When we were going along the Moselle river back in Germany, Nick and I spent a while talking back and forth in badly accented English of various flavors, complaining about how awful Americans are, and how badly Americans do everything. I played the Frenchman, saying stuff like, “Look at zese passenger trains. Zey are so much better than ze stupid American ones. Zey are on time, and zey don’t smell of piss and hotdogs.”
Nick came back with, “Yah, in Austria de trains have actual room, you know? You can put your feet up. But we don’t; ya? Because ve are not de tasteless savages like de Americans. In der flip-flops und baseball hats.”
Well, this morning we boarded our first French train, out of Luxembourg.
Crammed our piles of stuff onto the terribly designed French trains, and we’re on our way…
Crammed our piles of stuff onto the terribly designed French trains, and we’re on our way…
Nick managed to get about half an hour of napping, until a German man wandered into the train car talking loudly on his phone. The man paced the aisle and ranted, getting more and more upset, then disconnected the call and left through the sliding door with a murderous expression.
Nick was not pleased.
It’s so gauche to complain on vacation. But from a bike tourist perspective, I do have a few minor complaints to air about the French trains. For one, they sold me tickets with a six-minute transfer time, to get between two trains that arrived at opposite ends of a massive station, and our train pulled in late. Even without two loaded bicycles, we would have needed to move at a dead run, threading through crowds.
When we missed that connection, the ticket counter attendant said that missing the train was “our fault” and that the best they could do was put %15 of the ticket price towards later tickets. So I had to pay another $140 for failing to get across the platform at unsafe speed.
(The elevators were so small we had to stand the bikes vertically and go one at a time. The elevators were also very slow. This is a concern mostly for bicycle tourists like us, but also, woe betide you if you’re in a wheelchair and the person pushing it isn’t willing to sit on your lap for the ride to the platform.)
When I asked them which platform the next train would arrive on so I could be prepared, they said they did not know, and had no way of knowing until 20 minutes before the train was due to depart. Not when it arrived … when it departed.
When that time comes due, they start flashing the name and platform of the train on the big electronic signs, including the one in the lobby. At that moment, several hundred people suddenly stand up and begin shoving themselves and their luggage down the hall. The only reason I can think of for doing it this way is so people waiting for a train don’t wait “too close” to the designated platform and interfere with people catching trains before them. … But if they knew the time and platform in advance, with enough confidence that they could time their walk to the platform, most people wouldn’t do that. They’d sit in the waiting area where there are comfortable benches.
The train was ten minutes late, cutting ten minutes off the time it would linger before departure. Nick and I had to wait with our loaded bikes in the main hall, staring at the departure screen, waiting for it to update and show the platform, so we could dash for the correct elevators and ride them up.
When we got to the train we had to run the bikes to the far end of it, to a car with no external labeling indicating it conveyed bikes. The bike area inside was up two steps, around a sharp bend, behind a completely useless sliding door that kept closing on the bikes as we were moving them … and then up two more steps. And again, at the same time, if you’re in a wheelchair or not entirely able in some other way, the French train system says, screw you.
Traveling on the Belgian trains was alright; traveling on the German trains was a pleasure. The French train system is a dumpster fire. Not the trains; the train system. Even the lowly American train stations back home – and the subways, and the bus terminals – can tell you what platform each one will be arriving at, with near-realtime accuracy.
Aaaaanyway…
When Nick and I emerged from the train station with our bikes, we were in Paris, and it was instant chaos. We dropped into the nearest bike lane and zig-zagged through city streets, tumbling in the chaos of cars and people and bikes and scooters all fighting for gaps. It was pretty intense, after polite Luxembourg. Nick performed quite well in it, saying “my rides in Oakland prepared me for this.” We got lots of interested looks and comments from even the jaded Parisians about the bikes we were riding.
This is the face you make when you’ve survived your first ride through Paris bicycle lanes.
We had to pass through two security gates and open an apartment door that was built stronger than the door to any other apartment I’d ever stayed in. It was like entering a vault. We pulled the bags off both bikes to fit them through doorway.
