France au printemps...
There were 28 of us total including a couple of very nice people from NY and our tour guide, Alissa. It rained (hard) the first day in Paris, but after that not so much. We arrived on the day of a general strike which forced us to change hotels from the Latin Quarter (ground zeo for the demonstrations) to the Montmarte are near Sacre Coeur.
We enjoyed a variety of sights and activities, some guided others improvised. The students became quite adept at using the metro and getting around the city. They did their best to support the local shops and street artists...the euro is not cheap these days.
On day 4 we were scheduled to leave Gare de Lyon on the TGV (bullet train) for Avignon but we ran into an unannounced "manif" where about 1,000 students blocked the train tracks leaving the station forcing a complete shutdown of the station and stranding hundreds of travelers (including us). It was somewhat chaotic although most people seemed to take it in stride. There were students handing out homemade pamphlets making their case against the labor law (CPE) in question.
Some of us perused the newstands to get some idea of the situation. One funny item involved Sharon Stone, the actress. Apparently she had come to Paris and joined the protesters. There was a cartoon of her wielding an ice pick and charging the French police who were beating a terrified retreat...apparently "Fatal Attraction" still has some traction in the popular imagination here. Most impactful, I think, was the sight of police in riot gear trotting down the platforms to confront the protesters and also the military who were called in to secure the train station and prevent people like us from wandering down to take a look or to try to board a train.
I got a chance to chat with a few soldiers...nobody seemed to uptight. I asked one of them how long the demonstration might take. He smiled at me as if I were an innocent and he said, "Ca depend sur les etudiantes." As it turned out it took 3-4 hours. Too late for our train. It was interesting to see a poll that claimed that 80% of the French wanted to see the CPE either revised or withdrawn altogether.
Even so, I don't get the feeling that the French are as unified or as deeply engaged by this as that poll number might suggest...there is a kind of middle class quality to the issue and there remains apparently some fairly significant divisions within France over how to promote more jobs and how to address the marginalisation of immigrant populations whose unemployment numbers are very high.
Nevertheless, I find it interesting to observe a culture where the bias tilts in favor of the worker and where the burden of proof of goodwill and responsiblity rests with those who would like to employ those people (for profit of course). They seem to be reluctant capitalists in France...I'm not so sure there isn't some wisdom embedded in that predisposition.
Anyway, there was some drama for our little group of travelers at Gare de Lyon. We had to find lodgings that night in Paris and we had to book another train the next day. I say "we" but really it all fell on Alissa's shoulders. She was amazing. At first it wasn't clear what the ramifications of the demonstration would be...we held out hope for our train...Alissa was on two different mobile phones talking to EF Tours, talking to bus companies, talking to hotels, all the while keeping an eye on us as we staked out our little turf against the wall next to a platform.
The stations was filling up with people, everywhere you looked there was a sea of people. The bathrooms were out of order. Occasionally an announcement droned overhead, incomprehensible usually, but the large electronic travel board told eveyone all they needed to know....every train "annule'". Eventually the uniformed people standing between us and the trains began shouting at everyone to evacuate the station. The effect was a bit startling for some of our group who were closest to the soldiers, they looked anxious and prepared to leave, but where, the people further back, on the far side of the station were out of earshot of these calls and oblivious or unconcerned about any calls to evacuate.
After a few more such calls, Alissa took us outside. Again we established a little beachhead on an island in front of the station. Taxis were streaming in, carrying away little by little the swelling numbers of people standing curbside looking for someplace to go. I lead a couple of groups of people to a nearby bar where they could use a toilet. Meanwhile Alissa was in full emergency mode. I came back from the bar and saw her holding a phone in each ear...there was a young man (a rookie tour guide for another group similarly stranded it turned out) was pleading with her even as she carried on two phone conversations. finally she waved him off with her very expressive italian hands, the poor guy looked utterly defeated as he left.
Alissa, to her everlasting credit, did not crack. She had found a hotel, Pierre Vacance in Porte de Versaille, no address just a name and neighborhood. We would have to take taxis there. The line for taxis extended across the full front of the train station. We moved our group and all our baggage (this was a time to be grateful that we had packed light) to the end of it. Alissa told me that she was going inside to book our train for tomorrow. She left and we waited.
After awhile I began to perceive the rate at which we were advancing toward the head of the line...I began to wonder about Alissa. Her absence and the advancing line began to appear to me as a kind of collision in the offing. The collision wasn't what worried me, it was the near miss. What if we got to the taxi and Alissa wasn't there. People in our group were looking a bit stressesd. It had been four hours.
