Wednesday, September 17, 2014

I wake at 7:30, not a bad time. Today I plan to bus to Fontenay aux Roses, stroll down the hill from work to the RER, and then wander the RER. I can walk (and take breakfast) south-east down Boulevard Daumesnil, and catch the Tram clockwise to Chatillon-Montrouge to intersect the 294. The surest way is to take Metro 13 to Chatillon-Montrouge, but the Tram ought to work, and who needs the crowding?

An easy walk along Boulevard Daumesnil to Daumesnil(!) then I hop on the first tram that arrives; it is crowded and I make my way towards the centre of the car (7-car tram) and realize that standing isn't the problem, it is facing a wall – I can't see out of a window, so I hop off and make like a tourist while two trams pass, board the third, and after a half-dozen stops I get a seat to Port de Vanves.

I grab the Metro out to Chatillon-Montrouge, and hop on a 294 bus which should take me to Fontenay Aux Roses, which it does, and I start scanning for my old place of work, which doesn't appear, and here we are at Robinson RER, so I hop off the bus, onto the RER and head back to Fontenay Aux Rose, hop off the RER and study the station map to determine where I should go.

I have, of course, forgotten the name of the street on which I worked, but I'll know the area when I see it!

I start walking in a general north-westerly direction, and it is up, Up, UP hill all the way. Mountain of Roses, more like it. I do recall walking down to Trevor Cox's place, downhill from the office, so uphill is good, and I think I shed about a pound in perspiration. Soon recollection stirs within me, and Voila! as we say in Toronto, here is the intersection.

The Brasserie is no more, it is a Japanese restaurant, so no memory-stirring breakfast for me, but just up the street is the familiar building and gate and gate-house. The building in which I worked is being turned into a four storey condominium by the looks of it.

Ignoring the sign that says the great unwashed public is forbidden to enter (I can't read French, right?) I sneak in through an open doorway and make my way down corridors, lit and unlit, towards the sound of voices that have distinct tones of "But ...!" and "I don't care, just get it DONE!" and find myself inching past dangling electrical cables into a room with four white-overalled workers.

I say "Bonjour Messieurs" and they chorus back at me. Who knows who this guy is, right? We are but humble workers. We Ça Va each other, and junior reaches out to take my hand. I say that I am on vacation but they are working, and they laugh and commiserate with each other. I ask if this used to be Chez Phillips, and they confirm. I wrote computer programs in this office before any one of them were born.

I feel old, and with much goodwill I leave and walk down the street to catch the 194 bus, which I should have caught in the first place. This takes me close by Malakoff into Porte d'Orleans.

I spot the Hotel Terminus and the adjacent restaurant where I ordered and ate my first meal back in June 1978. Sigh! I cross the street and am sitting here in the Cafe Orleans; my croque monsieur is finished (brunch each day, around 11 a.m., is a different sandwich – jambon, ementhal, croque monsieur, ...)

I have achieved many of my objectives and am up to date. Better yet, I have confirmed that I can carry on a conversation in French and can find my way around.

What to do now at 11:30? I could go back to the hotel and goof off, have a quiet day, but I believe it is going to rain tomorrow and/or Friday, so I think I'll stroll north up Avenue General LeClerc and see how far I can get.

I get as far as Denfert-Rocherau, then take RER to Chatelet Les Halles, and RER to Etoile. I find St George's but all doors are closed despite the printed invitation to drop in for a time of quiet contemplation.

Not so much "no room at the inn" as "no entry to the room". Ah well, back to Etoile, RER to Gare de Lyon and the information desk. Yes, much has changed in 35 years. It is no longer an SNCF train that I take, but another RER double-decker from an underground platform.

We are soon speeding through stations without stopping. Will we stop at Le Bras de Fer? Yes, we will, and do.

I wander around totally bamboozled by the buildings that crowd the station; this used to be a industrial desert! I think I spot my building; it is on the far side of the highway. I have a memory of walking across what used to be a busy road twice a day!

On the way back I chat up a school-minder with a crocodile of children; the children ask me if I speak English, so I reply in Australian just to confuse their minds. The minder laughs. She says that she has lived here since '73 and is often confused as she walks around. At least I am only confused since 1980, and have been absent since then!

The train back to Gare de Lyon arrives on time, and I start typing this up while we speed towards home, the ride is that smooth.

I prowl Gare de Lyon and wander around the ground-level – all is changed. The bar - where I'd take my morning glass of white wine – is gone; it is a "Relay" convenience store now. I can see no mainline trains as I knew them, only TGVs, and there are dozens of them in the station, and several dozen more parked just outside the station.

(Later on I learned that the mainline trains are one level down!)

I walk home along Avenue Daumesnil and Rue de Charenton and treat myself to a chocolate bread, to the amusement of the ladies behind the counter and all the customers I usher ahead of me while I choose to listen to what and how they order.

Then to the Tea Shoppe (not its real name) and I buy a big mug for tea.

I have a shower and make two huge mugs of tea, drink them both. These day-long walks are dehydrating me.

After 7 p.m. (See! I can learn!) I set out for a light supper, choosing a restaurant I've not visited before; my ploy to get outside my comfort zone, which is quite tiny, and hence very easy to do. I end up outside eating a Salade du Sud, if I got that right, and go through a 26-oz bottle of water too.

On my strolling-way back I am approached by a middle-aged woman who gabbles away at me and I gather she wants to know the time. I have only my camera, and I fumble through the menu, settings, camera, date and time, time, until we see that it is 8:36 p.m. after I have subtracted the Toronto time offset. My new acquaintance apologizes – she did not know I wasn't French. How could she? She asks/I tell about my trip and we chat for maybe ten minutes right there in the street. I am joyful.

