So following a convo online I decided to update my travel bucket list. But first, places I have visited:
Now the bucket list – you’ll notice there isn’t anything in Europe. And of course some of the “visited” countries could also go into the want to visit (again) bucket list.
Most of these countries are in South-East Asia and the Pacific – Laos, Burma, all these funny Pacific Islands, OZ, NZ, Nouvelle Calédonie, Easter Island, Tahiti, etc. Plus Chile, Argentina and Mexico.
Posted in Travel
I didn’t have time to join #TTOT so I just read the roundup. Since Visa & Immigration is a favorite subject of mine – I’ve been in quite a few places in the last few years – I thought I’d add up, late as it is, to the discussion.
Q1: Ever been stopped at the Airport Immigration? What happened?
In the US. See this story.
Q2: Most treasured visa in the passport and why?
Chinese visa. Costs an arm and a leg and takes 5 days to renew.
Q3: What’s the funniest question you ever got at immigration?
Why are you in this lane? Seoul.
Q4: Have you ever been refused a visa and been given the weirdest reason as to why?
China, once in 2008, once in 2010. For being French. Seriously.
Q5: Do you think it’s fair that the world is not open to travel by everyone?
Fair doesn’t enter the equation. Life ain’t fair. Deal with it.
I could use a few questions of my own:
Posted in Travel
Since I am in a very foul mood, and need a release of sorts, let me tell you this little experience I had with US Immigration, a long time ago. It was actually the first time I visited the US, and it cured me for quite a while. Cat. Curiosity. Dead. You know. Took me actually 10 years before I stepped again aboard a plane headed to the US. But anyway. Here’s what I happened.
I left Seoul Kimp’o airport (yeah, that story’s *that* old) on an Asiana flight (code-share with NWA) bound to Hawai’i. I was attending a conference on Asian Studies, and was staying at my friend and fellow crazy linguist Sasha’s place. As I said, first trip to the US. I only knew I didn’t need a visa. I didn’t even know the expression “Visa Waiver”. My English back then was good, I suppose, but still very academic, and British-influenced. Tom Clancy and consorts fixed that since, but, hey, I’m French, I started out with a huge handicap, aye?
Aboard the flight, the attendants were handing out long green immigration cards. Assuming I was a US citizen, they didn’t give me one. So I asked for one – I am not a US citizen. “Oh, okay!”. Handed me one of those green forms – the only kind they had. Important detail. I filled out the form, skipping the “Visa #” part – I’m French I don’t need/have a visa. kkthxbai.
Standing in line, I realize I’m in for a long wait. A long line of passengers ahead of me, all Korean, and not too many who speak English. There’s *one* Korean-American Immigration officer, who apparently speaks Korean, so that line is quick enough, the rest of the counters are slow. Next in line, I see that I will either be handled by a white lady, or a very angry looking Mexican. Well, I suppose he’s a US citizen, but he still looks like Zapata. And sure enough, with my luck, I get Zapata. Handlebar moustache, “Made in Tijuana” accent and bad temper all free of charge.
He looks at my form, my passport, my form, grumbles, lets me stew.
“Where is your visa?”
/me squints “I’m French, I don’t need a visa.”
“Don’t tell me what you need or don’t. You filled out a green form. If you want in on a visa waiver, you have to fill in the white form.”
“Wasn’t told. They had green forms on the plane. They gave me one. I filled it out.”
“Don’t give me that crap. All airlines have both forms.”
“Apparently Korean airlines don’t. Look around.”
“As I said don’t give me that crap. Now,” He throws back my passport, and a white form. “Get aside, fill this form, and wait.”
I think he wanted me to wait as long as he could possibly make it last, make me “pay” for my insolence or whatnot. Unfortunately, Pedro’s plans were foiled by one of his colleagues. I still laugh at the scene when I think about it.
Comes a HUGE black man, a colleague of his, probably senior to Zapata, since thereafter I didn’t hear a single word from His-Excellency-From-Tijuana. The giant, and I really mean Michael Jordan huge, I had to lift my head all the way back to look at him, says “Whassamatta?” Pedro grumbles something. “Where’s he from?” Grabs my passport. “Hey you’re French!” 1000 watt smile. Stop that officer, I don’t have my sunglasses.
“I just came back from the Loire Valley. Rented a boat, cruised the river for two weeks. Best holidays in my life!” I try to process what he’s saying. Like, you are telling me about your vacations? And I care because…? BECAUSE THE DUDE IS IN LOVE WITH YOUR COUNTRY AND GONNA LET YOU IN, DUMBASS. /me slaps self, mentally. We chat a bit, best pals. I never boated on the Loire river, but I sure am a fan now. NBA-dude deploys a crane, er, extends his arm, and grabs passport, form and stamp. Bang! Bang! “Welcome to the USA son!”. Glares at Pedro, then throws the stamp back on his counter. He escorts me to the luggage area, chatting with me while I wait for and pick up my bag, then again escorts me to the customs area. He nods to an officer, shakes my hand (Can I have my hand back? Intact? Now?) and sends me on my way. “Have a nice trip, son!”
That was surreal.
Posted in Too Few Circuses, Too Many Freaks, Travel
Reading Shanna’s blog lately, and enjoying her discovery of Korea, I thought I’d give out-of-the-way hints. I’ve been in a gazillion places in Korea – and while I don’t have that many pictures since my travels were done, ahem, in the 20th Century, it might still be interesting.
Songgwangsa is a Buddhist temple from the Chogye monastic order 曹溪禪宗. According to the remaining records, Songgwang-sa was founded by Zen Master Hyerin in the late Shilla dynasty. It is my favorite temple in Korea (I’ve been there 7 or 8 times), for a few reasons:
I shamelessly copied the maps provided on Songgwang-sa’s own website for reference. Go visit their site and get a better idea of the place. But nothing can replace going there.
A similar pic of 大雄寶展 was on my desktop for years. I need to find my own pics…There it is!
So the question is: WHO IN BOTHERATION REMOVED THAT TREE? Grrr.
It’s pretty easy – although it takes forever. This is based on sliiiiightly dated info (I haven’t been to Songgwang-sa in ages). You need to get first to Gwangju’s Bus Terminal. That’s the easy part! Go either to Kangnam Express Bus Terminal or the East Seoul Terminal (동서울 터미널/강변역). There’ll be buses to Gwangju every 5 minutes, give or take.
