The good news was that we got new train tickets for Compiegne. The bad news was that the train wouldn't leave for another two hours. A bright guy would have taken that time to explore the environs outside of the gare...apparently, I'm not that guy--my wife will confirm that. We found a place near a reader board to stand and observe while we watched the board for information about our train...and sent an email to the friend who was supposed to meet us at the train station in Compiegne to let her know we would be two hours late.
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
We had just missed our train from Gare du Nord to Compiegne. The boy in the information booth told us that we would have to go exchange our tickets some for a later train, and pointed us in the general direction. We went in the general direction. We asked at another booth. We were directed toward some machines. The machines did nothing for us; they gave us neither directions nor exchanged our tickets. They were for purchasing tickets; we hoped to avoid that option.
My wife and I wandered, like the Israelites in the desert, a desert made of concrete and filled with people; we wandered for another ten or twenty meters, before we found our Mount Sinai; we were prepared to receive the stone tablets.
Surprisingly, there was a line. When we got to the head of the line, I made conversation with the short, sturdy woman whose blue uniform seemed too large, and her cap was slightly askew, as if she had been in a scuffle and had not yet straightened the chapeau; her job seemed to be to tell people which window to go to for help. She proved to be more pleasant than she appeared. I explained that we needed to exchange tickets for a later train; she confirmed that we were in the right place. Shortly, the man who had been in the line ahead of us returned, saying that the worker at the window did not speak English, so could not help him. Fortunately, we had been conversing in French, so she directed us to the now vacant window.
I don't know if the man was tall, or if he was standing on something that made him loom high above us. He had sandy colored hair and seemed a little older than most of the people with whom we had dealt in France for this sort of stuff. I explained that we had missed our train. Naturally, he wanted some details. He asked if our train from Versailles had been late. I told him that I didn't know, but that it couldn't have been late by more than a few minutes. I explained that the M4 ligne was down and that we had had to take a longer route from Gare Montparnasse, and that's why we had missed our train. I left out the confusion I had experienced in the bowels of the station, trying to find our departure point. He looked at the train schedules and went to speak with a supervisor. He returned with one stone tablet for each of us; by which I mean he gave us replacement tickets at no charge. This was typical of the superior way that we were treated by the French during out visit. My wife thinks it was because I spoke the language. Another friend suggested that it was because of my winning personality; that made me laugh...but I'm not going to rule it out. Maybe it was just our good fortune to consistently encounter folks both congenial and hospitable. It made our experience very enjoyable, in spite of the various mishaps and Maxwell Smart moments.
I'm skipping over a day, the best day of the trip, one of the best days ever; that day alone would have made the trip more than worth every effort and euro expended...even though we got pounded with rain. It was Mother's Day. For her present, my wife got to walk over a mile in her flats, and to be liberally laved in the lavish lacrimal offerings of the French heavens.
So moving right along... Monday, we decamped to another location. Fortunately, our bags had plenty of room for all of our decamping equipment. Our time at Versailles had come to an end; sadly, we departed. Perhaps we were sad because we had to leave early in the morning, before anyone else at the hotel was even up, or so it seemed. We were to depart from Versailles-Chantiers, which, you may recall, was where we had arrived...near, but not exactly at the planned point of arrival in Versailles. Another benefit of that earlier faux pas (which expression always make me think that someone is referring to a fake father) was that we knew exactly where our station was located and how far it was from our hotel. That earlier missing of the mark worked out in our favor. BOOM! Winning! (Picture below of the Gare Versailles-Chantiers from this site).
We didn't take a taxi. I went out the night before we left and looked at the bus stop for the routes to figure out which bus we needed to take to get us to the train station in time to catch our early train. I determined that we should take the express, the T bus, for the best results. However, when we went to catch it, two other buses came first. I turned my nose up at the first bus like it was so much spoiled yogurt, and let it depart sans nous. However, I asked the second bus driver if his bus went to our destination, and if so, if it would get us there before our target time. He assured me that it would, and seemed amused at my concern; he dismissed any need to take the T bus, inviting us to board his coach instead. And so we did. The bus got us to the station in plenty of time...but there was another obstacle.
I had given this schedule a great deal of thought. I had purchased and printed our tickets for our travel from Versailles to Compiegne weeks before we left. The thing is...to get to the trains, we had to pass through gates. To get the gates to open, one had to put a ticket into a slot, which would read the magnetic strip on the back of the ticket and open the gate. As you might have guessed, our home-printed tickets had no magnetic strip; additionally, the little scanner that might have read tickets such as ours, seemed to be out of order. Finally, there was no one in the booth to give us assistance. We were watching time slippin away while we were unable to make any progress toward the platform and our train. This was particularly concerning because we had to take this train to Gare Montparnasse in the south of Paris, and then take the metro to Gare du Nord in the north of Paris, and then catch our train to Compiegne. A missed train at Versailles would render our tickets for Compiegne worthless.
Finally, with minutes to spare, two ladies arrived at the booth. An attractive blonde woman, especially cute in her little SNCF cap, and with a very helpful and friendly disposition, listened to my concern. She examined our tickets, and then pushed the magic button to let us through the gate. She also directed us to the proper platform to catch our train. And so we did. We were on our way back to Paris.
Next time: More fun with trains.
