Navigating to Avignon
The train arrives twenty minutes late at Gare du Nord. I’m at the door on arrival and dash where the Sortie signs direct. Before arriving, I looked up the line I’d need to get to Gare de Lyon le plutôt possible. RER D. In the hall of trains, I ask a uniformed man the way to RER D. RER stands for Réseau Express Régional and RER D is one of five lines (A, B, C, D, E) that provide quick, distance metro transit in Paris. I’d looked it up while on the train and knew it was what I needed to get to Gare de Lyon le plutôt possible.
My French “R” must be improving because the flat-hatted attendant understands me and I understand him when he explains how to get to the right track for RER D. He adds the crucial detail that to get to Gare de Lyon, I need the direction Melun and I understand, and this makes all the difference when I reach the RER D and must choose which side, which direction, takes me to Gare de Lyon. Melun is the last stop for the direction that has Gare de Lyon as one of its stops. If I chose the wrong direction, I’d end up going the opposite way. For city people, this kind of detail comes easily. For someone who grew up in Alaska, there’s been a learning curve.
There is a row of electronic metro gates and I’ll need a ticket to get through. And I have one. I purchased a metro ticket when I first arrived in Paris and didn’t end up needing to use it with all of the construction confusion. I put it in an easy to reach little side pocket of my backpack and after all the travel from Paris to Thonon-les-Bains to Lille to London and back, it’s still there! I pull it out and push it into the reader and the gate bar turns for me and I head down the stairs to the RER D.
I stand among the stifling crowd waiting for RER D Direction Melun. I position myself close so I can get on right away when the train arrives. Once on the train, I squeeze near the door to be able to get off as quickly as possible. I check the time. Fifteen minutes until the train departs Gare de Lyon. It’s going to be a close one.
I slide out of the packed commuter metro car as soon as it arrives at the station and blaze past the signs showing the way to the hall of trains. No time to check the time, I walk as fast as humanly possible without knocking anyone over, which would definitely cause a disturbance to the French sense of politesse.
At a choice between train halls, I instinctively go right instead of left and see Voie A lists Avignon TGV 6067. That’s the one. Generally intimidated by escalators, I race up this little one and emerge to find the train in place. I don’t look for my car. I just get on. I walk through a number of cars before finding my seat. 104. Voilà.
I feel victorious. Without the level of language proficiency and French train experience I’d achieved, I would never have made it. And if I’d had to buy a metro ticket to get on the RER D, it would very likely have slowed me down enough to miss the train.
We begin rolling out of Paris. After getting my breath for a few minutes, I look for some breakfast.
In the food and beverage car, the windows are massive and there is something lovely about watching the green French countryside roll past. At the cashier counter, I order a standard petit déjeuner. There are some unexpected questions. Yogurt or cheese comes with the standard meal and I can choose the kind. I don’t know the French word for blueberry and find out that it is myrtille. Once ordered, I stand at a little table facing hills and farms while eating the flaking croissant and spooning the smooth cheese crème and its blueberries into my mouth and sipping the rich, warm little coffee and fresh orange juice. This is the life!
And then, the ticket lady arrives in her blue suit and flat hat. She sees the foreigner with a predator’s sense of victory. Little does she know, I have my black shoulder bag with me and pull out my passport, Eurail pass, and reservation ticket. Before I left my seat, as required, I’d written in the travel calendar and travel log on the Eurail Pass. Everything is as impossibly bureaucratically in order as it can be. The woman is stunned. She looks me straight in the eyes. “Parfait!” I feel like I’ve just been granted citizenship and have a strange desire to sing La Marseillaise.
Curious that a system for foreign travelers would be so complicated that you need to be a local to navigate it.
The train continues barreling south and it becomes real to me that soon I will be in a town I’ve dreamed of visiting, the home of the popes in Provence: Avignon.