Then, when you arrive in Gwangju – looking it up on the web I see they have improved the building and renamed it uSquare. Ridiculous much? Anyway… Last time I did this I went from the long-distance section of the terminal to the “local” section, bought a ticket for the “direct” bus to Songgwang-sa and was on my way. I see here that the schedule hasn’t changed There’s 5 buses per day each way. So you should leave from Seoul very early – 5am or so – so that you can get the first bus to the temple. It’s REALLY worth it. You’ll arrive before lunch and will be able to enjoy some quiet. Then lunch at one of the restaurants, get a bus back to Gwangju and go have some duck soup (오리탕)!
I wrote the following, in an email, to an Aussie who was being relocated to Korea, and didn’t know the place. This might actually come in handy.
* Housing
There are two systems for rental, one for expats and one for the locals (and those who don’t want to play along with the expat rip-off system).
The expat system is basically a 3-year contract that has to be paid in full, up-front, and it’s not cheap, in areas full of other expats… 2,000US$ and up, way up, per month. So the company – or you – will have to front 72,000 US$ and up. There are a few areas where you can find these places – which are usually nicer than what the locals have. If the company goes for that, so be it You’ll live in a nice place. If you have to pay for yourself, or the budget isn’t sufficient, you might want to consider option 2.
The other system is what they call key-money (welcome to konglish). You sign a contract for 1 to 2 years, pay up a deposit – usually a very large one, 80,000 US$ and up – and you pay no rent. The deposit is refunded when you leave. Yup, I know, sounds weird and one has to wonder how they make money, but there you go. I lived in such places all the time I was there, and I was basically living rent-free. You’ll need the assistance of a bunch of Koreans to get that (to combat instant foreigner-induced price-tag inflation and whatnot), but Koreans are usually in sufficient supply in Seoul…
* Phones
Keep the same Koreans handy when you apply for a mobile phone. Most companies now have a prepaid-ish + very expensive system for foreigners, for fear they’ll leave the country without paying (it wasn’t so when I was there…). To get the “Korean discount” you register the phone in the name of a Korean and set up auto-pay on your own bank account. Voila, thank you, done. 
Phones are CDMA – our phones can’t be used there. Welcome to “we’ll do it our way and screw you twice” Korea (they screw mostly their own people but whatever). Many phones can be set to English – I know mine has that somewhere. If you use the prete-nom services of a Korean person, just get an iPhone – other phones are made by and for Koreans. Seriously. Your HK mobile phone will work (roaming charges $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$) if it’s 3G.
* Transportation
Taxis used to be considered as mass-transportation; you’d fit in a cab as many ppl as possible, with ppl stepping on and off cabs along the way. 1997 and the economic crisis brought this to an end, thank God, but taxis remain very cheap. Except the black cabs – avoid them unless you have no choice. Cabbies usually don’t speak English, I mean at all. Prepare addresses in Korean, and have a phone number of a Korean-speaking person ready. The addresses in Korea are very confusing, and cabs have difficulties sometimes finding places.
When you arrive at Incheon airport, DO NOT TAKE A CAB! If the company is not picking you up, take a KAL Limousine bus to your hotel. Buy a ticket at the KAL counter, nearby Gate 4. Taxis working the airport, even the legal ones, are crooks, and will give you a full tour of Seoul before you arrive home, maybe. I had a cab driver arrested once.
The so-called high-speed train from the airport is, excusez my French, a fucking joke. Neither fast nor convenient. A waste of time. KAL Limousine Bus, lady.
Inside Seoul (the place is 40 miles wide, 20 miles north to south), buses are convenient when you know what you’re doing. Avoid them until you’re settled in. Traffic in Seoul is almost as bad as in Bangkok – seriously. The metro system is getting better now, and serves its purpose. The PAs and signs are in Korean and Konglish, so you’ll be fine after a few days.
Taxis are usually fine within the city – as long as you’re going somewhere they can find. They’re not all honest, the airport cab drivers have cousins downtown, but most of the time they’re ok. You’ll miss HK cabs though. But Seoul cabs have GPS. “nabigayshon”, don’t ask. Sometimes more than one…
* Health
Hospitals are hit and miss – good ones and bad ones. And too many people. Seoul has 11 million people, and just as many in the suburbs. And they usually come to Seoul for work… So health care is kinda tough. Plus it’s massively expensive. Make sure you have good coverage first, along with the local insurance card (hospitals won’t take you in unless you have a medical insurance card) and in case of problems, until you find a suitable place, go to Samsung Jeil Hospital, in Jangchungdong. I use to be a service provider to hospitals, and they’re one of the best.
Unless you’re feeling adventurous and desire sick days, do not drink tap water. Even boiled. Once boiled it still contains heavy metals. Once boiled and filtered it is considered safe to drink. Oh well.
* Aussie Embassy
If they haven’t moved they’re in the Kyobo Building, on Sejongno (-no/-ro means road; as you’ll see, Seoul’s streets are highway-sized). It’s in the northern half of Seoul, downtown. In this building you also have a large bookshop that actually carries English books. There ain’t that many. The Aussie Embassy used to have a bar called the Boomerang Bar, that used to be open (or not) to ordinary people every Friday arvo. Worth checking it out – drinks were cheap there.
* Weather
Seoul has two seasons, interrupted by short-term “seaslets”: freezing cold and dry, and bloody hot and humid. “Spring” is a few weeks of generally clement weather, and fall is wonderful, but lasts as much as a snowball on a grill. No typhoons, yay, but Jangma, the monsoon. Jangma actually means long rain. You’ll see. People die every year trekking in mountains during Jangma. They never learn.
* Trekking
Rome is called the city of 7 mountains or something like that. Seoul is the city with a thousand of them. I don’t think you can find inside Seoul a mile of flat land. Hills and mountains everywhere. Many of them, alas, layered in concrete apartment blocks. But a few good ones. Koreans LOVE trekking. They’re basically the human version of goats. Even the beer-bellied 2-packs a day dudes are better than you’ll ever be.
* Food
Hope you like chillies and garlic. I do Koreans are carnivore. They don’t understand what “vegetarian” means. I’ve seen even Buddhist monks eat meat. There are a few vegetarian places, but mostly, if you’re a veggie (I’m not) you’re in for a lot of home-cooking.