I settled in with the computer, working mostly on photos, and Nick laid down for a few minutes. Then we got up and went searching for food.
We passed several restaurants and cafes, jam-packed with talking people, almost all of them smoking with one hand and drinking with the other. The noise of conversation even outdoors was jarring.
We arrived at a little cafe I’d picked randomly on the map, and the head waiter took our orders. He debated with his companion, who was from Argentina, what the definition of “Argentina spiciness” was, but couldn’t find an English translation. We rolled the dice.
First French meal, at a restaurant a few blocks away.
The meal was tasty but not quite filling. I suggested that we get right up and go looking for another, and Nick readily agreed.
He led the way, picking streets at random. I vetoed a couple of spots that looked too expensive or too boring. We eventually wandered into a restaurant facing an extremely busy traffic loop running around a square, and went inside because it was a little bit chilly in our cycling clothes. The big windows gave an easy view of all the passing cyclists, and I schemed about coming back some later day with the camera to make an anonymous gallery of them.
I ordered a bolognese and ate about half of it. It was very heavy. Nick ordered honey-glazed salmon which was cooked perfectly, and I stole some.
After that we went walking again, generally in the direction of the apartment.
Inside, Nick laid down for a while again, then got up and exploded his luggage and re-configured it into a smaller version, using one of my stripped-down bike bags as a carry-on for the plane flight he was going to be taking soon.
We were both up until about 2:00am, with him organizing luggage and me sorting photos. There were a lot of them to sort… About 1500.
Got ambitions to go bicycling all around the world? Got fond memories of playing the Carmen Sandiego games on your old Apple II computer with the fuzzy color monitor? Well I sure do, on both counts!
I put these slide shows together from the original games, just following my sense of nostalgia for an afternoon, and when I was done I realized they could serve as hyper-ambitious checklists for bicycle touring.
“Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego” from 1985:
Currently I can only claim London, New York, and Reykjavik, and I feel pretty accomplished already.
Update: As of June 2023, I can also claim Paris.
“Where In Europe Is Carmen Sandiego” from 1988:
I built this slide show to run a little slower, so you stand a chance of reading the scattershot descriptions on the right. On this list I can claim Reykjavik (again), Amsterdam, Brussels, and Copenhagen.
Update: As of July 2023, I can also claim Edinburgh and Luxembourg.
I bet the key to the other door opens this one too.
For fire safety there’s a key behind some glass that opens a back door, and that passes through a storage room that also contains spare keys. You can see them through the keyhole! But, should you break the glass? That seems wasteful.
You keep looking around. At the top of some stairs you find another locked door that leads to the upper story of the house, where the owner lives. When you look in the keyhole, you notice it’s dark. It appears that someone has left a key in this door, on the other side.
You also notice that the faceplate over the keyhole only has one screw in it. Has someone taken it apart before you? You don’t have a lot of possessions to work with, but you poke around the laundry room and find a dull knife. It’s just enough to turn the remaining screw.
It’s also enough to turn the entire locking assembly once you get the faceplate off. You do so, and hear a loud “clunk” as the lock disengages. You open the door…
… and discover that the owner has left a complete set of keys to the entire house, including all the rooms, hanging in the lock on the other side of the door.
You unlock your own room, fetch your key, then place the keyring back where you found it, and screw the faceplate back in.
The singer Bjork is eating the roses off the bushes of a house nearby. It’s just something she likes to do. I decide they must be tasty and I should try one. I turn the bike around in the street to go back to the rose bushes but I see my ex girlfriend, walking about 30 feet away from Bjork.
“She’s out here too?” I think. “Uh oh. The two of them are bound to get to know each other, and then she’ll will find out that I scheduled a date with Bjork for Sunday. I think I’m still in a relationship with her. Wait, am I? What’s my situation? Didn’t we break up like, half a year ago?”
I turn the bike back around, knowing that if I get close to either of them they’ll just walk away from me. They want private time. So, am I seeing other people, or dating again, or am I still with my ex? I can’t remember. We need to talk.