The taxi line stretched back as far as ever. the thought of going back to the end seemed terribly sad. I decided I'd try to find Alissa while we still had some time. I dashed inside the station. I'm not sure what I hoped to see, but all I could see were hundreds of people. All the people who had left had been replaced by new ones it seemed. It was bedlam. I tried to cut through the crowd passing by the ticket windows but it was useless. By the time I got back out front our group was within a dozen people or so of the head of the line...unfortunately Alissa wasn't there. What to do?
There was a uniformed man in charge of the line, placing people into taxis as they cruised up for their fares. He was trying heroically to hustle people into cars, to keep people in line, off the street and out of the traffic. I walked to the head of the line, trying as I walked to clarify exactly what I wanted to ask him. What I wanted, I thougt, was to know if Pierre Vacance Porte de Versaille was enough information for a cab driver or did we need an address?
I stood just behind him as escorted an elderly lady to a cab, waved it off and waved in the next cab. I tapped him on the shoulder, purposefully not looking at the people at the head of the line, trying not to imagine what they might be thinking about me at that moment. He turned to me, I asked him,"Do the cabbies know this hotel?" Without a pause he went to the cabbie and asked him. I saw the driver nod yes. Then the man in charge waved me over, gesturing for me to get in the cab. I understood at once that this was going to be unpleasant for both of us.
No, no, I said. It's not for me. I have a group. We... before I could finish I could see the anger in his eyes.
Why are you wasting my time. He turned away from me disgustedly and ushered the next person to the cab.
My group was inching closer...still no Alissa. I persisted with the man, trying now to explain the full situation. He listened as best he could while still moving people and cabs in and out. I told Beth and the other parents my intentions, we would take cabs only if they knew where the hotel was...even if Alissa wasn't there.
I repeated the name of the hotel and the area...Pierre Vacance Porte d'Orleans...Barbara, the woman from NY interrupted me, Porte de Versaille, she said. What? I said. Porte de Versaille, she repeated. Right, I corrected myself to everyone in earshot, Porte de Versaille. Privately I was dismayed by the thought that I might have already given the wrong name to others in the group. Suddenly the prospect of getting all 28 of us to the same hotel, a hotel that none of us had ever heard of in a part of Paris none of us had ever seen, seemed a bit dicey.
Caution would have been advised at this point; instead I pressed on, determined to take advantage of our spot in the line when we arrived. How much is the fare? someone asked me? I ran over to a cabbie and asked him. He shrugged as if to say, what do I look like a calculator? I ran back to our group and said, Look, four people to a cab, make sure your group has money. No groups with no money.
How much? someone repeated.
I don't know. I grabbed a number out of thin air a number which in retroospect should have proven to everyone there that I knew next to nothing about taking taxis...a hundred euros, I said. People's faces blanched. A hundred euros? Maybe a hundred twenty I said.
We were next in line. It occured to me that we didn't know exactly who would be travelling with whom, how many per taxi...and where by the way was Alissa? Before I could figure how to settle this, it was our turn. The man, who be now was painfully aware of our group and our destination, went to the cabbie. I saw him ask about our hotel...the cabbie frowned and shrugged.
The man turned and asked for the next fare but our group was so large that he could not easily see where we ended and the next fare stood. Now he was perturbe all over again. He began to wave our group over to the side. I saw that he wanted to put us in a kind of holding area, but our group was like a very large a very lethargic python. The more he gestured the more moribund it seemed our group became.
Finally we mangage to create a small space between ourselves and the rest of the taxi line. Some of our kids seemed shackled to their bags, slouched in the drizzling rain. A couple of them had that faraway stare, they were no longer with us in spirit only in body and baggage. One of them was too far out in traffic. The man barked at her to move back. She didn't respond. He approached her sternly and with a hand moved her back. That gesture engendered in her the kind of sullen and aggrieved look that I occasionally associatte with teenagers.
Now we were a group apart, the other taxi riders looked at us as if we were some curiosity. It gave me time to try to organize riders. 4 riders per taxi. One adult per taxi. Suddenly we had a cab. I called for a group of riders. The first group got in. I got in the driver's face and confirmed the hotel. They sped off. I wondered what we would do if something went wrong...there was no plan B, nobody had a phone number to reach me or Alissa. They were gone.
The next cab came, without my noticing it, two adults got in. Mothers and their offspring...my pronouncement about one adult per cab had no authority in the face of maternal instincts. The looks on their faces was one of determination not to be separated from their offspring, come what may. What was I doing?... I thought to myself.