It’s pouring rain when the train arrives at Gare d’Avignon. The station is just outside the circular wall surrounding the medieval town center. Like a portal to another world, an opening in the wall with two gate towers with flared, square-notched tops greet those who arrive. When you pass them, it feels like at any minute some bar might come down and a loud voice thunder, “Who goes there?”
The straight street lined with trees, restaurants, clothing stores, museums, tourism offices, McDonalds, and tall, ancient sand-colored buildings with lacy balconies feels like walking a half-mile welcome parade into town. It leads to the Place de l’Horloge, or plaza of the clock, which was the site of the ancient Roman settlement and is where the city hall (Hôtel de Ville) stands today. Little mechanized life-sized figures, jacquemarts, do the ceremonial honors of striking the bell every hour from the 14th century Gothic clock tower behind the Hôtel de Ville.
Because of the rain and the off-season, the square is open and empty of its usual umbrella covered dining tables. Wet fall leaves sprinkle the dark stones. The entrance to l’Hôtel de l’Horloge is from a side street and the lobby has the dark wood feel of entering a study or library in someone’s home. There are even books neatly arranged on shelves. The people at the front desk have a positive spirit and check-in is simple. The room is a comfortable haven and I look forward to rest.
There is a little Salon du Thé next to the hotel and I go there, watching the rain in the plaza and eating a tarte aux champignons (mushroom tart) and a tarte aux pommes (apple tart) with a double café. There were Americans nearby, a man in his sixties perhaps and what seemed to be his sister, from the East Coast, and you could feel their stress. It was such a contrast to the relaxed manner of the French. They were condescending to the waitress, like they were talking to a child, and said very rude things about the restroom, the service, and even about being in France where things just aren’t done the way they should be. Don’t they realize that French people generally understand English fluently? I heard them discuss how they had to try to speak the language in order to not be rude and I wanted to laugh. In their case, a little French was rude. It made it much more difficult for the waitress and was done in such a belittling way, like trying to do this difficult thing that was imposed on them. I was so embarrassed to be American. I was embarrassed to order in my rude and terrible French. Before I left, though, as is the French custom, I went to the counter and said, “Bonne journée!” with the best accent I could muster. I meant it as thank you and I hope they understood.
The hotel room is so comfortable that it is easy to rest there for the evening. There are tall windows, more like little doors, that lead out to a tiny balcony. I open them and can see and hear the narrow street below. Late in the afternoon, during a brief break in the rain, a trumpet rings jazz tunes from the plaza and it is a beautiful sound.
At this point in the story, you, reader, must be wondering what I’m doing. I left Santa Fe and journeyed to France alone for what feels like an indeterminate amount of time to an unclear number of destinations. You must have so many questions. Why am I alone? What do I do for a living? Who am I?
These are the same questions I ask myself while sitting in the lamp-lit room on a rainy evening listening to a jazz trumpet. I was going to become so many things.
A jazz singer was one of those things. I had opportunities to sing jazz while receiving classical voice training in college and my soul hurts that I didn’t continue. “Do not sing unless you must,” said Schubert. I took his words too seriously while also not understanding what “must” means. It’s too easy to take important things for granted.
A teacher was another. My high tolerance for the nonsense of others, while seeming to be a virtue, proved to be disastrous as a teacher. The most successful teaching venture was a learning environment I created for two and three year olds based on what I’d learned about human development and the practices of Maria Montessori. It was a strong and beneficial place of learning for the little sponges and I learned a lot, too, about how we’re all born with stunning strengths and weaknesses. It was exhausting work, but a high tolerance was a plus in this setting.
An education administrator was another. I did that in a Lutheran church for a few years. It was a time of growth for the church and it was exciting to be part of something so dynamic and fulfilling. I got to work with people of all ages in meetings, workshops, classes, programs, and all sorts of creative venues. I wrote Larry and Bob Veggie Tale puppet skits for a Vacation Bible School that required some creative challenges for the teens manning the puppets. I put together a Christmas Around the World Children’s Program that included teaching children to sing in five different languages and gave them the opportunity to learn about other cultures. I taught a Young Parents Bible Study and a Whirlwind Bible Study class for adults with the goal to focus on the messages of the Bible as a whole, looking at it in historical and cultural context. It was through this study that I became convinced that not only was the Bible inspired by God, but the putting together of the Bible was inspired as well.
