Friday, September 26, 2014

My last weekday in Paris, how to spend it? Well waking up at 4 a.m. is a good start.

My little map of Ile de France shows where I've had significant trips, it's a weekday, so frequent trains by SNCF, the fare is paid. I can toddle around Paris or the RER on the weekend … so it's either south towards Malesherbes or east towards Coulommiers, Nanteuil or Crecy.

If Malesherbes is in zone 5, that'll do; it has a market. Or I could walk all of Boigneville; from Gare de Lyon.

Coulommiers and there will be a bus from the station to the town centre, for sure.

(I realize that in my five months planning of the trip, I shunned towns where the centre seemed to be a long way from the railway station; I hadn’t realized that there would be so many buses ...)

Nanteuil is not so good, but the preceding station La Ferte sous Jouarre is right on the Marne.

Crouy sur Ourcq has a market and Crecy la Chapelle looks good too.

Except for Malesherbes, the rest are all out of Gare de l'Est, so Gare de l'Est it is!

The laundry is closed, even after eight, so I walk up and down the market, listening. There's a special services bus trying to negotiate the middle of the market, but the bus’s way is blocked by market vans, so passengers get out to direct the driver. It just won't fit.

The driver gets out.

I think it's a good idea to have street theatre at 8:00 on a wonderfool day like today ...Finally someone realized that if they just back up THIS van six inches, the stream of traffic that tails back to Dugommier, honking, might begin to move again.

I feel no pain for the motor-cyclists who have woven their way through the cars to find themselves in a cul de sac formed by a huge RATP bus and a ten-tonne van. And there are too many of them, now, to back there way out of the narrow defile. Like one of the better B&W cowboy movies of my youth.

For the first time since arriving I buy carrots, three, raw, to munch on. Why have I avoided carrots? I eat them on foot everywhere when walking around Toronto. Is it because I am “on holiday” and just won't do what I'd normally do at home?

The train from Daumesnil to Bastille is packed. The train Bastille to Gare de l'Est is not packed. I check the next train while I wait; sure enough, trains coming FROM Gare de l'Est are packed, presumably with commuters coming off the suburban trains and heading to work.

Nowadays commuters have more problems, mainly because most of them are holding cell-phones with one hand and trying to steady themselves with the only hand that's left.

At the Metro Bastille two events unfold.

The first arises because I am so eager to get going, I search the platform map for the correct exit for Gare de l'Est for nearly sixty seconds until I realize I'm still only at Bastille. Ooops!

I ride the escalators like everyone else and am greeted by a phalanx – well six anyway – of gray-suited ticket inspectors. No one escapes.

I am in my usual light-hearted mood and so I mime “eeny-meeny-miney-mo”, and all six break out in smiles when I pick the lady, who checks my Navigo. I pass! But her partner, a guy, says something about how he is pretty, too; or perhaps it's his wife who think he's pretty.

My lady whispers in my ear a word I picked up on the 46 bus last week while holding the little boy on my lap. “Elle est jalou”, jealous. I look across and the other lady has a sweet pout, so I walk over to her and SHE checks my card for me.

I explain that really I want to know if it being a read-only operation the check can be performed frequently; it can. We part on the best of terms, but I am so delighted at being able to lighten up with the (by some) feared inspectors that I lose my way.

I retrace my steps and as I approach the gang from the rear, my lady spots me, so I sidle up to her and ask “Qu'est-ce-que tu fais ce soir?” in my most seductive accent. “Ah!” she replies with a tone of regret, “C'est secret!”, and we both laugh.

I am just over the moon that I can joke in French.

At Gare de l'Est I take my time; I am, perhaps, last off the train, and am met by what turns out to be a deaf-mute who wants to know the way somewhere. He pulls out his ticket while I check there is no gang of pickpockets behind me. Gare de l'Est, Grandes Lignes, Nancy, is the answer, so I take him to the displays and he seems happy.

I scan my boards and see a train leaving for Coulommiers in four minutes. What a deal. We hightail it out of Gare de l'Est and are in Tournan 30 minutes later, then it's the milk train to Coulommiers, just 33 minutes later.

In Coulommieres I stroll into town. At this time the air is fresh and sweet, cool, with the promise of a perfect day. I cross the Grand Morin and its various little siblings that thread their way through town. I find the bureau de tourisme and get a map from the lady, also a book on local hotels (€75). I confirm directions for the library. The library is housed in the old prison, a castle surrounded by high walls.