Pretty soon there was a cab with only students getting in. They betrayed not the slightest apprehension, I took heart from their sense of adventure, I only hoped that it wouldn't be an adventure in the strictest sense of the word. At last there was only three of us left...and then Alissa appeared. The four of us (all adults) got in the cab and took off.
The cabbie surged off into the parisian traffic. It was reassuring somehow to be in his hands even as he seemed to entrust himself and us to some force or aura that enabled him and every other vehicle on the road to sense each other's presence and to somehow swerve and careen safely away and around each other. It was as if the skin of every car was magnetically charged with the same charge and so gently repulsed every move toward contact.
I thought of the others. I wondered who their drivers were. I heard Alissa draw in a sharp breath. There can't be, she said. What, I said. Two hotels by the same name in the same neighborhood. I felt at that moment that I would rather have faced a firing squad than confront the accusing looks of the mothers if and when we were ever reunited...but then Alissa was laughing again...the two hotels were right next door to each other. Who ever heard of two hotels by the same name right next to each other, she laughed.
Indeed. I had heard enough to last me for a good long while. The cab swerved deftly in and out, there was Notre Dame... later the Eiffel Tower...we had already seen them the day before...what was I doing here?...we were headed out of the city it seemed, on the autoroute passing into a concrete land of overpasses and cloverleafs, vaguely I worried if the driver had confused Porte de Versaille with Versaille, a town about 20 miles away...impossible, I thought...I was tired...Alissa was chattering on with the driver...it was good to have her back with us.
We were the last cab leave and the first to arrive so we had about five to ten minutes of suspense...where had those cabs taken our friends? Then, one at a time they arrived. We hugged them as if they were returning war heros. (our fare was 20 euros; the others ran as high as 30 euros...a good day for the parisian cabbies) At dinner that night I tried somehow to convey to the mothers how much I appreciated their anchoring presence, how suspicious I was of own impulses to make things work, to beat deadlines, to take things as a challenge. I could see that I was forgiven, but only because we were all still together...not even waiter's faux pas with our order could dampen our sense of well being. It had all worked out...better sometimes to be lucky than good. Still I'd like to be a little wiser next time....it's always good to be good, at least that's what I tell myself.
We enjoyed a variety of sights and activities, some guided others improvised. The students became quite adept at using the metro and getting around the city. They did their best to support the local shops and street artists...the euro is not cheap these days.
On day 4 we were scheduled to leave Gare de Lyon on the TGV (bullet train) for Avignon but we ran into an unannounced "manif" where about 1,000 students blocked the train tracks leaving the station forcing a complete shutdown of the station and stranding hundreds of travelers (including us). It was somewhat chaotic although most people seemed to take it in stride. There were students handing out homemade pamphlets making their case against the labor law (CPE) in question.
Some of us perused the newstands to get some idea of the situation. One funny item involved Sharon Stone, the actress. Apparently she had come to Paris and joined the protesters. There was a cartoon of her wielding an ice pick and charging the French police who were beating a terrified retreat...apparently "Fatal Attraction" still has some traction in the popular imagination here. Most impactful, I think, was the sight of police in riot gear trotting down the platforms to confront the protesters and also the military who were called in to secure the train station and prevent people like us from wandering down to take a look or to try to board a train.
I got a chance to chat with a few soldiers...nobody seemed to uptight. I asked one of them how long the demonstration might take. He smiled at me as if I were an innocent and he said, "Ca depend sur les etudiantes." As it turned out it took 3-4 hours. Too late for our train. It was interesting to see a poll that claimed that 80% of the French wanted to see the CPE either revised or withdrawn altogether.
Even so, I don't get the feeling that the French are as unified or as deeply engaged by this as that poll number might suggest...there is a kind of middle class quality to the issue and there remains apparently some fairly significant divisions within France over how to promote more jobs and how to address the marginalisation of immigrant populations whose unemployment numbers are very high.
Nevertheless, I find it interesting to observe a culture where the bias tilts in favor of the worker and where the burden of proof of goodwill and responsiblity rests with those who would like to employ those people (for profit of course). They seem to be reluctant capitalists in France...I'm not so sure there isn't some wisdom embedded in that predisposition.
Anyway, there was some drama for our little group of travelers at Gare de Lyon. We had to find lodgings that night in Paris and we had to book another train the next day. I say "we" but really it all fell on Alissa's shoulders. She was amazing. At first it wasn't clear what the ramifications of the demonstration would be...we held out hope for our train...Alissa was on two different mobile phones talking to EF Tours, talking to bus companies, talking to hotels, all the while keeping an eye on us as we staked out our little turf against the wall next to a platform.