I wake up in an unfamiliar bedroom. I think it’s the house I share with my ex. I hear kitchen sounds in the distance. “Well, that’s probably her. I better get this over with.” I roll out of bed and pick up my pants, which I have trouble putting on because there’s something jammed in one of the legs. I reach in and extract my phone.
She walks into the room. “Okay, here we go,” I think. But instead of seeming worried like I am, she’s relaxed. She’s also wearing no clothing except for underwear.
“Follow me,” she says urgently, and walks into a different room. There’s another bed here. She dives onto it, then reaches into a bedside drawer and pulls out a condom in a clear plastic wrapper, and flicks it onto the covers.
She wiggles around until she’s partly under the sheets. I know what I’m supposed to be doing but I’m not feeling into it. Something is still wrong between us. I’m also skeptical of the condom: It looks too colorful, like something you’d find in a bowl at a saucy adult party. “What time of month is it?” I ask her pointedly. Things are already dysfunctional, and having a child on the way might pull us together into a commitment neither of us feels good about. She’s looking at me expectantly, as if to say, “What’s your problem?”
Some friends and relatives of hers wander into the room, carrying groceries and food. They’re about to throw a Thanksgiving celebration. She climbs off me immediately. We can’t have an intimate conversation with all this family around. Am I the only one who thinks we need a discussion? I get off the bed and walk out of the room.
Night falls instantly. I’m wandering around the gritty courtyard of a large beat-up hotel. The walls are charcoal colored, like either a deliberately spooky paint job, or just a phenomenal amount of decay. People are emerging from the doors and windows of the hotel and wandering around in small groups. There is a party-like atmosphere. I look down and see several coins in the dirt, and pick them up. One is a very thick coin with dull round edges, as big as a silver dollar. I turn it over in my hand and notice that it is stamped with a year far into the future, somewhere in the next millennium.
Impressed with the coin, I begin waving it around and singing an improvised song, in the style of They Might Be Giants:
Hey look! It’s: MONEY FROM THE FUTUUUURE Who knows what you can spend it on When all of civilization’s gone? How valuable is this techno-coin? Come on everyone, let’s join The search for MONEY FROM THE FUTUURRRE Check it out, it’s MONEY FROM THE FUTUUUURE
-My brain, 4:30am
Music erupts around me. Some of the people wandering around turn into band members playing instruments, and when one of them starts a wicked guitar solo, I go running down the street, then jump up onto a wall, then run along it and jump onto a roof. The music fades in the distance.
Today was one of those “this is what it’s all about” touring days, even though I had to put in six hours of work.
Actually it started on a strange note. I woke up to weird animal sounds, coming in through the screened window of my room. The window was over a central plaza, and as I scooted around in the bed I thought “This is a very urban place to be hearing animals. Actually… What kind of animals are these? There are no coyotes in Iceland. What else would be large enough?”
Eventually I realized I was hearing words, mixed in with the gibberish sounds, echoing around the walls of the plaza. What the heck? … And then the sound resolved to two middle-aged people having sex, in a room somewhere else high up with the windows open. It was a mixture of grunting and words, but I could only parse some of the words – which were all curse words in English – because the rest was in Icelandic and sounded like the babbling of a semi-human animal.
“That is hilarious,” I thought. “Also, dang, Icelanders are surprisingly kinky. I thought this was a more conservative realm, but perhaps I’m using a definition that doesn’t fit…”
I laughed for a while, then debated whether to make them aware they were being overheard. It would certainly embarrass them, but it would also be quite funny to the other people who could hear them too. I couldn’t be the only one. I wanted to lean out the window and shout, “THAT’S THE WAY TO DO IT, LAD! PUT YOUR BACK INTO IT! GET ‘ER WHERE SHE WANTS TO GO!”
But I changed my mind, and decided to roll out and start the day instead of spoiling theirs.
Some company’s representation of how the city plumbing looks. I think it’s pretty cool!