The library is, of course, closed. Wrong time of day. That makes my score 1 out of 10 for the past ten days. On my way down the Impasse I chatted with a labourer who appeared to be standing in the street shouting at himself. There was another labourer on a scaffold, masked by the cloth drapes to retain the plaster and powder. We laughed, and I understood his joke – my friend had “not taken his medicaments this morning”. Hah hah.

I stroll around town; there is a patisserie every twenty yards on average (see photo above). These folks have sweet teeth, if they have any teeth left.

The crosswalks in every place I've been, even in Paris, work exceedingly well. Cars and other vehicles actually slow down and stop for you; it's not a game of chicken as in Toronto. I get a bit embarrassed because I figure every driver is going somewhere on purpose whereas I am just wandering aimlessly.

Even when I stand well back from the crosswalk they seem to think that they should stop sooner to give me confidence. I wave them on. No No! They wave me on! After all, I am a tourist, and they are just slaving away paying taxes so that I can ride their trains almost for free.

The height of idiocy (in a nice way) is when I wave a driver on and he waves back “No, you go first”, then I reach into my pocket and dangle my camera at him, then he wags a finger at me, as if he is admonishing me “No. No!”, but he is merely signaling that HE has just realized that it's a one-way street (a no-no) and he can't come down here anyway. We part on the best of terms laughing jointly at ourselves.

Into a patisserie. “I have a diet, but YOU have raspberry meringues”, and she laughs, heads towards the display in the window, and agrees when I blurt out “The biggest there is”. For €1.5, about $2.25 I am graced with the biggest handful of sugar I've ever held in my life.

I drop into a cafe and on my way to a table order a cafe. The coffee arrives, I drink it, and take a €5 note to the bar to pay. I reflect on how little I knew when I arrived 35 years ago, how much Lee and Stammers seemed to know, and how much I believed them.

They really didn't have a clue, and if only they had looked and listened they would have seen that French people behave just the same as English (or Australian or Canadian). If you're in a hurry it's OK to cut corners. You don't have to wait for the bill to arrive before you fish a banknote out of your wallet, and so on.

I walk back to the station, check bus timetables, train timetables, and elect to get the #17 bus which will take me through Mouroux, which we came through on the train, Crecy la Chapelle, and Chessy.

Chessy? Chessy SNCF? I don't recall any such station on any of the maps I've been poring over these past five months.

It turns out that (but see Friday September 19, 2014 “Persan-Beaumont”) Chessy is a town, and is served by the same SNCF station that serves the neighboring town Marne-La-Valee. Only I've never known the station as “ Marne-La-Valee Chessy”, only as “ Marne-La-Valee”, a terminus of an RER line.

There seems to be some confusion about Crecy la Chapelle – we don't go through it but we go past it. By the time we get back to Coulommiers from Disney World I've worked it out: Some buses (used to) go via Crecy la Chapelle, you could get off and do some shopping or buy a coffee – but now, or this bus, skirts town and doesn't stop.

The #17 bus essentially picks up workers in Coulommiers and Mouroux and takes them to work at Disneyland; and of course, brings them home. There appear to be four buses rolling across the countryside at mid-day.

The bus wanders around Coulommiers picking up courage and passengers, then jumps on the D934 main road through Mouroux and skirting the aforementioned Crecy la Chapelle before jumping on the Autoroute A4 southbound, through the toll plaza, and hence off on the D344 ring road for Disney. So!

And the driver is laid back, knows most of the passengers by name, and spends the entire trip – including the Autoroute section – chatting with the lady in the front seat and steering with one hand on the wheel and the other cooling off outside the window.

Well, here we are back at the station at Coulommiers. And I've missed the hourly train by less than five minutes; it's funny to think that if I'd jumped off the bus at Mouroux and walked the street to that station I might have caught the train.

It's the 15:36 for me now. Straight back to Gare de l'Est direct from Tournan, no doubt. Or I could get off in Tournan and fool around. I’m tired. I’ll go straight home.

Which of course makes me think of going Home, landing in Toronto after 5 p.m., probably 7 p.m. by the time I unlock my apartment door if I stop by Dominion and collect a tub of ice-cream to celebrate.

It's hard to believe that I haven't had a lick of ice-cream since I left.

So it is at speed we arrive back at Paris-Est. I dawdle off the train and wander through Information and hang a left and then a right to MonoPrix and here's my #46 which takes me in pretty good time from noon to 4 o'clock on the dial that is Paris.