The stations was filling up with people, everywhere you looked there was a sea of people. The bathrooms were out of order. Occasionally an announcement droned overhead, incomprehensible usually, but the large electronic travel board told eveyone all they needed to know....every train "annule'". Eventually the uniformed people standing between us and the trains began shouting at everyone to evacuate the station. The effect was a bit startling for some of our group who were closest to the soldiers, they looked anxious and prepared to leave, but where, the people further back, on the far side of the station were out of earshot of these calls and oblivious or unconcerned about any calls to evacuate.
After a few more such calls, Alissa took us outside. Again we established a little beachhead on an island in front of the station. Taxis were streaming in, carrying away little by little the swelling numbers of people standing curbside looking for someplace to go. I lead a couple of groups of people to a nearby bar where they could use a toilet. Meanwhile Alissa was in full emergency mode. I came back from the bar and saw her holding a phone in each ear...there was a young man (a rookie tour guide for another group similarly stranded it turned out) was pleading with her even as she carried on two phone conversations. finally she waved him off with her very expressive italian hands, the poor guy looked utterly defeated as he left.
Alissa, to her everlasting credit, did not crack. She had found a hotel, Pierre Vacance in Porte de Versaille, no address just a name and neighborhood. We would have to take taxis there. The line for taxis extended across the full front of the train station. We moved our group and all our baggage (this was a time to be grateful that we had packed light) to the end of it. Alissa told me that she was going inside to book our train for tomorrow. She left and we waited.
After awhile I began to perceive the rate at which we were advancing toward the head of the line...I began to wonder about Alissa. Her absence and the advancing line began to appear to me as a kind of collision in the offing. The collision wasn't what worried me, it was the near miss. What if we got to the taxi and Alissa wasn't there. People in our group were looking a bit stressesd. It had been four hours.
The taxi line stretched back as far as ever. the thought of going back to the end seemed terribly sad. I decided I'd try to find Alissa while we still had some time. I dashed inside the station. I'm not sure what I hoped to see, but all I could see were hundreds of people. All the people who had left had been replaced by new ones it seemed. It was bedlam. I tried to cut through the crowd passing by the ticket windows but it was useless. By the time I got back out front our group was within a dozen people or so of the head of the line...unfortunately Alissa wasn't there. What to do?
There was a uniformed man in charge of the line, placing people into taxis as they cruised up for their fares. He was trying heroically to hustle people into cars, to keep people in line, off the street and out of the traffic. I walked to the head of the line, trying as I walked to clarify exactly what I wanted to ask him. What I wanted, I thougt, was to know if Pierre Vacance Porte de Versaille was enough information for a cab driver or did we need an address?
I stood just behind him as escorted an elderly lady to a cab, waved it off and waved in the next cab. I tapped him on the shoulder, purposefully not looking at the people at the head of the line, trying not to imagine what they might be thinking about me at that moment. He turned to me, I asked him,"Do the cabbies know this hotel?" Without a pause he went to the cabbie and asked him. I saw the driver nod yes. Then the man in charge waved me over, gesturing for me to get in the cab. I understood at once that this was going to be unpleasant for both of us.
No, no, I said. It's not for me. I have a group. We... before I could finish I could see the anger in his eyes.
Why are you wasting my time. He turned away from me disgustedly and ushered the next person to the cab.
My group was inching closer...still no Alissa. I persisted with the man, trying now to explain the full situation. He listened as best he could while still moving people and cabs in and out. I told Beth and the other parents my intentions, we would take cabs only if they knew where the hotel was...even if Alissa wasn't there.
I repeated the name of the hotel and the area...Pierre Vacance Porte d'Orleans...Barbara, the woman from NY interrupted me, Porte de Versaille, she said. What? I said. Porte de Versaille, she repeated. Right, I corrected myself to everyone in earshot, Porte de Versaille. Privately I was dismayed by the thought that I might have already given the wrong name to others in the group. Suddenly the prospect of getting all 28 of us to the same hotel, a hotel that none of us had ever heard of in a part of Paris none of us had ever seen, seemed a bit dicey.
Caution would have been advised at this point; instead I pressed on, determined to take advantage of our spot in the line when we arrived. How much is the fare? someone asked me? I ran over to a cabbie and asked him. He shrugged as if to say, what do I look like a calculator? I ran back to our group and said, Look, four people to a cab, make sure your group has money. No groups with no money.