* Travel
Lots of nice places to visit outside Seoul — Seoul’s butt-ugly — and buy this book to give you lots of tips on the place. Avoid Chinese New Year and the Autumn Festival to travel, because 20 million+ of ppl are doing the same. Highway 1 – the main highway in Korea – is smaller than many avenues in Seoul, and turns into a parking lot during these holidays.
Yes, Korea celebrates Chinese New Year and such — they just tell us that it’s LUNAR rather than Chinese, but that’s where they got the Lunar calendar from, China
* Money
The Korean Won is one of those monkey deals with too many zeroes, and alas not convertible outside Korea. There are also restrictions on sending money out. Caveat emptor. The won is available in 1,000, 5,000, 10,000 and since recently 50,000 won bills, and there are coins of 500, 100, 50, and 10 won.
There’s an Octopus-like card (T-Money), except that it has only 2 legs instead of eight, as it’s used mostly in buses, metros and taxis. You can get it in subway stations. Handy. They can be recharged by handing over a bill and the card and a smile, or at machines. Remember. People. Don’t. Speak. English
Opening a bank account usually takes 10 minutes. You’ll only get a debit card, at best, or even just an ATM card. And a cute passbook. Credit cards are harder to get, since, like for mobile phones, you are suspected of wanting to run away without paying. Get used to it.
立席. Ipseok. That’s what I am looking at, here in the middle of nowhere, in the south-east region of South Korea. I can’t remember what station it was, possibly Pohang. Somewhere quaint, anyway, with remnants of the Japanese era. The station looked definitely like a transplant from another decade, and from across the sea. So. Ipseok. I try to wrap my mind around that concept. 立 means “standing”. 席 means “seat”. Hullo? Standing seat…?
I don’t remember where I was that day, but I remember where I wanted to be – back to the civilisation. I was touring the Deep South, sans Cajun music, with a few friends, and we wanted to go from Podunk, South Korea, to Busan. Not that Busan was/is much of a megalopolis, but as far as amenities were concerned, it’s night and day. So we were inquiring about trains going down there.
Back then, there was no TGV clone, aka KTX, linking Seoul to Busan in 4 hours or so. Plus, KTX trains, as they’re called, don’t stop in pissoir-sized stations anyway. So it was Mugunghwa all the way, a cute name for trains that would look luxurious, I am sure, in Myanmar, Utar Pradesh or Tanzania. It takes these trains 20 minutes to reach cruise speed, but by then they already had to stop a couple of times already, for they are the appointed cattle-movers, and will serve every possible village along the line. Cool when you have to go somewhere remote and otherwise unreachable. Otherwise, a pain in multiple body parts.
My favorite transportation means in the Nineties was long-distance buses. About as safe as unprotected sex in Uganda, the so-called high-speed buses, oh yeah!, emphasis on speed, and high, cover every imaginable place in South Korea. There are a couple of bus terminals in Seoul, I have used three of them, with buses leaving for Gawdknowswhere every 10 minutes. Some people try to reinvent the wheel, Koreans reinvented the human noria. These buses offer relatively comfortable seats – at least when the buses were not moving – and record average times from Seoul to Gawdknowswhere and back. Plus, long-distance buses have their own lanes on highways. And their drivers know how to shove automobiles aside. Nothing. Can. Delay. Them.
But that day, for some reason, buses were not an option. Thus the inquiry at the station. And the answer. “Sorry. Only ipseok for the next train. And the one after that is in two hours.” Yippee Ki Yay, mother. Okay, what’s ipseok, then, I ask. The employee looks at me like I am dumb. Probably. “Standing only. If there are free seats, you can sit, but if people come in with pre-reserved seats, you have to give it back.” Which is basically what happened. Over the two hours and change that it took us to reach Busan, I switched seats a few times, and so did my friends. We were seating more or less as a group when we departed, but when we arrived we were spread all over the carriage. Which made for a quiet trip, of sorts. This was before mobile phones became a must-have, when people would actually talk to each other. So while we didn’t have obnoxious people yelling on their phones, the noise level was somehow high, albeit a loud hum of conversations. Besides, people in that region speak a dialect with a very strong accent, that make them sound louder than they may be. Then again, they’re loud, too…
It was probably one of the most unremarkable trips I took in a train – although, considering my mileage on trains, the number of unremarkable and long-forgotten trips is probably high. It sticks in my mind because of that single word. Ipseok. 立席.
When I was working summers at the SNCF, the French Railways Corporation, I was based out of a city smack-dab in the middle of France, while technically part of the South-West. I would “travel” mostly within a very large triangle between Paris, North-Eastern Spain and Bordeaux. Paris may be a strange place to put in the South-West, but the particularity of Paris is that it has six stations, circling the city at its periphery, each of them being the end station of a different region: Gare d’Austerlitz for the South-West and Spain, Gare de Lyon for the South-East and Italy, Gare du Nord for the Northern part of France, Belgium and other cold places, etc. All the stations are dead-ends, and trains that arrive there have to go back the way they came. This is important, moderately so at least, since this story is about trains going from Belgium to South-West France, which would imply normally getting off at Gare du Nord, crossing Paris, and getting on board another train at Austerlitz.
These trains were different for two reasons: first, they circumvent Paris altogether, not an easy feast, considering that since the French railways have been built centered around Paris, with railroads leaving its six stations towards the provinces, most express trains go from and to Paris. Period. The second difference is that these trains are seasonal — summers only — and transport families of happy vacationers, complete with automobiles. The idea being that after a good night’s rest, and a couple thousand miles in trains, these vacationers would be less liable to be part of an automobile crash, something that was a very common occurrence in France every summer when I was a kid.
Except that… Except that this assumed the so-called vacationers would be rested and sober when they left the train at Narbonne and got on board their vehicles, for parts unknown — probably Spain. We’re talking about people — Belgians and Dutch — who live 335.5 days a year in rain and grey weather, with temps in the high 40s, and I mean Fahrenheit. We’re talking about people who think drinking beer is a god-given right, along with it being beneficial to their local economy, of course. Shall I throw into the mix trains that had little to no air-conditioning, except windows that might be cracked open, given Obelixian strength and a couple of power-drills? Now we have a recipe for a very hot evening, and lots of work for the cleaning staff in Narbonne.