OK. Let's test your knowledge of skills in Paris: Say you have forty motorbikes parked along fifty metres or so of kerb, and it's autumn, leaves have fallen and clutter up this beautiful city, including the gaps between, under and around the motorbikes, and this scene is repeated maybe a thousand times across the city.

How do you clean up the leaves?

You send out a three-man crew, two of them armed with leaf-blowers and one to drive the street-sweeper truck very slowly along the line of bikes. The leaf blowers blast the leaves away from the curb and into the street where the street-sweeper sucks them all up like a Mountain Devil getting stuck into a trail of ants.

From Daumesnil I toddle down my street, get my key, grab a shower and change into fresh clothes then head out for a paper and dinner.

The paper kiosk has a different guy; he tells me no Le Monde today, they are on strike. Oh. Can he suggest an equivalent?

Just then the regular fellow comes back, recognizes me, suggests “Liberation”. I think the gist of what he told me was that I should balance my reading with something a bit left-wing!

I pay and get my change, then he laughs and gives me a stale copy of YESTERDAY'S le Monde, because he knows I'm reading it to learn French. What a nice guy. Typical of the French, and a pox! on Stammers and Lee.

I make my way up to yet-another-brasserie and have a coffee until they start serving dinner, steak-frites as a treat to myself, then a very slow walk home.

I wander up and down Rue Daumesnil waiting for the laundry to open. The street is waiting for the market to open. The market waits for the sun to open ...

Most of the stalls are set up. The fresh-food stalls seem to be the last to set up. Could it be the essence of timing to get the freshest produce from the Rungs markets and then rush them here in dozens of vans?

You can by bedding in the street markets, not just fresh food and clothing.

If it looks like chaos, it’s because it is!

The lady in the red cap to the right wants to fully-open the door of her truck.

The driver of the van wants to park.

A larger delivery truck carefully backs into his stall spot, at right-angles to the kerb.

Eastbound traffic waits; no honking of horns. Yet.

Look! There’s an unusual sight! An RATP bus making its way uphill, eastwards, up our street.

I turn and check the eastwards view. Do you think I should move the hand-trolley so that the bus can get through?

No. No need to. The RATP bus can’t get past the delivery truck.

Only I think it’s not an RATP bus, it says “Recuil Social” on the front; “social shelter”, roughly. Social services probably.

There followed fully ten minutes of street theatre. No one was game to hop in the cab and gently roll the van backwards two feet. The driver was probably off in some café having a quick one.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch salad ...

Cell-phone, luggable luggage, green light ...

How can I not love these buildings. How ugly Toronto’s glass cubes look.

A lousy shot of the sign on the side of my train telling me which stations will be served. The sign is perfect, it’s my shutter-timing that’s lousy.

My train! Clean, sleek, and leaving on time.

Everyone else’s trains. Clean, sleek, and leaving on time.

A four-screen display tells you everything you want to know, where we are going, when we will get there, the next station, and so on.

It is ***so*** re-assuring to sit in a train and see that it is indeed going to where you thought it was going.

Tournan. Exactly 30 minutes from Gare de l’Est.

I tried to get a shot of an ivy-grown wishing well just past the station fence.

Whoosh! Once we leave Tournan.

Here we are, flashing along the Morin valley.

And Coulommiers about an hour out of Paris, including several stops.

Just outside the station I check the directions for the centre of town.

Don’t forget to marvel at the weather.

This bus looks a little out of the ordinary, but they fly in and out of the station at frequent intervals.

Broad and well-defined cycle paths lead towards the town centre.

And in the other direction ...

This is one of the Morins. There are two Morins, the grand and the petit.

Here is the other side of the bridge. The creek looks like a green swampy canal at this point.

But the bridge is well-decorated.

The side of the war memorial; a mother weeps.

I always stop and silently read off the names. These were men who had dreams, fears, and very short lives.

Back to the street. Already the shops appear and we are not yet at the town centre.

This van looked like an overgrown Dinky-Toy, but I bet it is efficient for the job.

I noticed that French cars do not sport vanity plates. I can’t recall seeing one in the two weeks I was here.

What’s not to like about a street with such shade on a hot day?

Another Morin; they lace their way through town.

Another bridge; more flowers.

I suspect that Venice looks a lot like this.

The first and third shops are pastry shops.

And the third shop on the other side is a pastry shop, too.

I am here.

Just past that pastry shop is a chocolate shop. Makes a nice change ...

