended to be a Carmelite?), but by the time I learned that the mass was at the convent back in town and not at the Basilica it was too late.

I had a Perrier on the interior terrace of a restaurant in town shielded from traffic and smoke, then caught the train back to Caen. Luc met me with my luggage and with a seat assignment for my trip to Paris. Thus ended the first stage of my adventures in France, enriched by the generosity of two wonderful young people.