As I said, I was based in the middle of France, and the northeast point I ever went to on SNCF business was Paris, on a regular basis — once or twice a week, actually. We’d usually go there, stay a few hours in a dorm-like facility, and go back 6 to 8 hours later. Our work revolved about timeliness, and coordinating so many people and trains is not an easy task, and every employee working in trains produces graph-like time-lines of what was supposed to happen, and what really happened. Work assignments look like cipher messages, and we’d get little slips with assignments in our individual mailboxes, or week-long regular schedules, which would look like gibberish to outsiders. You get used quickly to the abbreviations, station names and train numbers, at least the common ones. So that night, I had to ask one of the old-timers. “What da heck is XXX?” — I can’t remember the three-letter acronym of this station, but XXX would work just as fine here, as it was not even really a station, but, as it soon came out, a triage area.
“Oh, you’re doing the Schaarbeek-Narbonne train, then, kid?”
“Er, I dunno, what’s that?”
“Well, you see, this station is Villeneuve, south-east of Paris. This is where trains from the south and the north meet, so that engines can be swapped. There are only two kinds of trains that bypass Paris. Freight trains, and special tourists trains. Since they don’t need us on freight trains, it means you’ve been assigned to baby-sitting the Belgians…”
“Okaaay, and how do I get there? If it’s a triage area, there’s no station!”
“There’s a shuttle bus, once in a while, if the guys remember, from Choisy le Roy. Or you can try to hop on the engine that’ll be swapped at Villeneuve. It’s usually departing from Austerlitz. Just ask around…”
Not a good start. Austerlitz is a maze of a station, and Paris being Paris, the people there aren’t the most pleasant ones. Even to colleagues. But this is the “Big House” — a happy family where we all toil away for the greater good of, well, who knows. I call a colleague of my father’s, a train driver, and ask him about this deal. While he doesn’t know about that engine swap, he tells me where to go to ask, engine dispatch, and to tell any of the people there that he sent me. Best idea I had so far. The dispatcher looks up the schedule, and tells me where and when to board the engine. Now I can go and enjoy one of those family-style lunches we had.
*** Interlude ***
Conviviality, forced or real, was very big back then — maybe still is. One of the most important things then was having lunch/dinner together. Whether at a major station like Austerlitz with 100 people any given day or in the middle of nowhere with 4 guys counting the hours until they could head back home, going shopping for ingredients, cooking and enjoying a meal together was the most important thing, if you intended to become “one of the guys”. These guys, who probably didn’t lift a finger at home — if my dad was any standard to go by — would outdo themselves. We would have huge lunches and dinners, with way too much to drink too, alas, followed by a few hours of rest. These meals served also as major relays for the grapevine, and rumors and information would be exchanged. One of my favourites was lunch in Agen, a small city in the south-west, where we’d cook lunch and early dinner for 6 to 8 people, from ingredients bought from a local market. Fresh produce and meat, locally-made bowel-cleaning liquid that was labeled and sold as wine. This was life!
*** /Interlude ***
So here I am, calling out to a train driver, up in his seat at the front of the huge electric engine.
“Yo! You’re the guy going to Villeneuve?”
“And you’re the poor sod who wasn’t told how to get there? Hop in, kid!”
Formality was never really part of life at SNCF. We all treated each others as instant brothers — ready-made brothers, like instant coffee, and just about as memorable and durable. But I always made efforts to introduce myself to drivers, being the son of one of their colleagues. And it usually paid, as many were bound to know him. This one wasn’t an exception, and we left off for Villeneuve, while chatting about my father, known associates and the old days of diesel and coal engines. Yawn.
The engine slows down and stops, in the middle of what seems to be hundreds of railroad tracks. The only thing I can see, in the dimming light, is dozens of freight trains. There’s no one around, apparently, and definitely no large sign with a red arrow saying “Here, dda, there’s your train!”. The driver smiles, obviously understanding my unease. “C’mon kid, no need to worry. Your train will be easy enough to find.”
“Er, right, got a map?”
“What for? Just stick around. Whatever train I get hooked up to is yours too, dummy!”
Right. Night comes, and still no news of our train. Not much to see now, not that there was a lot anyway in the first place, and conversation about engines and colleagues can go just this far. Then comes a voice from below, and, I guess, outside. “You there, Narbonne? Your train’s incoming, we’ll hook you up in a few minutes!” We never saw the guy come, and he’s there with a couple of other guys, ready to unhook the engine and hook us up instead. Within a few minutes, we’re all set, and as I get off the engine and prepare to board the train, the door opens and a colleague gets off, looking around. Apparently, he’s about as green as I am. “Did you see my engine?” I point behind me, adding “Dunno whether he’s waiting for you, but he was on the next track, over there, a few hundred meters off”. “Shit, better go and catch him them. Have fun, they’re all warmed up, by now.”
Whut? Warmed up, what does he mean? I hop on the train, check on the routing documents the compartment number where I am supposed to be staying until we arrive in my home-town, and head there, a few carriages down. Warmed up indeed. Talk about ghost town. There’s not a single soul in there! I am apparently accompanying an empty train. I find my compartment, unlock it, drop my bag, and, bored, decide to give the train a look-see. It’s not very long, a dozen passenger carriages, plus car-carriers, which I won’t get to see anyway, so it should be done quickly. And we won’t stop anywhere until I have to get off – the only reason we stop there is for me to get off and another dude to come in and replace me — so there’s not much to do anyway. No tickets to check, no sleepers to allocate, this is indeed baby-sitting.
