9 While 9, I'm Waiting, Waiting For the Train
10 Aout
There’s something remarkable about trains, and there is a lot to be said about the simple act of riding in one. The TGV, or Train Grande Vitesse (Great Speed Train), is just that: A really, really fast fucking train.
Gerard and I got into our seats (Alex had already gotten there and was seated behind us), breathed a collective sigh of relief, and watched passively as the station began to slowly slip away from us. We were on our way, at last.
The French countryside swept by at an increasingly brisk pace as we raced south through farming community after farming community, the petite little villages all rough-hewn stone with tiny steeples poking up where the local church would be. And above these villages, almost without fail, would be a massive chateau on a wooded hill, overlooking the valley below. I could almost imagine how it was during the Medieval times, the landlords above watching the progress of the peons beneath the turrets and the stone walls. Oh, wait - maybe that’s England. Is that more of an English thing? I do not know, but still - it was very easy to imagine. That’s one of the nice things about whooshing along at 200 km an hour through an absolutely foreign landscape - your mind is absolutely free to roam alongside at roughly the same speed and can thusly come up with intriguing ideas and theories.
Waltzing down to the bar car doesn’t hurt things, either. Two bottles of Provence Rose, two bottles of Evian, and two chicken club sandwiches, and we were as good as gold, the two of us. Libby (the massive Italian bulldog) sat obediently at the foot of our little table and all was well. We sped the fuck along, the elder gentleman who sat across the aisle from us was quite charming (he used to be a fashion photographer) and interesting, and there was almost always something fascinating to gaze at on the other side of the glass. I’d been on a high-speed train like this only once before, and that was in March, when Chase, Kit and I traveled from Paris to London on the EuroStar. Sure as hell beats the CalTrain, I thought to myself.
We barreled down until Avignon, and then the train began to travel at slower speeds. Then there was San Rafael, Aix, Marseille, Antibes, Cannes, and, finally, our final destination: Nice. Each station afforded us the perfect opportunity to take a brief respite from our seats and hang out on the platform to smoke a brief cigarette - until the man in the hat blew his magic whistle that signified that the doors were about to be closed and the train was to go back on its merry way.
Ah, Nice! It had been quite a long time since the last time I’d graced its presence. That would have been back in September of 2003, and I didn’t even stay in the city. For some reason, Nice has never been the actual final destination - it’s always been something of a go-between city; always going through but never actually staying there. In 2002 and 2003, it was Beaulieu sur Mer via Nice. Now it was a little forest village in the Cote d’Azur mountains called Saint Jeannet. There we were at the train station then, a slight dusting of misty rain carpeting the vicinity. Luckily, we had a car waiting for us at the Europcar rental kiosk. I can only give you one guess as to who was the only person in our little group that knows how to drive and has a license. Yes, that would be me.
There’s something remarkable about trains, and there is a lot to be said about the simple act of riding in one. The TGV, or Train Grande Vitesse (Great Speed Train), is just that: A really, really fast fucking train.
Gerard and I got into our seats (Alex had already gotten there and was seated behind us), breathed a collective sigh of relief, and watched passively as the station began to slowly slip away from us. We were on our way, at last.
The French countryside swept by at an increasingly brisk pace as we raced south through farming community after farming community, the petite little villages all rough-hewn stone with tiny steeples poking up where the local church would be. And above these villages, almost without fail, would be a massive chateau on a wooded hill, overlooking the valley below. I could almost imagine how it was during the Medieval times, the landlords above watching the progress of the peons beneath the turrets and the stone walls. Oh, wait - maybe that’s England. Is that more of an English thing? I do not know, but still - it was very easy to imagine. That’s one of the nice things about whooshing along at 200 km an hour through an absolutely foreign landscape - your mind is absolutely free to roam alongside at roughly the same speed and can thusly come up with intriguing ideas and theories.
Waltzing down to the bar car doesn’t hurt things, either. Two bottles of Provence Rose, two bottles of Evian, and two chicken club sandwiches, and we were as good as gold, the two of us. Libby (the massive Italian bulldog) sat obediently at the foot of our little table and all was well. We sped the fuck along, the elder gentleman who sat across the aisle from us was quite charming (he used to be a fashion photographer) and interesting, and there was almost always something fascinating to gaze at on the other side of the glass. I’d been on a high-speed train like this only once before, and that was in March, when Chase, Kit and I traveled from Paris to London on the EuroStar. Sure as hell beats the CalTrain, I thought to myself.
We barreled down until Avignon, and then the train began to travel at slower speeds. Then there was San Rafael, Aix, Marseille, Antibes, Cannes, and, finally, our final destination: Nice. Each station afforded us the perfect opportunity to take a brief respite from our seats and hang out on the platform to smoke a brief cigarette - until the man in the hat blew his magic whistle that signified that the doors were about to be closed and the train was to go back on its merry way.
Ah, Nice! It had been quite a long time since the last time I’d graced its presence. That would have been back in September of 2003, and I didn’t even stay in the city. For some reason, Nice has never been the actual final destination - it’s always been something of a go-between city; always going through but never actually staying there. In 2002 and 2003, it was Beaulieu sur Mer via Nice. Now it was a little forest village in the Cote d’Azur mountains called Saint Jeannet. There we were at the train station then, a slight dusting of misty rain carpeting the vicinity. Luckily, we had a car waiting for us at the Europcar rental kiosk. I can only give you one guess as to who was the only person in our little group that knows how to drive and has a license. Yes, that would be me.
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