Sweet mercy goodness, Day 44!
1) Couldn’t sleep from about 3 AM on. Just couldn’t. Tossed, turned, occasionally surfed the socials until I couldn’t stand it any longer at 5. Wrote my pages, showered, dressed, finished my packing — forgotten things seemed to turn up in the unlikeliest places, despite everything I’d done the night before — and then headed for the p’tit ascenseur.
2) There in the elevator was the day manager (who had been very helpful to me) with a few towels. He looked at me with a little surprise until he remembered that I was checking out early and a taxi was coming for me. We went downstairs, settled my account to the sound of a vacuum cleaner, and he very kindly offered me a cup of coffee.
3) One of my favorite parts of Our Hearts Were Young and Gay is when Cornelia and Emily have to overnight in Rouen and end up in a pension recommended by the Ladies Rest Tour Association. All the other guests seemed to be young women in extravagant evening gowns, and the patronne was rather heavily made up. You guessed it; our girls had spent the night in a brothel by accident. “As surely as we were what our mothers would have called ‘nincompoops,’ that house was one which our mothers also would have called ‘of ill repute.’”
3a) Why do I bring this up as I’m checking out of this little hotel? A little before 6:30 AM, as I’m sitting alone in the lobby with my luggage and my scalding café au lait, a young, rumpled couple walk in and stand hesitantly. I say in English “He’ll be back in just a minute.” And the day manager was. I knew enough French to know that the young man was looking for a room for two to three hours, but the day manager had to turn him away. When I asked him about it, he said “We’re full up. The only room I had to give him is yours, and it’s not ready.” Brings new meaning to the phrase chambres disponsible . . . or does it merely underline an old meaning?
4) The nice taxi man came for me, helped with my bags, and drove me through the silent, near empty streets of “un autre beau jour de Paris.” Gray really was the color of that hour, but as we got closer to the Gare du Nord and wider spaces of sky, that gray became pearlier and warmer.
5) Inside the station, I got a very small coffee and a chocolate croissant, and eventually found someplace to perch awhile. That coffee must have had a nicotine filter. Sitting and observing all the other travelers engaged me more. So many backwards baseball caps. Several instances of bright flowing full-skirted kente cloth, sometimes with a matching turban. So many people ready for more sleep.
6) I was assigned to coach 18, so it was concerning when the track was finally announced that the first car was 9, and the numbers got smaller the further one went on. Turns out coach 18 as the first car of the second train. This confused a lot more people than just me.
7) But we all struggled on board hefting our big ol’ bags into the overhead racks. Once we finally got going, the conductor — who enjoyed celebrating his French accent in three languages — let us know that the train was full, and that we would have to put our bags in the overhead racks because of crowding. Or something.
8) I alternately slept, looked out the window at the French, and then Belgian, countryside, and wrote in my journal.
9) Pulling into Brussels, I knew I had time between connections, but the aisle filled up quickly with people and luggage. One young woman from the center of the car did have a much quicker connection than all of us, but we managed to make way for her without much difficulty.
10) One thinks of grand railway stations like Grand Central and the original Penn Station, and then there’s Brussels, which is like an underground bunker housing a discount mall. Nothing beautiful or comfortable, nothing to delight the eye.
Cologne Station.
10a) And then there was the pay toilet, my first encounter with one on this trip. In a blow for equality, ladies and gentlemen all had to use the same entrance. Unfortunately, one of the only two turnstiles was broken and closed, and the other had to serve for both entrances and exits — with all one’s large luggage. Sounds like a fire hazard to me. A cluster of about a dozen people speaking more than two languages was trying to negotiate the ticket machine at the turnstile. When it was my turn I at least used my card to speed things along, but then had trouble getting my bags through; and of course I hadn’t forgotten when I had to pay twice in the Madrid train station when my bag handle got stuck on a turnstile bar which wouldn’t move without more money.
11) Pretty Manzhay served for a sandwich and a bottle of water, after which I returned to the platform.
12) En route to Cologne the train was stopped for police assistance (!) for 10-15 minutes — Heaven knows why. A couple policemen walked through my car. European police have some secret power that makes them look simultaneously hulking and slim.
13) My anxiety about Cologne intensified when I suddenly woke from a doze and realized we were supposed to be there already and were still traveling forward at a fast clip. Did I mention that I would have 13 minutes between trains in Cologne, and then 11 minutes between my next transfer? If this was Boston, it would be like arriving at North Station and having to get to South Station. In the end, I just made my connections, in part because the second train was also running a wee bit late. But I also had to hump all my bags down and up a couple long staircases — a periodic reminder that Europe is not subject to the Americans with Disabilities Act.
13a) The Cologne-Nuremberg leg of my journey was made slightly more challenging because (having had to figure something out the night before) I had no seat reservation. (I did eventually find one.) Navigating the aisle with my laptop bag and valise I got to see all the types of travelers, not least because they were blocking the aisle, LOL:
The mother, wearing the largest non-camping backpack I have ever seen (she could have had a mini-fridge in there), traveling with a party of more than two very young children, one of whom just would not be controlled and kept running away down the aisle; Mother’s backpack made any movement between their seats and wherever that boy got to impossible.
The pair of petite young women, one of them in a wheelchair and with a cast on one leg, looking anxiously down the aisle and fearful they would never make their places before the train started because of that little boy.
Finally there was the old lady standing by her table, first being helped out of her coat, then being helped out of her vest, then having to go through her bag and remove things she might want to use, then put something back, then stow her bag, and finally sit down. The delays were almost comical. (Think of Jean Arthur putting her pen away in A Foreign Affair of 1948.)
14) In Nuremburg I transferred to my final train of the day, after which I could watch Germany’s rolling farmlands in the fading light, and then Austria’s rolling farmlands in the grey-gold twilight. Some of those smooth fields were like mohair velvet.
15) To be honest, I disembarked not once but twice at incorrect stations, and got back on board just in time.
16) But finalmente, Wien! Pitch black night by this time, but it felt good to be almost at my final destination.
17) I found the taxi station just outside. A woman was getting into the first taxi, and the driver of the second taxi was telling me to get into the first taxi with her. For some reason he thought we were together! “I’ve never seen her before in my life,” I told him (in English). “Well, you never can tell,” he replied.
18) My room at this conferency hotel gives a feeling of aggressive neutrality with its hard grays and whites with touches of black — very much like a space between and removed from the worlds. Think of that bedroom Keir Dullea imagines at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. That feels both protective and cautionary, as in yeah, it’s a good retreat, but I’ll know I’ve lived my life more fully the less time I spend in it.
19) The kitchen having closed, I had to forage in the hotel’s overpriced convenience kiosk. But I splurged on a tiny bottle of pink champagne — Wiener Blut, like the famous waltz — to toast my arrival in a city long on my bucket list.