More of the same. Empty compartments, again and again. Then comes faint music. Then louder. I open yet another door between carriages, and there you go. Full blast. Someone has brought a boom box into the dining-room carriage, and it is full of people dancing and drinking. 99% blond hair, white/pink skin. I would be unrecognizable, being from Belgian stock on my mother’s side, but for the blue uniform and cap. Heads turn towards me, spilling torrents of beer on the floor in the process. “Lookit, they brought us a new guy! Come here, bro, have one with us!”, says one of the alpha-males, a guy who looks right out of Asterix chez les Belges. Jeez. Just standing here and smelling the spilled beer would probably make me drunk enough to fail the physical. Then again, this is the SNCF, so drinking is kind of engraved in our collective DNA. I look at the 1% non-blond, the other hired help on this train, the waiter/clerk who’s supposed to sell food and drinks. He shrugs and says “They invaded the carriage as soon as the train left. They had cases of beer, that boom box. They’ve been here ever since… What can I do?” I point at his right hand, which holds a bottle of beer. “Probably drinking to forget, eh?”. He shrugs again…
I finish my round, more empty compartments, some of them closed and maybe not so empty, judging by the sounds. Heading back to my own compartment, I have to cross the “night club”, and this time the Belgian “cousins” won’t let me go. I have to accept a glass of beer, by now tepid at best, and listen to the slurred speeches of a bunch of drunk tourists speaking French with a weird accent. Over deafening music. Wouldn’t be so bad if the air-con worked, too. I drop my hat and uniform jacket, and the tourists take this a sign of surrender, I suppose, for they cheer loudly and start singing “A poil le contrôleur !” — no way I am doing a strip-tease, Chippendale style, on top of sipping a beer while on the clock…
After a while they loose interest — viva extra-strong Belgian beer! — and I head off to my compartment, and lock myself in. What I don’t need right now is a bunch of crazy, drunk, and possibly half naked tourists invading my hiding hole… Three more hours pass, night trains drive at 50 mph, give or take, and we approach my stop. I straighten my tie, put my hat and jacket on, and prepare to get off. The next conductor, who’s lucky enough to board the train from a station platform and not in the middle of nowhere, is waiting right in front of the door. An old-timer, who seems delighted to be on this train. “The tourists drunk yet?” Yup, he’s been here before… “Good, maybe I can go to bed too, anyway — next stop Narbonne, 6 hours of sleep if I can help it.”
I did this train a few more times, and it was always the same circus. The last time, in 1988, I had locked myself in as soon as I boarded the train, and almost missed my stop, as I had dozed off. I jumped off the train while it was starting moving, landing on the platform in a very unceremonious manner, clothes, bag and documents strewn around, cheered by the few people who were still awake. I’ve never been to Narbonne, by the way, and I wish I had been once on the last leg of this trip, to see their faces when we woke them up at 8am with loud cries of “Narbonne, Terminus!”.
Posted in Too Few Circuses, Too Many Freaks, Travel
I was born within the not-so-warm embrace of the French Railways company. My father was a train driver, trained on the last coal engines, then onwards to diesel and electric engines. When you have a parent working for the SNCF, especially working for one of the close-knit technical groups of employees – train drivers, train conductors, tracks supervisors — you pretty much live inside the “Big House”. The friends visiting on weekends are colleagues and their families; many, at least back then, lived in company housing; the kids went to company-run youth camps. And of course our main means of transportation, for long-ish distances, was trains. Lots of them. I almost never paid for a train ticket until the ripe age of 27, with the exception of my trips outside France — where I still got heavy discounts.
When, as a high-school graduate I tried to find a summer job, the first place I went looking was, of course, the “Big House”. And sure enough, they were happy to oblige. After a fortnight spent cramming through a crash-course and an exam, I got certified as a replacement train conductor. Being the son of a well-noted “Rail Baron” — that’s how the train drivers called themselves… sigh! — I was a shoe-in for the job. Because, France being France, railway personnel take lots of vacations during summer, when they’re most needed, of course. So they need temps to fill in. It’s impossible to produce ad-hoc replacements for drivers, so they have to cope with the load, but many other jobs are not that difficult or technical, and for three years I donned the uniform of a train conductor, summers and winters, while other kids toiled under station managers, or, worse, sat idly at ticket booths [the "commercial staff" was back then considered barely part of the company by the drivers and conductors. If you weren't involved somehow with the trains, you weren't thought fit to call yourself a cheminot, a real railwayman]. Needless to say, despite all the mileage I had accrued as an “SNCF kid”, working for this old beast gave me a different outlook on things. I have many stories, some of them fit for publication, even. They are mostly anecdotes, the travelogue of a part-time interloper, who posed as a train conductor…
1. Mail Service
One of the things the general public doesn’t see us do, although it’s often right here for all to see, is courier service. Most of it happens in night trains, though, so this is maybe why it’s less obvious. Stuff is loaded on a train at point A, and at each stop until the train reaches the last station, parcels are dropped along the way. Among the myriad of documents a train conductor is issued is a delivery booklet. The employee receiving the parcels from the logistics department in a station — anything from a batch of blank train tickets for a small station to radioactive material for a hospital — signs a receipt, and the load is more or less thrown haphazardly on board a freight wagon, part of a passenger train. Oftentimes, half of a passenger wagon has been converted to freight, so that the agent in charge of freight can travel in more or less comfortable conditions.
The first job is to inventory the parcels, record them one by one on the delivery notebook, and sometimes it can be hundreds of them!, before the train arrives at the first stop, since there may be stuff to be dropped at this station. The first time I was scheduled to do it, I was to take charge of a load of parcels at Paris Austerlitz, on a train going south to Rodez and Agen — the train split in half mid-way, so there were actually two guys doing the same job, one for each half. I went to the logistics office two hours before departure, and a guy shows a huge bin overflowing with an assortment of parcels of various sizes. Gulp. The bin was attached to a small electric cart, and off we go to “my” train. When we arrive at the right carriage, the logistics guy unlocks the door, and starts throwing the parcels inside, without any attention to order.
“Er, wait, maybe we should do this a little more carefully…”
“Hey, kid, you think I have all night to play with you? You’re not even a girl. I’ll make sure you have the same number of parcels as is indicated on my delivery book, and you take over!”
So here I am, standing in a freight carriage, surrounded by hundreds of parcels. Good thing I had come early. I have an hour and a half, plus one hour or so to go to the first station, I should be okay. Right… I never realized the train had left the station, busy as I was trying to organize the parcels by drop-off station, hopefully in a chronological order. We were reaching the end of the Paris suburbs when the train master dropped by.
“So, kid, you’re okay?” he said, not really caring about the answer. And then he whistled in appreciation. “That’s why they put college kids like you on this job. You kids are full of energy and still can think on your feet. The only times I see freight this well organized is in summer. You’ve no idea the mess some of the regular guys can live with. Ah well, I guess you’re done for the night. Don’t forget to wake up at every station!” Apparently, it was also okay to sleep on the job, as long as you woke up at every station. And since my betters and elders said we could, who was I to say different?
After 250 miles and four hours — night trains in France were quite slow back then — I had handed over a fair bit of the parcels to a bunch of stations, and the rest was signed off by the next guy, another student, surprise, surprise, who boarded where I left off. Before the train left, I pointed out a bunch of large cardboard boxes.