How much? someone repeated.
I don't know. I grabbed a number out of thin air a number which in retroospect should have proven to everyone there that I knew next to nothing about taking taxis...a hundred euros, I said. People's faces blanched. A hundred euros? Maybe a hundred twenty I said.
We were next in line. It occured to me that we didn't know exactly who would be travelling with whom, how many per taxi...and where by the way was Alissa? Before I could figure how to settle this, it was our turn. The man, who be now was painfully aware of our group and our destination, went to the cabbie. I saw him ask about our hotel...the cabbie frowned and shrugged.
The man turned and asked for the next fare but our group was so large that he could not easily see where we ended and the next fare stood. Now he was perturbe all over again. He began to wave our group over to the side. I saw that he wanted to put us in a kind of holding area, but our group was like a very large a very lethargic python. The more he gestured the more moribund it seemed our group became.
Finally we mangage to create a small space between ourselves and the rest of the taxi line. Some of our kids seemed shackled to their bags, slouched in the drizzling rain. A couple of them had that faraway stare, they were no longer with us in spirit only in body and baggage. One of them was too far out in traffic. The man barked at her to move back. She didn't respond. He approached her sternly and with a hand moved her back. That gesture engendered in her the kind of sullen and aggrieved look that I occasionally associatte with teenagers.
Now we were a group apart, the other taxi riders looked at us as if we were some curiosity. It gave me time to try to organize riders. 4 riders per taxi. One adult per taxi. Suddenly we had a cab. I called for a group of riders. The first group got in. I got in the driver's face and confirmed the hotel. They sped off. I wondered what we would do if something went wrong...there was no plan B, nobody had a phone number to reach me or Alissa. They were gone.
The next cab came, without my noticing it, two adults got in. Mothers and their offspring...my pronouncement about one adult per cab had no authority in the face of maternal instincts. The looks on their faces was one of determination not to be separated from their offspring, come what may. What was I doing?... I thought to myself.
Pretty soon there was a cab with only students getting in. They betrayed not the slightest apprehension, I took heart from their sense of adventure, I only hoped that it wouldn't be an adventure in the strictest sense of the word. At last there was only three of us left...and then Alissa appeared. The four of us (all adults) got in the cab and took off.
The cabbie surged off into the parisian traffic. It was reassuring somehow to be in his hands even as he seemed to entrust himself and us to some force or aura that enabled him and every other vehicle on the road to sense each other's presence and to somehow swerve and careen safely away and around each other. It was as if the skin of every car was magnetically charged with the same charge and so gently repulsed every move toward contact.
I thought of the others. I wondered who their drivers were. I heard Alissa draw in a sharp breath. There can't be, she said. What, I said. Two hotels by the same name in the same neighborhood. I felt at that moment that I would rather have faced a firing squad than confront the accusing looks of the mothers if and when we were ever reunited...but then Alissa was laughing again...the two hotels were right next door to each other. Who ever heard of two hotels by the same name right next to each other, she laughed.
Indeed. I had heard enough to last me for a good long while. The cab swerved deftly in and out, there was Notre Dame... later the Eiffel Tower...we had already seen them the day before...what was I doing here?...we were headed out of the city it seemed, on the autoroute passing into a concrete land of overpasses and cloverleafs, vaguely I worried if the driver had confused Porte de Versaille with Versaille, a town about 20 miles away...impossible, I thought...I was tired...Alissa was chattering on with the driver...it was good to have her back with us.
We were the last cab leave and the first to arrive so we had about five to ten minutes of suspense...where had those cabs taken our friends? Then, one at a time they arrived. We hugged them as if they were returning war heros. (our fare was 20 euros; the others ran as high as 30 euros...a good day for the parisian cabbies) At dinner that night I tried somehow to convey to the mothers how much I appreciated their anchoring presence, how suspicious I was of own impulses to make things work, to beat deadlines, to take things as a challenge. I could see that I was forgiven, but only because we were all still together...not even waiter's faux pas with our order could dampen our sense of well being. It had all worked out...better sometimes to be lucky than good. Still I'd like to be a little wiser next time....it's always good to be good, at least that's what I tell myself.
posted by K at 10:14 AM
2 Comments:
Wow, Dad! It seems that you always end up in Paris during major situations! Remember a few years ago when the American Embassy closed the day we got there? You do handle crisis well, though! (And you do understand Mama Bear syndrome! haha) What a great story- very suspenseful!
If I'm traveling with kids, especially girls, mama bears are mandatory...
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