Accounting is what I’m doing now, remotely, for an artist while I travel. It works well because when it is morning in the United States, it is evening in Europe. I can explore in the morning and afternoon and return to the hotel to work in the evening. The work involves numbers, spreadsheets, data entry, adjustments, and reports. Although I like Excel, it’s not my favorite work. It’s dry. It can often become infuriatingly bureaucratic. I’ve been an accountant in non-profit businesses at a tourism convention and visitor’s bureau and a community health center, and now a for-profit artist. I’ve enjoyed what I learned about these industries and the interaction with the people, however, I’ve never truly enjoyed the work. I suppose though that it is foolish to be choosy. Accounting is a way to earn a living. Potentially, although it hasn’t been the case for me, a very good living. Perhaps, it would be wise to be glad for what I have rather than longing for something more creative.
A writer was what I wanted to be as a child. I didn’t really know what that would mean when I wrote my autobiography in third grade. It was short. Editor of my high school newspaper and Features Editor of my college newspaper, I trained in classical journalism and was even planning to pursue Journalism as a major at the University of Northern Arizona when life took me on a different path. I’ve gotten to write so many articles in my lifetime. There are some interviews I remember fondly. The colleagues of a beloved English professor. The scientist who taught me about the coal fires that burn continually in India and shared her work to reverse this danger. The scientist who taught me about the atmosphere; when she said that we experience the air pollution of China, my mind was blown. The scientist who was so thrilled that I let him review the article I wrote about the commercial salmon fishing run so that he could make sure it was right. He’d never had a reporter do that before. I said that the truth was more important to me than anything else in journalism. I guess that makes me a purist and might explain why an actual career at this time in the world might not have worked out for the best. The closest I’ve come to doing it professionally was the tiny bit of money I made from some articles for a small newspaper in Southwest Alaska. In college, I won awards for poetry and short story writing. I always believed I’d be published one day and perhaps that belief kept me from pushing hard enough to make it happen. Now, I’m pushing and it isn’t happening. What does it take to get published? It often feels more like a lottery pick than any substantial consideration of craft. Everyone is a blogger. Everyone is a writer. What does it matter now that my whole life has been devoted to the craft and not the career? Where am I left with my love of the sounds and meanings of words?
Leaving Santa Fe, I wasn’t sure I’d come back. I like Santa Fe, but the man that I loved for twelve years did not and things became strained between us. There were ways we both let each other down and there was betrayed trust. I’m trying to figure out how to allow the person you love and admire to be human and make mistakes while at the same time not tolerating disrespect. I think most people have to work through that in some way.
My great grandmother did. She wrote a poem back in the 1930s confessing that it was wrong for her to cast aside the people in her life who failed her simply by being human and making mistakes just like she did. The challenge is to love without enabling bad behavior. Bad behavior hurts the person doing the action as much, maybe more, than anyone else. I try to keep that in mind. I’ve found that it takes time when someone has broken your trust. I’m not sure what is ahead for us. He’s in Alaska for several months. In Santa Fe, we didn’t leave on good terms. Alone, I walked down Canyon Road and to the Santa Fe Depot and got on a train.
If only I could navigate my life the way I navigate trains!
Next France for Two Months: In the Walled City of Avignon
This is #9 in a series of stories: France for Two Months. Follow the links below to read the other parts of the series starting with the first:
1. Santa Fe Depot Departure
2. Return to the Great Lady
3. Shakespeare and Company Bookstore
4. Paris Stroll
5. Paris – des heures exquises
6. Train to Thonon-les-Bains
7. Château de Ripaille
8. Getting up with the Birds: Lac Léman to Lyon to Lille