“Check these out, they’re for Périgueux.” The largest, or rather the least small city in Périgord, the heart of foie gras, aka goose liver. “They’re whole goose livers, from Hungary, for a Périgord foie gras producer. I guess the geese are less expensive over there…”
Since then, I’ve always been a been doubtful about the mention “Foie Gras du Périgord” on the stuff we bought for Christmas…
[tbc]
Posted in Travel
“dda, what are you doing next week?”
“Nothing, really, except a Korean culture exam, why?”
“I’ve been summoned by a Berlin judge to testify in a court of law. They’re paying for the air fare. Wanna come?”
“Er, yeah, but I am not flying. Too expensive! And a train to Berlin will take forever…”
“Well, yeah, but since the first day I’ll be in court, you can travel while I testify, and then we can party in Berlin.”
Spring 1989, Germany still spells either as DDR or BRD, depending on which side of the Iron Curtain you stood. And Berlin is still two cities, West Berlin, a fragile member of the Free World, carved out of the western part of the original Berlin and its western suburbs; and East Berlin, covering most of the original Berlin – sans most of the historical buildings, which had been flattened out by Allies and Commies alike. I’d been a lot to Germany, since I have an auntie who lived many years in Köln, but I had never been to Berlin. Never one to pass up on an opportunity to visit a new city, I head home to my collection of timetables.
Ralf, my German friend, is a natural when it comes to being involved, even only as a witness, with court proceedings. An immensely strong man, he financed his studies, starting in high-school, working as a construction worker. Good genes and years spent manipulating a shovel turned this young man into a poster boy for an Aryan Power recruitment ad. Except the guy’s political leanings are way to the left, and if he had it his way, he’d hand over the keys of Munich [a very conservative city] to the people – preferably his pals – and send politicos to reform camps. But he’s a very nice man once you go past his political ideas, and a very gentle, friendly guy. His girlfriend is a cute little thing with anxiety problems, and they make the most improbable couple – except that when you know her, you realize that she needed someone like Ralf. Anyway, he’s a great pal, and if he says Let’s go to Berlin, I just reach for the train time tables.
Not so fast pardner. Going to West Berlin isn’t going to be that easy. First, I have time constraints – I need to take that bloody exam before I go, and the next train departing from Gare du Nord for Northern Germany after my exam leaves me 2 hours to take the exam and scram from Jussieu to Gare du Nord. Gulp. And that train goes to Hamburg, wrong place. This is before the Internet and sncf-voyages.com. Scheduling a trip involves either dealing with station employees, something I try to limit to its minimum, or hack it myself from timetables. Lucky me, I have a collection of thick timetable books from my summer job, since the “Big House” was kind enough to let me keep the whole assortment of timetables I was issued to help travelers on board our trains. And that collection, while it changes every quarter, is a precious help when you travel as much as I used to… After leafing through a couple of books, I find out I can transfer either in Aachen, Köln or Düsseldorf for a night train to Berlin. Off to the International Trains counters to book a ticket. I hand over my precise itinerary, along with my FIP card, the precious bit of paper that made traveling in Europe oh so cheap.
“Well, are you sure the schedule is correct?” asks the clerk.
“Right out of the Chaix indexes,” the old name for these timetables.
“I see… Well, looks alright. Want to book the return ticket?”
“No thanks, I’ll do that in Berlin.” Should I mention to the clerk that ticketing at Deutsche Bahn counters was already computerized, and, of course, efficient as hell? Probably not…
Thursday comes, and it’s time to sit on that Korean Culture exam. Fortunately, it’s easy, maybe the professor wanted out early too… I hand over my exam sheet – 18/20 if memory serves, thankyouverymuch — and head to the metro station in front of campus, carrying a big rucksack. Why I would bother with so much luggage back then, I have no idea… One transfer and there I am in Gare du Nord. Except that in my schedule I didn’t figure in the maze of corridors one has to run through in order to reach the platforms. Gonna be a stretch. I reach the end of the platform with seconds to spare, and sweating like a pig, head to the first loo I can find. Too much information, probably, I know. I’ve always been a bit anal on cleanliness, and starting a 15-hour train ride marinating in sweat is not what I want. I have developed a technique to get the equivalent of a shower out of a train toilet, even if it turns the toilet into a swimming pool once I am done… Refreshed and clean, I head to the middle section of the train, since chances are that wherever I transfer – hopefully Köln – stairs to the underground and other platforms will be located close to the middle of the train. Six hours to Köln, more or less, via Maubeuge in France, Liège in Southern Belgium, and Aachen, in Western Germany. Then it heads north, through the Ruhr Valley, and onwards to Hamburg. Since I’ve been dozens of times to Köln, and love the food there, I decide to transfer there – I will probably be able to grab a Flönz [a sausage] and a Kölsch beer before heading east to Berlin. Chances are that the train to Berlin will be an old train, with bare-bones service – at best, a food cart with dishwasher coffee until the border, and nix after that. Better fill up before we leave civilization.
The train is of German manufacture, efficient and clean, if unremarkable. French, then Belgian, and finally German border police check our IDs. Might sound weird to Norte Americanos, but having to hand over your identity card to various cops — including Belgian guys while still inside French borders — is something very natural to us. But this time I had my passport with me, since crossing into East Germany meant we needed to get a visa on the spot, even if the final destination, West Berlin, was part of the European community. Back then French passports, especially those made in remote provinces, were hand-written, I kid you not. Imagine how it looked to suspicious border policemen to have a young dude with lots of hair and clothes that cried “Down with authority!” hand over a passport that’s hand-written… Yeah, I’d be like him, too… However things go pretty smoothly. I am sitting across from a German girl who studies in Toulouse, France, and since, back then I was, among other things, a double major English-German, we got things in common, and the trip up to Köln is fast enough. We chat in French and German, and we have just enough fun — this is Germany after all, fun, like anything else, is metered out in standard-size bites.
