Slow Trains

Years ago, I asked my secretary to do something that was either redundant or not needed which she pointed out to me. I still asked her to do it – whatever it was, only to realize that she was right. When she brought me the results, I apologized and admitted that I was wrong. She looked at me over the top of her big 1970s glasses and said: “When God was handing out brains, you thought he said trains and said ‘I’ll take the slow one.’”

Taking the Amtrak train to Chicago last week, I was thinking that I have still not learned my lesson. I still take the slow one. Taking the train to Chicago requires as much time as driving. If we had been able to take a French fast train, we would have arrived in Chicago in less than two hours. Instead, we were on the train for almost four hours.

It is so different from taking a train in France. The French trains are called “TGV” (Train à Grande Vitesse) and they roll at 130 miles an hour.

The big difference is that French trains can roll without interruption. They never have to cross a road or street. Every rail/road intersection is either an overpass or an underpass. The Amtrak train to Chicago crossed a street or road about every four or five minutes until the train got past Niles, MI and then completed the route on Chicago train tracks (no street crossings).

Amtrak does not own the rails on which its trains operate. They have had to rent rail line time from freight lines and, as renters, Amtrak gets lower right of way priority. (Our trip to Chicago was slowed by 15-20 minutes because of a rail use conflict. Our delay was small in comparison to horror stories that we have heard.)

Europe made train travel a priority and as a result has an amazing network of rail lines. A person can leave London in the morning and have dinner in the south of France the same day. The trains are electric and controlled by a computer network. They are as clean as they are fast. Newer rail beds and electric motors make for a very smooth ride on trains in France. The Amtrak ride was not nearly as smooth. Walking to the café car on the way to Chicago, I looked like a little boy who had filled his pants with my wide stride so as not to fall on someone as the cars jostled back and forth. Needless to say, I held my beverage rather than setting it on the tray.

Not everyone likes the fast trains. We have an ex-pat friend who laments the loss of slow trains in Europe. He claims that one can no longer get a proper meal on a train. No more dinner jacket dining for the James Bond types of the world.

I may have chosen the slow one before but now I prefer the fast trains of France.

What we miss

I just saw a friend’s post in which she referenced “35 Things You Appreciate About America After Living in Europe.” It was written by Lucy Hebb and first posted at www.buzzfeed.com. I found the list interesting and more than exhaustive (exhausting?) I wondered if the author had to limit herself to 35 things or if she had to stretch to reach 35. I am sure that the author found all of the items to be legitimate but several times I had to ask myself why she included X or Y but, hey, it is her list.

As counterpoint to that list, I offer an update to my 2009 list of what I miss when not in Europe (France). My list contains only 25 items. Feel free to add to my list if there are other things you see that I missed.

1. The friendliness of shop owners “Bonjour, monsieur” greeting as I walk into almost any store (followed by: “Au revoir, monsieur. Bonne journée” as I leave a store – even if I didn’t buy anything.)
2. Very good wine for under $10.
3. Specialty stores – butcher shops, fish shops, vegetable shops, bakeries.
4. Open air markets/market days
5. Sitting in cafés nursing an espresso (for hours, if you want) and none of the wait staff push you to leave
6. Cheese selection – more than 200 varieties
7. Fresh rabbit – and other selections of protein such as pheasant, quail, guinea hen
8. Walking (everyday) to purchase food items for dinner
9. Bread (baguette) for $1.00
10. A fresh baguette everyday
11. Minimalist (environmentally friendly) approach to packaging
12. Diesel fuel which costs less than gasoline
13. Inexpensive espresso
14. Cars with clean-operating diesel engines
15. Cars with manual transmissions
16. Fast, on-time trains
17. Roman ruins
18. Fields of poppies
19. Slow food
20. Small portions (of food entrées in restaurants)
21. Dry rosé
22. One dollar (euro) coins
23. Well-maintained roads and streets
24. Families walking together on Sunday afternoons
25. Mussels from Brittany (moules de Bouchot)

Sounds

In addition to the semi-annual exercise of realizing that “we’re not in Kansas anymore”[i] and we have to adjust our lives and life style, I was awakened the other morning by a train whistle. Trains crisscross Lansing on a regular basis and one can hear train whistles as the trains cross roadways.

Since France has invested in a high-speed rail system where the trains never have to cross a roadway, one rarely hears a train whistle in France. (Vaison la Romaine is not a village with rail service.) In fact, the trains use quiet, electric motors and thus are so quiet, the sound they make is “whoosh” as they speed by. Probably the loudest sound connected with passenger trains is the conductor’s whistle as s/he signals that the train doors are closing. French trains are quite a contrast with the US where the automobile reigns and trains must traverse roads on a regular basis. Even if the US rail system could handle high speed trains, the engineers would still need to maintain lower speeds to reduce risks at railroad crossings.