I am here.

The street bends.

The man with his hands in his pocket is the boss. He spent part of his morning asking people not to stand in the doorway of the tourist office on account of falling plaster.

Later he shared a joke with me about being “off his medication”.

I turn out of the tourist bureau and head towards the library.

Can that be it? Looks more like a prison to me.

Yes; the library is housed in the old prison.

Prison walls. Just how precious are these books? (joke!)

These two ladies appear to have just left the library, so it must be open.

Ah! What a dramatic entrance.

Now these stairs could be a bit of a handicap if you were handicapped.

Shut tighter than a drum. No books will escape from here today!

Then I found the handicap access under the main stairs, but, of course, locked.

And here we go again. I arrive at each library by chance – day, hour, town – and they are always CLOSED!

So back to stroll around Coulommiers, using that church tower as a landmark.

Shops, shops, shops. Who’d hang around Paris when there are thousands of shop-keepers willing to chat?

Streets are quiet and heavily used by – pedestrians.

A car or van is an unusual event.

The square.

And yet, and yet, you can till enjoy a nice little traffic-jam if you want to.

Wandering, wandering.

Another beautiful building, but not the town hall.

Electronic cigarettes are big in the region. I noticed several shops in most towns, and many such shops around Paris.

A huge roundabout for vehicles, prettily gardened too.

I was plucking up courage to buy a meringue from the pastry shop on the left.

So I walked right around the intersection served by the huge roundabout.

Coulommiers has a covered market.

Wednesdays and Sundays, if we read the sign correctly.

Here’s a detail of the next sign from the photo before this one (!).

The Christmas Icicle lights have been left up; good for them.

Houses are built into each other.

Count the chimney pots!

My meringue.

Trucs! I remember being stumped by this word back in ‘78. I asked a colleague what a truc was and she said it’s a watchamacallit, a thingyumyjig, a doovalackey, you know? No, I said, what IS it?

A view back down a hill past the café where I took a coffee, towards the parking square.

Another huge roundabout.

Parts of the tower have been rebuilt. I didn’t learn why.

The newness of the stone is evident.

Another view of the covered market.

I am in a bit of a daze. A sugar-high?

More on pedestrian crossings. I am walking around the intersection that, for cars, is governed by a huge roundabout.

Once I cross here, from left to right of the photo, I will walk past the black car (parked on the footpath!) to the next crossing; see the next photo.

Here I have walked past that black car on the footpath, and almost reached the next pedestrian crossing, but the roundabout intersection is way behind me.

As a pedestrian I walk a long way to the crossings; they are not built right on the intersection as in Toronto.

But by being so far from the intersection, the drivers give me their full attention.

Tanning! Those were the days! Thirty-three of them in 1791, but only three by 1908.

Surely the spinning and weaving industries had a lot to do with the demise (of the leather chemise ...)

The Morin looks quite stately here.

There is a hefty current, though.

You can live here and have a car drive underneath your living-room floor!

Mouroux I passed through on the train; Meaux is way to the north, on another line out of Gare de l’Est.

I must look up www.darche-gros.fr

Here is what I mean by the richness of the Transilien system. I took a train from Paris to Coulommiers; from Coulommiers I can make use of a bus network that serves a decent area.

Imagine having a day to spend, and hopping on and off buses to visit, as in sight-seeing, all the little towns in this small region.

Now multiply that for lines A through P of the Transilien system, not just for those towns at the end of the line, but for towns we passed through along the way.

Off on the bus ride to Chessy. I have a window seat, but very limited viewing space in terms of anticipating camera shots.

At the bus stops wild flowers bloom. I hadn’t understood the meaning of profusion until now.

You have to walk on beds of flowers just to board the local bus!

At first glance I wondered if the bus was pedal-powered for steep hills.

I took this shot because we passed through a lovely avenue of trees, like that classic picture of Poplars in Belgium?

By accident I caught our driver, left arm out of the window, head turned to chat with the passenger in the front seat.

Dormitory villages lie across the farm fields.

The concept is similar to urban growth outside Toronto, but here we have villages separated by farms, rather than a cancerous creeping blight that spreads out from the downtown core.

A view of my bus trip, out and back to Chessy.

Back in the station yard I take a photo of my bus as it prepares to head out again.

And on the way back in the train I see what I take to be preparation for an extra line running alongside the existing tracks.

(Movie) Birdsong in the bamboo garden Quartier Bercy

My various walks around Coulommiers.