We reach Köln, and, on a whim, decide to push as far as Düsseldorf on this train. The reason is that the train to Berlin is going to be a crappy cross-border night train, so I should just as well stay in a comfortable train as far as I can. As soon as the train stops in Köln Hauptbahnhof, I dash towards a sausage kiosk, right on the platform, godblessthegreedygermans, grab food and drink, and dash back to my train. Chomp, chomp, slurp, life is good. The train’s still half full, and will probably stay that way until Hamburg. As for me, next stop Düsseldorf, and another train, Richtung West Berlin! As expected, the train, which left Aachen 15 minutes after us and followed us up to here, is a World War II piece of antique best suited for a museum. Alright, I may be exaggerating slightly, and this train, being German, will still be transporting cattle and tourists by the time I retire. No need to kick the tyres on this one, it’s built to last. And the comfort is par for course. No one is going to submit this design to contests and earn awards. But somehow, the wood panels, the straight-up seats, the glass panes, the large mirrors make for a kitsch look that’s almost enjoyable to observe. And observing is the only thing I have to do. The train is quite empty, a few people per carriage, and since the carriages are divided in compartments, the few passengers in each carriage have mostly a compartment each. No food carts, no restaurant wagon, nothing. A couple of train conductors come by and check my tickets, and beside the PA announcements for each station, strictly monolingual by now, the only sounds come from the tack-tack of the wheels on the tracks. Nothing to see, it’s dark, and there are not many lights outside.
When we reach the West-East border, lights are aplenty. It’s not like we’re trying to smuggle people inside the country — but “we” might not apply to the CIA and other Western intelligence services. The train enters a kind of corridor, bordered on each side by a thick wall of concertina wire, and huge krieg lights sitting on top. Border patrol soldiers walk the length of the train on each side, inspecting the underside of the carriages. Sniffer dogs walk with their handlers, looking probably more for people than illegal cargo. But who knows. Two border guards and a dog check every compartment, and my passport is given a thorough look-see. I am issued a transit visa — I am definitely not allowed to get off the train, an idea that would never cross my mind anyway… — a piece of paper that has to stay inside the passport until I reach Berlin. Sure thing, Mister. I’ll hang on to it as lice on a bum’s pubes. Inspection lasts all in all 45 minutes, I’d say, not that it matters; this train is scheduled to arrive in Berlin at oh-dark-thirty, so any delay plays in my favor anyway. Ralf told me to call him when I made it to Berlin Zoologischer Garten, the then main train station in West Berlin. And I think he’d appreciate if I called at a more reasonable hour than 5.30 or whatever ungodly hour this train was scheduled to arrive. And knowing Zee Germans, they’ll be on time, despite the Commies and their dogs.
If I thought the Reds were thorough when entering the GDR, I had something else coming now: more dogs, more border guards, more lights at the West Berlin border. They sure didn’t want anyone without the proper documents to leave the worker’s paradise. Bye bye, Ossies, here I come Berlin! Crossing into West Berlin proper was a formality. As soon as the West German border guards see my French passport, they move on. Not that they were friendlier than their Eastern colleagues, a Feldgrau is a Feldgrau after all. Eins Zwei Drei Vier!
When we reach Berlin Zoologischer Garten, it is still dark, and we are almost on time. The station served both as a train station and an underground hub. A few U-Bahn lines intersected below the train station, I think they still do. I call Ralf, he’s staying with friends who live in a WG, a Wohngemeinschaft, a flat where every bedroom is rented by a different person and the costs split between the inhabitants. There’s a communal spirit to this kind of housing arrangement, it’s not just about sharing a flat and fighting high housing costs, it’s also about living together and sharing. Or was. It’s been a long time since I’ve had any ideal, but back then it felt cool and hip. And staying in a WG helped improving my German tremendously – as I was expected to interact with the members of the WG. I am given precise instructions on how to reach the WG, and I find the place effortlessly after yet another long ride, this time in a series of U-Bahns.
During my stay in Berlin, we went to East Berlin for a day-trip, and this was something else. We had to take the underground to Checkpoint Charlie, passing a couple of ghost stations, below the border. I wish I had taken pictures. The memories I have of this trip are fading, but the somber, oppressing atmosphere is still alive.
Posted in Travel
When I was a student, I was lucky enough to be able to travel around Europe any time I felt like it, which was often, even though I was operating on a poor student’s budget, thanks to being an unwilling member of the “Big House” – unwilling except when it came to enjoying the 75~90% discounts on train tickets dependents of SNCF employees could get, that is… One of my favourite destinations was Italy, especially Roma and Napoli. I had a very close friend – we’re still close, but he lives in French Guyana, and I live in Hong Kong, so we haven’t seen much of each other in the last 14 years… – who enjoyed traveling, and while he didn’t get the same discounts, he’d skimp on everything else, including food, so that he could afford going to Italy several times a year.
This friend, whom I shall call here Jeff, was a Comparative Literature and Law double major – although he dropped out of law school later, bless his soul. He wrote his Master’s and PhD project about Giuseppe Tomasi Lampedusa. Like me, he went as far as finishing his PhD coursework and writing the PhD project, and quitting to get a job after that. Close friend, I said… So, Lampedusa. Il Gattopardo, The Leopard – popularized through the movie by Luchino Visconti with Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale and Alain Delon. Because of Jeff’s monomaniacal dedication to his thesis, we spent quite a few of our Italian trips on the steps of Lampedusa. We both speak Italian, he better than I, and both have read the book and watched the movie numerous times in multiple versions – sometimes it felt like I should get an MA degree for the support I poured in his work… So one December, I think in 1987, we were headed to Sicily, by way of Paris, and Naples. December is always a good time to be in Sicily, since it’s warm, but just so, and since Lampedusa was born just before Christmas, December 23 1896, it was proper that we should be in Sicily around his birthday. So off we went.
We had to go first North to Paris, and then head South-East again, because the French Railways were built radiating from Paris, and it is hard, and slow, to go from point A to point B if neither is Paris. Welcome to Jacobinism 101. So 3.5 hours North, then a quick dash from gare d’Austerlitz to Gare de Lyon, and we hop on the 8pm-ish train to Roma and Napoli, dubbed the “Napoli Express”. Now, let’s get something out of the way before I proceed: it is true that associating an Italian city with “Express” when naming a train is an outrageous claim, that should probably be brought up to a court of law, and, given the number of people defrauded, the case should probably be handed over to a tort lawyer. Nevertheless, since the train originated from France, one could be led to believe that the crawling started at the French-Italian border of Modane. Nopesky. In the Eighties, French night trains were usually not only very slow, for security reasons, or so I was told, but antiques. Fact is, the rolling stock used for night trains were bottom-of-the-barrel grade crap, that were probably designed to ride at crazy speeds of 60 mph, back when diesel engines were the latest fad. Whatever monies the oh-so-powerful unions were getting from the government, were scrimped from the red-eyes.