Some company’s representation of how the city plumbing looks. I think it’s pretty cool!
I’d done plenty of riding around the capital city before, and even with all my wanderlust I am a creature of habit, so I ended up going to the same coffee shop as yesterday. In fact I went there for almost an entire week, to work and write or just get a nice coffee to start the day.
And this became one of my go-to meals. Swiss mocha, fresh bread, and a kind of tuna salad to spread on it. This got me through a lot of meetings and a lot of lines of code.
After working into the afternoon, I shut the laptop and rode the bike over to a hardware store, where I purchased some velcro straps to do a minor bike repair. Then I took off, taking streets randomly for a while.
How tall does a building need to get before Vikings stop trying to raid it?
I wonder how many times that viking has tried to kill that spider...
Strangely, this statue has no explanatory plaque saying who is being depicted. Perhaps it's just J. Random Vikingson.
I found myself out on a spit of land bearing an art installation, known as Þúfa:
I went to a fish and chips shop I’d spotted earlier. Ate fish and chips and did some code review, then got some soup to go. I also found a chocolatier, and made a memo to check it out the next day.
Around 5:30pm it started to rain lightly, so I put on my raincoat and waterproof socks and kept right on biking.
It walked right up to me as though it was keeping an appointment. I imagined it saying, “Hello, I’ve been stationed at this cemetery to complete the spooky picture for you tourists. Sorry I’m late. Where are we sitting?”
I pet it and sang it the “graveyard cat song”, making it up as I went:
Graveyard cat. Grave Yaard Cat! Spooky at midnight, how about that!
Bein’ all fuzzy, Pokin’ at the graves, Lookin’ for a mouse to chomp today.
Cat cat, cat cat Catcat cat!
Graveyard graveyard Graveyard cat!
Does this picture just scream "Halloween" or what??
Does this picture just scream "Halloween" or what??
The cat sat down nearby, so I took the lid off my fish soup and set it next to the cat, and it licked the lid clean while I drank from the cup. A nice little shared meal.
I praised it for being spooky and photogenic, and did a round of language practice on my phone, and sent several people back home some cat photos. It watched me patiently while I made weird human noises at it, blinked for a bit, then got up and wandered away.
I learned a while ago that the instinct to hunt is not tied very strongly to the desire for food in cats. That is, they’ll hunt for the heck of it even when they’re not hungry. That makes perfect sense because if cats only tried to hunt when they were hungry, they’d starve before they got good enough to catch anything.
It also explains why a cat who’s recently been fed will still pounce on a small creature and maul it. I assumed my cat friend was heading out to find some cemetery mice and ruin their evening.
20 minutes later while I was on the other side of the cemetery the cat walked up again, and jumped onto a gravestone and posed for me. I give it a small piece of fish which it licked and then abandoned.
I tell ya: I don’t know where else in the world you would be able to get lighting this weird without some very expensive hardware and a few long extension cords.
The cathedral is visible from almost anywhere in the city. You can navigate by it.
I don’t fully understand my own contrarian nature sometimes. I really feel relaxed and comfortable when I’m sitting around in a place full of old bones and stone markers, commemorating death. If it’s midnight and I’m alone, all the better.
I didn’t used to be like this. When I was a kid I was scared very easily. I also had a stubborn desire to not be controlled, even by my own fear, so I’d go outside at night into the forest and stand there, letting myself freak out, then letting the fear ebb down to a flicker, then taking a few more steps until it flared up again, and so on. It got to the point where I was actively wishing for a ghost or demon to materialize before me, because the fact of it would open up a whole new universe of possibilities, and upend all kinds of things I’d learned about science and nature, which would be terribly exciting.
But it never happened, even once, and it still hasn’t happened, even with plenty of opportunity. Instead the practice of standing around in cemeteries and calming myself has conditioned me to relax in these places, perhaps too much, and I start thinking deep thoughts about nature and spirituality.
Also I think those cartoons about Halloween and “grim grinning ghosts” and the association of scares with candy may have contributed.