19,000 steps today

On my way down Daumesnil to Daumesnil; early morning duty is take-baguette-home or take-child-to-school.

We are looking through the trees on the far side of Avenue Daumesnil, near the intersection of Avenue du General Michel Bizot. That's a seven storey building, count 'em. The trees are close to seven stories high, say about sixty feet. Now why can't we have trees like that in Toronto along, say, Yonge or Bay streets? Why do we get puny saplings that are replaced every seven years? We may as well plant bamboos.

Not rocks from the start of the current inter-glacial period, but a work of art near, I think, Rue Albert Einstein. I have hopped off the Tram under the pretence of wanting to see these rocks, but I'm waiting for a later Tram with more seats. Everyone else who got off when I did is on their way to work (grin!)

Here is a Tram – a train of light rail vehicles, seven cars, heading off to the south-west corner of Paris.

Once again – there's no reason to avoid having a lawn in place of concrete. This is not a short stretch of weeds that has been trimmed with a Weed-Hog; this is a stretch of manicured sod, and it stretches quite a way around the city. Why can't WE do that in Toronto?

Even the crossover track is laid with sod. Sigh!

Meanwhile, back at the subway platform, painted guides show you where to stand, where to let passengers get off before you get on, and the carriage door WILL be there.

The doors of the subway car are closing, the doors on the platform are closing, too.

There we are. All closed up. The platform barrier inhibits suicides, I'm told, but I suspect that you just go to a different line of the Metro. Or jump off a bridge onto a passing barge.

This is a timetable board on a platform of the RER. Just LOOK at all the trains!

If you squint or zoom near the right-hand end of the date-stamp, you'll see that around five a.m. Trains (RER trains, not Metro subway trains) run every six minutes.

And here is my relatively new, sleek, clean, RER carriage.

One of dozens of chestnuts on the street. Which reminds me that I still haven't seen a chestnut or crepe vendor, but then, it's early for chestnuts and I haven't spent a lot of time in Paris city.

Another beautiful building, this time in Fontenay Aux Roses.

I'm standing on the corner; my old Brasserie has been turned into a Japanese restaurant.

Used to be corridors of power, now corridors of apartments.

“Don't park so as to block the gates”, amongst other things. You can read more here .

Here is the old gate-house where first I heard “zonpree”; that puzzled me for two whole days!

My old office window!

One last look down the street to Trevor's “Atelier Langues Vivants”, if I got that right. That's the old diner, on the left.

I so love the decorative older buildings.

Back in Porte d’Orleans, the cafe where I stumbled though my first meal that Thursday night in June 1978.

Walking north up Avenue General Leclerc, I pass a stable of buses waiting to go to Gare du Nord. The route numbers end in “8” which tells us “Porte d'Orleans”. How clever is the RATP?!

Still walking north, the church at Alesia coyly peeks around the trees.

I had noticed that the buses did not show a route number at the rear, then this one swooshed by me displaying “28”.

I don't wander into KFC at home; I'm certainly not going to have a meal here for the sake of KFC. I’d prefer to have a sandwich in a Cafe-Tabac.

There's Tour Montparnasse, letting me check on my progress across the city.

The little church of Saint-Pierre-de-Montrouge.

I think we are being renovated, hence the netting. Either that or we have a serious pigeon problem.

I don't wander into Burger King at home, either.

La Rajasthan; I ate supper here one night with Louise.

Nor McDonalds. This is awful! Is Paris being Americanized? Has my vocabulary become Americanized?

A sleek RER train in the station at Denfert-Rocherau.

I scurry past the Arc de Triomphe, avoiding the ordinary tourists who travel in groups with cameras at the ready.

I travel alone with camera in my pocket.

Cubism is alive in Paris.

Cubism is well executed, as well, in Paris.

At last I reach the corner of Newton and Auguste Vacquerie; I've trotted through here often enough in the past.

The main doors to the church.

The notice goes on to invite me to come on in and look around, but every door is locked.

I might come back next Sunday, just for the Hell of it.

And so to Le Bras de Fer. That's odd, this building wasn't here in 1979!

Nor was this!

Nor this alleyway!!

Nor these buildings.

At first I thought this was the building in which I worked.

Then I realized it was the one across thehighway, much busier than the main road it was back in '79.

The trees are new, too.

And still the buildings grow faster than the trees.

This view I remember, waiting for the train at 5:10 p.m., staring across to the platform on the far side.

Back at Gare de Lyon I spot the TGVs waiting to rush out of the station and to the south of France.

Typical scene: Everyone is using a smart-phone while waiting for the train to be announced by quay number.

I walked out along one platform to take a shot of the station. This is what I would have seen as I boarded the train each morning, had not everything changed.

So I leave the station and start the stroll home. I was struck by this long list of names. You can't see it, but the very last name is Evry, from which I just came.

I love the maps system, especially the notification of “you are here”.

Even though you are NOT here with me, you can easily spot where you would be if you were, right?

I have taken a shortcut down Rue Elisa Lemonnier and visited the patisserie on my way home.

Well, that lemon tart didn't last long!

A quick mug of tea … you can see that the hotel-supplied cup is barely a mouthful, which is why I bought my own mug.

My morning walk to the Tram.

From the Fontenay-aux-Roses RER station and up the shopping street.

Walking to, and past, my old place of work and on for a while to the bus stop.

Walking from Porte d’Orleans to Denfert Rocherau.

A saunter around Etoile, to and from church.

A quick sortie at Le Bras de Fer.

The stroll home from Gare de Lyon.

The Eiffel Tower at night; not a foggy night – I was playing with the camera with no flash.

I caught the tower as the yellow lights filled the body of the tower and the lighthouse-like beam swung towards me.