Anyway, Jeff and I had our routine down pat: find one of the carriages, possibly at the front – since entrance to the platforms in Paris stations is at the back of the trains, front carriages are far away, and people without a specific seat reservation would rather not walk half a mile… – and snag a compartment for the two of us, since the two sofa-like seats would make great beds later in the night. The trick was to get there early and spread our rucksacks and sleeping bags around. On some trips we were lucky enough to be left alone until Roma. Sometimes a persistent fellow traveler would insist that we concede some seats, but seating next to my or Jeff’s feet wasn’t probably their idea of safe travel. Bwahaha.
Reaching Napoli would take 18 hours, give or take. By the time we reached Roma Termini, it would be lunch time, and two hours later we’d get off at the last stop, Napoli. In both cities we’d shack up at the youth hostel, bleak places where we’d meet other travelers, young and not so young, many of them from outside Europe. I owe my English partly to these numerous shallow encounters – to all of you Aussies, Brits and Yanks I forgot about and who forgot about me, thank you! Napoli is a great city, and one can have a great time, if you just make sure no pocket is left unzipped, and no bag is hanging on your back. I have been twenty times or more there, and they never managed to steal anything from me. But we’ve seen many incidents, from handbags grabbed by kids on motorbikes to wallets relieved from sweaty tourists in the open-air market. So we spent a couple of days there, re-visiting for the umpteenth time places we enjoyed and never tired of, while sipping many an espresso. And then, drum-roll, it was time to board our night train to Palermo. Man, had we known…
This was December 24, Christmas Eve, and we thought that all Sicilian émigrés on the mainland would be already back home and feasting on whatever they have for Christmas. Wrong. Ohmigodweweresowrong. Apparently all Sicilians living on the mainland were working until the 24th, and decided to take the same train, the Milano-Palermo. All two million of them. By the time the train arrived in Napoli, it was 8 hours late. And when we finally made it to Palermo, the train was 14 hours late. But we knew it would be like this, since, well, we’d been quite a few times in Italy before… What we didn’t expect was the crowd. As we got on the platform and walked along the train to find a suitable carriage, it looked like a lot of people were standing in the corridors, ready to get off. I called out to Jeff “This one looks fine, they’re all getting off!” The trains stops, doors open, and, uh oh, nobody’s moving. You’re kidding, right? No sir. A young guy calls from inside the train “Whachu waitin’ for? A coffee and grappa?” Okay, so we have a joker on board. And bless his soul, this was the one ray of sunshine in a very bleak train ride. This was standing only, and I meaning standing: no crouching, no sitting on the floor, for there just wasn’t enough space. People with a seat would not move, and trips to the loo were usually prefaced by tirades along the line of “This is *my* seat, fuck with my seat, you fuck with my family!” The Opera was born in Italy, and we got real-life reminders!
Dawn comes, and we reach Reggio di Calabria, the toe of boot-shaped Italy, with even more people than when we boarded the train at Napoli. Sicily is not far, a 15 minute crossing by ferry. Well, 15 minutes is what the ferry took to cross. It took however 45 minutes to fit the train inside the boat, basically by sliding one third of the train inside the boat, unhook the remaining carriages, pull back, slide the second third into the ferry, rinse and repeat. So the 15 minutes spent on the boat, smelling the cool marine breeze, felt great, and going back to our carriages felt like going back to prison. Six more hours of slow moving, stopping in every piss-ant village – but with one improvement: people finally started getting off! We tried to open a window, but a woman standing next to us started complaining about being cold. In Sicily. Seriously. And we needed the fresh air – between the smells and the fatigue, short of a gallon of espresso, there was only one way we could keep awake, and our nostrils unoffended. Mama won’t budge, she is cold. So Jeff starts humming military marches, he has a huge repertory, and can annoy or charm you, depending on your position on military music, nine ways to Sunday, with his renditions of European military music. Since we’re in Italy, probably the largest European contributor to military and civilian music, he launches on a medley of military marches from different periods, diplomatically skipping the Mussolini era. Soon we have our joker and his friends humming and singing along. Mama dashes off to the next carriage in a huff. Score one for the French-Italian Musical Alliance™!
I can finally sit on the floor, and my mood isn’t really improving. The jokes from the young Sicilians at the end of the carriage can only entertain me this far, and when they switch to Sicilian, they might as well speak Macedonian. This trip is not as fun as the others, and I am starting to regret going to Italy around Christmas. Call me a grouch, but I usually don’t associate Christmas celebrations with that kind of misery. And military marches are not exactly mood-lifting… Someone bumps into me, and as I raise my head to give the woman rushing to the loo a piece of my mind, I see in her eyes that she’s not completely with us. Planet Zork, you have a visitor! Crazy old witch is more like it. When she opens the door of the toilet, she sees a bunch of cardboard boxes piled up to the roof of the toilet. Them Sicilians, they’re nice, but they tend to travel with the wildest assortment of luggage, as if they have to carry all their worldly possessions wherever they go. The two young people with the cardboard boxes gesture to the loo, implying that it can’t be helped. The witch starts shouting that she wants to pee, and yada yada, to which the young guys shrug, and point to the toilet in the next carriage. No, won’t do, Mama wants to pee here, and only here. Pandemonium ensues. Just what we needed. And then, just as abruptly as it started, the row ends. The witch comes back in the corridor, and before anybody can stop her – we were all too tired, and to this day I still remember watching the scene in slow-motion – she pulls the emergency brake and runs away. Train conductors arrive, and carabinieri show up behind them. I had no idea Italian trains had cops on board. Maybe they’re heading back home too, but they’re in uniform, so who knows… They get into the compartment where the brake was pulled and ask two people to hand over their IDs. “You are witnesses to this incident. Don’t tell me you didn’t see anything. You will be required to appear in court and testify.” Woah. Justice, the Italian way.
The train starts again, and a couple of hours later we arrive finally in Palermo. A beautiful city, albeit dark and oppressing. I don’t know whether it’s the city’s influence, or because they’re exhausted, but there’s no typical Italian exuberance in the greetings between the travelers and their families waiting for them in the station. A couple of days in Sicily will teach us something about the locals: they are nice enough, and helpful when talked to, but they’re the most quiet people I’ve ever seen. The contrast between the island and the mainland was striking. But coffee was just as good!
Posted in Travel