Given the location of our house, we can hear the vehicular traffic on the expressway that cuts through Lansing just a few blocks from here. There is a constant drone from the interstate. Over the years of walking our dogs in the evening, I have noted that the drone disappears on Sunday evening. I guess Sunday evening television is so good people get home early to watch their favorite programs.

In our village in Provence, one hears the local traffic – often moving too fast – and the annoying sound of motorbikes with two-stroke engines. The motorbikes sound like chainsaws and the teens who ride them love to race everywhere.

In Vaison la Romaine, we are serenaded by a rooster who takes his role very seriously. Starting at 5:00 AM (in the spring), the rooster announces the arrival of a new day and then spends the rest of the day crowing about the success of his prediction. Lansing has passed an ordinance permitting residents to have hens, not roosters. While in France, every time I am awakened by the rooster, I try to go back to sleep by listing the ingredients that go into “Coq au Vin.”

When I volunteer at the crèche, the kids enjoy pointing out jets, planes and helicopters as they fly overhead. Here in the states, if we notice air traffic, it is almost a subconscious awareness. In Vaison, we regularly hear and see the French Air Force jets as they fly by (low and fast) in an eight-jet formation. (The sorties seem less frequent now. My guess is that several of the jets/pilots have been ordered to Libya.)  

I miss the happy screams (or crying) of kids at the crèche on our street in Lansing. The closest child care is about five blocks away and the two toddlers who live in the neighborhood are happy, secure kids who are just beginning to talk, so they are very quiet. I miss hearing one of the teachers at the crèche telling Gaston (not his real name) to go to “time-out.” He spends so much time in “time-out” that it seems that he spends his time there thinking about his next transgression rather than reflecting on why he had to go to “time-out.”

The Rhone Valley from Chateauneuf du Pape

We have had a few severe thunderstorms and tornado warnings recently in Lansing. These weather events usually include high winds but they occur much less frequently than the Mistral winds of Provence. The Mistral blows from the north and brings dry air as it races down the Rhone Valley as it heads to the Camargue on the Mediterranean coast. Vaison la Romaine is situated among several high hills and does not get the full brunt of the wind but our friend Beth who lives at the very edge of the Rhone Valley has said that a person who committed a heinous crime would be able to claim that he temporarily lost his mind due to the Mistral because the winds are so forceful and so constant, it can drive one crazy!

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[i] Wizard of Oz, 1939

All Aboard!

During Ellen’s month in Villefranche-sur-mer, I took the train for two of my weekend visits. I have written about trains in France before and despite the glitch with printing tickets in November, I want to underscore how impressed I am with train travel in France.

 

The cars are clean and quiet. The trains are superfast and one can set one’s watch by the train schedules. I used www.voyages-sncf.com to purchase my tickets on line this time. Being retired has its advantages. I was able to pick my travel times (having discovered that the cost of a trip is based on three th ings: the destination, the time of day one travels and the date of purchase. (Ticket prices increase as one approaches the travel dates.) If I had purchased a senior pass, I could have saved an additional 20-25%.

The one aspect of train travel in France that I still don’t understand is the need to “composter” (time stamp) the ticket.c There are several waist-high yellow time-stamp machines located in every train station waiting area and everyone must take the ticket and get a time stamp. I don’t understand the logic behind the machines. But, if you take your assigned seat and are traveling to the destination named on the ticket but did not time-stamp your ticket, the conductor will reprimand you. (Having been reprimanded several times, I began to wonder why I needed this date-stamp. I was clearly on the train and in my assigned seat and going to the destination written on the ticket. What then does this additional procedure serve?) I have no idea but now am diligent about “composter” my ticket (so that the conductor - who was probably a nun in a former life - does not make me feel like I am seven years old again.)

Going to visit Ellen twice by train permitted me to get a sense of traveling by train in France. From Avignon to Marseille or Aix-en-Provence: 30 minutes. From Marseille or Aix-en-Provence to Nice: 3 hours (stopping at Toulon, Cannes, Draguignon, St. Tropez, Antibes before arriving in Nice. There were places where the train ran along the Mediterranean with beautiful vistas (when it wasn’t raining).

The train travel was great but the goal was to get to Villefranche-sur-mer and to see Ellen. When Ellen had finished her month at L’Institut de Français (www.institutdefrancais.com), our neighbor Jane drove to Villefranche-sur-mer with me to collect Ellen’s belongings and Ellen. We (Jane and I) spent the day visiting the Rothschild villa in St. Jean Cap Ferrat (www.villa-ephrussi.com).

We had lunch at a café overlooking the bay and then went to Ellen’s graduation ceremonies.

   

Ellen made great progress in her spoken French. (She had always had good skills in written French.) The picture shows the Institut’s administrator announcing that Ellen would not be held back from passing to the next grade. Bravo Ellen!