Every half hour, two women would come by begging for money; dusky skinned with dark manes largely concealed by scarves, they wore layered outer clothing and long skirts...long as in nearly to the floor. They first asked in French and I told them no; they immediately asked in English and I ignored them. After that they ignored us, holding out their hands, asking only the people around us for money each time they came by. I did exchange a text with our fellow travelers from the Boise airport, Jim and Nancy, letting them know that we were stuck waiting again. They were in London; Nancy said that they were enjoying London...except for the food.
We met a couple from Canada...British Columbia, if I remember correctly. They were taking the train to Amsterdam. The line grew long for that particular departure, and moved slowly as all of those travelers had to pass through the metal detector and show passports; I don't know all of what else they had to do, but it took quite a while. I watched them briefly through the glass walls of the booth; what with the juggling and hand stands, I think it must have been the same officer running the booth that stopped Steve Martin in The Man with Two Brains. When they were all boarded, the SNCF people took down the red belt and black pylon barriers they had used to confine the line for that train.
Meanwhile, we continued to watch people. A batch or two of school kids came and went. I remember noticing several men wearing neck scarves. I also noticed shoes, and noticed no one else wearing the light hiking style boots like I wore. One guy did wear heavier leather hiking boots; most wore some type of tennis shoe or leather shoe. I only saw a couple of men with ties, although a few wore sport coats.
At last the board indicated the platform of arrival and departure for our train. The SNCF man looked at our tickets and approved our boarding. I had tried to put the tickets into the little machine to validate them, but it wouldn't work. That's why I asked the man to look at and approve our tickets. He examined them closely and seemed slightly suspicious, but didn't ask for a blood sample or try to search our backpacks. I don't remember if he validated the tickets. At any rate, it didn't matter; no one checked them on the train. That was a worry for me because once, long ago, when I had been in France on a train to Compiegne, I had forgotten to validate my ticket, because the train had been pulling away from the station, and I had had to run to catch it. The train security had discovered that my ticket had not been validated and fined me on the spot...but that was long ago. No such incident marred this trip.
We chose seats on the upper rather than the lower deck of the train. My wife got this picture...
...just before the train left the station. And thus we found ourselves (with apologies to Rush) on a train to Compiegne, aboard the Picardie express. We hit the stops along the way; we only stopped for the best...that is if "the best" was every town between Paris and Compiegne. When we pulled into Compiegne, no smoke rings filled the air, but there was something better--a cherished friend whom we had missed on Saturday.
Sylvie and Gerard and their family had been dear friends when I had left France some 30 years earlier. They had seen me to the train station when I had departed from Compiegne all those years ago in May. Now, Sylvie met us again at the train station on my return to Compiegne in May.
I recognized her right away, although we had both changed somewhat over the intervening years. Fortunately, the good nature and kindness of Gerard and Sylvie had not changed. Sylvie had waited at the train station for us 2 hours earlier; she had not made a timely discovery of the earlier email about our delay. When we had not disembarked with the other passengers, she had gone to our hotel to see if we were already there...and as it turned out, we weren't, and hadn't been. She talked to the hotelier, and confirmed that we could leave our bags there, even though we couldn't check in until later in the afternoon. She then went back home, discovered our email, and returned to the station to meet us.
We exchanged brief greetings and she informed us that she would take us to our hotel in order to drop off our bags, and then take us from the Hotel de Harlay to the chateau at Pierrefonds, a little over ten miles away. According to Google, the distance was actually about 17.5 kilometers, which can be simply converted from metric to Americanese: Remember that 88 kilometers is equal to 55 miles (refer to speedometers with dual markings to confirm this); so 17.5 divided by 55 = 0.31818182, which when multiplied by 88 equals 28.with several zeros and a 2 (which I round off). Next 55 divided by 28 equals 1.96 and more change (which I ignore). Move the decimal one to the right because on the map, Europe is to the right of North American, and we have 19.64, which added to our original number of 17.5 equals 37.14. We then take the average by dividing it by 2 which gives us 18.57. The sum of the numbers 1,8,5,7 is 21. When we divide 21 by two, to account for the fact that we're dealing with two systems, the result is more than 10. So the distance was over ten miles.
A car had stalled in front of Sylvie's vehicle, but it was quickly pushed out of the way into an empty parking spot. In a moment we were away to our hotel. The hotelier kindly took our bags and informed us that we could check in after 3:00 p.m. Our backpacks in the custody of the hotel, we joined Sylvie for the drive to Pierrefonds.
The day had started early and little things threatened to derail our plans. We had a minor snafu regarding the bus, then an unfounded scare at the gare in Versailles, then the confusion in the bowels of the Gare du Nord, the missed train, the quest for new tickets, the wait for the train, and so forth. But once we got to Compiegne, it was was smooth sailing all the way...almost.
Next time: Pierrefonds
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