Taxi from Gare du Nord to Montparnasse was €25 including tip. My little treat to myself . Very polite lady driver in a very clean, hybrid something-or-other. Traffic not too bad. Clear skies. Hot. Parisienne women dressing as Parisienne women do. Yummmm. Espressos and ciggies under canopy in street cafés…. Shouldn’t these people be at work? Place de Madelaine and Eres, where Doris once bought a swimsuit. Oh how I love Paris!! Quite definitely my favorite city. Nowhere like it. Annoying! Sustained the first damage though – somewhere between taxi and train, I lost the basket to one of my walking poles. Bummer. Won’t be the last loss. Oh, the mood swings…
1252 and we’re off on time. Again.
The TGV is the dog’s bollocks. I’d forgotten how cool. Leaving Gare de Montparnasse for Biarritz en route via the new rail line that the taxpayers recently built for the Socialistas. Jeremy Corbyn, eat your heart out. These trains are delightful. New. Clean. Smell nice. Big display in French, English and Spanish – no German, oddly. Speedo too – currently 262km/h and winding up rapidement. Looks like we top-ticked at 300 km/h (186mph) as I scribble. I’m on the upper level with a seat to myself. These solo seats have a vanity mirror built in so one can do one’s makeup. A 5W USB port, a spot light in the arm and a dimmer wash light and a mains-power plug point in the desk. The tray-come-desktop comes down in two parts, there’s space for book/paper storage and there’s a foldaway cup holder. Lastly a pop-out coat hook and seats that recline as if they’re on gliders. You connect to the internet via tgvconnect.com and you get all the instructions in English, complete a with moving map and a “Diploma for 300km/h“. This is what taxes are for.
You’ve probably heard that Britain/Rosbif suffers from poor productivity but no one can figure out why for sure. The French/Hexagones are more productive yet their labor laws are more stringent and they work less. Arrogantly, I ask myself, how can Hexagone productivity be superior to Rosbif productivity? Maybe because of the Scots? More on that bottomless pit another time. If investment in infrastructure and capital goods has anything to do with it (it won’t take a week by road to get your goods to an airport, by which time they’ve perished), the Hexagones had the right idea, and the Rosbif are doomed. It’s not clear how we get back in the game being so far behind, and worse, at a time when our government is in tatters and the cabinet feuding like spoiled children.
As I bemoan our barren future, I console myself by trying to buy some cheap wine in a plastic bottle, and I proffer Mr MasterCard. “TGV Bar” man looks at me.
“Carte étranger…?” he asks
“Oui.”
“Ne-marche-pas!” he says. Won’t even let me try.
So cash it is. No tip.
Luddite to say the least, and a vivid counterpoint to the pinnacle of TGV technology. It is oddly-comforting (to a Rosbif bridling at the corn-holing he’s about to receive from a smug, unelected EU apparatchik) to see Europe remain dysfunctional despite all the guff and chops-licking over “Botchit”. Thesis intact. Europe can never be a proper, functioning “union”. Something as basic as cross-border credit card payment restrictions in the 21st Century highlights the hurdles still out there. It’s a sign. As much as the Hexagones get some of it right, it’s more the stuff that stays within l’Hexagone, domestic bliss – the ‘infra’ in infrastructure. It’s not that mine was a Rosbif card that they where instructed to decline to be punitive; Spanish or Bosch cards would be just the same. “Étranger”. Which my iPad auto-correct unwittingly changes to “stranger”.
Yay! Another (small) victory. We’ve arrived at Bordeaux St Jean. LATE. The big, flashy, tax-payer-funded monitor reads “Dax 16:15 16:20”. So, only the Swiss run on time, and they’re not in the EU. Money can’t buy taste, as they say. Nor can it ensure punctuality.
The Camino really is quite chummy. I was approached by a chap at Bayonne station as I waited for the local to St Jean Pied de Port, my jumping off point. We had the same backpacks and were waiting from the same train
“English or Espagnol?”
“English” I replied, as we shook hands.
“Figured we might be doing the same thing…”
This was Maurice – a burned-out physician turned private equity executive from Sacramento. His motherboard was fried by trying to juggle a hideous travel schedule, two young kids and an understanding (physician) wife. He’d resigned but unexpectedly secured another job, so the Camino was squeezed in at short notice. He only had 3 weeks, so he was going to omit chunks. We registered at the pilgrim office, wandered around the town, had a pilgrim dinner, bid goodbye and I have no doubt I’ll see him somewhere along the trail. Delightful.
Tonight I sleep with strangers in a shared room that costs €30. Livin’ the high life. Tomorrow, I walk 27km from St Jean Pied de Port to Roncesvalles. Supposedly the hardest leg of the lot because of the changes in elevation – start at 200m above sea level, climbing to 1400m then ascending back down to 900m. Apparently there is no warm-up.