Bon Voyage
Last of the travel notes
Well, this post is the last of the travel dispatches– which I realize have been few and skimpy on the details. Right now I’m sweltering in the lounge drinking mediocre Bordeaux while awaiting my flight. I’ve got a couple of hours to kill, not enough to get to Paris and back and more time than needed to get through check-in and security. Yep, my trusty victorinox knife has yet again made it through, although I’m happy to report that they only provide plastic utensils at the lounge once you clear security.
The advantage to getting earlier in earlier than your flight yet after the slew of earlier flights is that there are no lines, you can snag the exit row and everyone is happy to work their English whilst I work my Franaise for the last time.
I actually like sitting in airports. I’m in front of the takeoff and landing runways so there’s been a series of graceful Air France plans gliding in for landings. A puff of smoke as the wheels touch the ground and they decelerate from 170 plus or minus a few mph to the patient 5 mph of taxi speed limits. Er, actually I don’t know if there’s a taxi speed limit. Certainly the cars that I see racing around the tarmac are hitting 50-60 mph. Landings are pretty controlled anyways these days, I’m sure whatever the exact speed the planes are at is consistent which each one. To this day I still marvel how such a large metallic tube with a couple of wings can fly. Oh I know the whole mathematics behind it, but it’s one of those things that I think about considering how the early aviation pioneers had to make that leap without the benefit of computer models and physics, and simply tried to imitate the birds. The birds btw, likely some sparrows, are flying in to the lounge area snarfing some crumbs.
So while I haven’t been able to fill you in on the romance of traveling in France I still have a few observations worth parting with. On the train ride to the airport, and yes I took the train from the les provinces right to the airport, I had an electrical outlet to plug into so I could keep charged. No outlets easily discovered yet in once at the airport but the view more than makes up for it.
The entire train trip was under 4 hours, including a 50 minute change of trains from the local slow train to the speedy TGV. The train route was essentially through farmlands. Right up to the airport. Which tells you something about France. The idea of suburban sprawl is an anathema to the land of terroire. I’ve probably seen just about every type of crop on the trip, mostly unbeknownst to me since I’m the epitome of the city-girl, but for the ancient schooling of regions, I knew the grape vines from the green stuff they stick in salads. Oh, and I’m sure we passed through mustard fields but that’s only because I drove the route once, and read the helpful signs.
The train announcements ran in both French and English. Most directional signage was pictorial, which makes it infinitely easier to figure out where you are going. Follow the plane, the bus, the train the baggage icons. Europe seems to get the “we don’t speak your language” thing but we’ll make it easy for you to figure out where things are. The other thing, was how clean the roads and train stations were. It occurred to me that it was likely due to the absence of fast food eateries. I think the last fast food eatery I saw was in Grenoble when passing through on our way to find if any antique dealers were open.
Only two were open, and I refused to go inside them due to the circumstances by which we were there. In short, my grandmother has been living in an assisted living home here, and she was moved from independent apartment style living to assisted living in a nursing home sort of way. I’m too tired to recount the whole nursing home, elderly, bureaucratic stuff right now, but basically imagine having a family reunion with a bunch of people who refuse to speak to each other trying to make important decisions for someone who really needs it but who refuses to accept any decision. In another language. Having to express concepts in a language that I mostly use for ordering croissants and wine that verge on medical, technical and well, a bunch of crazy family crap is hard.
Here’s an example. I wanted to express, “You’re fucking crazy.” Now you can’t really say that in French, and certainly not in English towards your closest relatives who don’t understand English, so at best I come up with, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Which roughly becomes “Je suis tonn” which is really “I’m quite surprised.” See how the nuance of what I really wanted to say was lost? No wonder Molierre had such rife material to work with. But no amount of reading Tartuffe can prepare you for any discussion in real life, and so I made do. And a mental note to watch some more French policers for a refresher course on argot. You don’t pick that stuff up around the dinner table. But I’ve digressed.
Anyway, without the plethora of fast food restaurants, the land of one euro cafes and 3 euro bottle of wines seems to have little roadside trash problems. In fact, I didn’t see the usual piles of garbage dumped outside of transfer stations, or weed infested lots devoid of activity or foot long grass at the exit ramps. In fact, I saw plenty of safety vest clad workers out and about mowing, sweeping and otherwise engaged in construction all over. So much for the recession here. Oh but the recession is apparent. The French economic stimulus bail out was to lower the VAT, that is the national sales tax, but only on some items. So rather than funding finance company bonuses as we did, the French government decided to lower the consumption tax, in order to stir up consumption. Kinda makes you wonder just who is thinking along economic capitalistic recovery these days.
Strangely none of the usual suspects were on strike over here. I usually make travel arrangements in France with an eye on who might be going on strike or protesting something or another. Usually Paris is mostly affected, owing to the national attention it gets, but sometimes notable strikes hit les provinces as well. I particularly was impressed by the fruit truck driver strike that blocked all the autoroutes for a period. That strike started with a protest of Spanish grown strawberries being imported into France. According to the EU charter that was allowed. But the French truck drivers protested because the Spanish trucks were not held to the same regulations as the French trucks. Essentially this boiled down to the weight of the trucks. Which immediately caught the attention of French fonctionaires who spend their time figuring out who is paying for what. Apparently the French spend considerable time figuring out how to not repave their roads all the time by limiting the weight of the vehicles rolling along them. Formidable! Just think if we could figure out that trucks that carry heavy stuff are mostly responsible for the pot-holes we see because the roads we build are not engineered for excessive weight. Imagine that suddenly it was the responsibility of heavy vehicles to pay for road repair instead of all taxpayers. That is the Euro model, of course, where our model is to subsidize those that cause the most expense because we can’t be bothered to figure out who ends up consuming the most resources. In the end the French were able to add an increase to the tax for Spanish strawberries that were trucked in, and the French truck drivers were then only mildly disgruntled since they could still compete on price, and the French strawberry growers were still not happy because the Spanish strawberry was cheaper, the French consumer didn’t notice much except that the country of origin was noted on the lowly strawberry package and the EU flunkie peeps had to sort through this and hundreds of other regional disputes because one countries laws and taxes were tightly regulated versus less so for others.
Which sort of brings me back to the one of the inexplicable things you suddenly have immediate need for knowledge of. Things like the flammability index of Louis XIV furniture or the difference between Empire I versus Empire III columns as it relates to weight of wood and glue. There’s a reason the word bureaucrat comes from France.
