The Physician Anthropologist: THE LONG BUT COMFORTABLE JOURNEY WITH OCCASIONAL STAIRS AT PARIS METRO FROM MIAMI TO QUIBERON

mercredi 4 janvier 2023

THE LONG BUT COMFORTABLE JOURNEY WITH OCCASIONAL STAIRS AT PARIS METRO FROM MIAMI TO QUIBERON

It was a good day to leave Miami. The food, the social isolation and the general dislike of Cubans vs Others, occasionally bordering on hatred was weighing upon me.

Got this greetings from a friend of mine from Iquitos,Peru and it was a nice symbol of a send off.. the days to come would not be a disappointment .

I like to get to the Miami International Airport in time to enjoy a nice meal and a couple of glasses of champagne before the flight (so that the disappointing cuisine on American Airlines wouldn't matter!).. Flagship Lounge is one of the nicest lounges at Miami International Airport and over the course of months and years I have become friends with many of the people who work there and it all gives the journey a pleasant beginning.

I was the first to board and it is a quirky habit that i like to board first and deplane first (or at least one of the first)..

As expected the food onboard was barely edible and thanks to Flagship Lounge I did not need any food or drink. The flight to Paris was a very quick 7 hours and 30 minutes.

I was able to get a shut eye for a couple of hours and before long the flight was descending into CDG Paris airport.

This is where the most unpleasant aspect of this trip begins and it has nothing to do with the Frenchm but to do with the luggage i was carrying .

I am so used to traveling around the world with my carry on suitcase and a backpack but this time at the request of the La Poête de la Côte Sauvage, I was schlepping a bag weighing 20 kg full of Amazon.com offerings ...

CDG was unusually solitary, i remember the extreme part of Terminal 2 full of flights going off to Africa and the Middle East but today there was not single agent in sight. Later on I was told that there was some industrial action which is not at all uncommon at Paris CDG Airport.

No one had the even the faintest clue where i could catch the bus as I had done in the past to the Railway Station but they were cancelled during the covid period. I come to Paris often enough to connect to Brittany by train and usually there is a train from the railway station right at the airport to my destination in Brittany. Today I had to haul myself all the way, this time with the luggage that was not obeying my orders!..

Take the RER train and then change at Denfert-Rochereau and then Metro 6 to Paris Montparnasse station. Going up an down the stairs, as these stations were built long before the invention of moving escalators.. it was a sheer agony.. I would extract a promise NEVER TO BRING SO MUCH EXTRA LUGGAGE OR get a suitcase like the one i travel with, which would have made those stairs EASIER but still problematic..

Paris has excellent public transportation system as well as long walks between platforms with precipitous stairs

I began journeying to Paris CDG in 2006 and have flown there more than one hundred times. Many of the flight crew stay at this boat shaped Sheraton Hotel and a friend of mine who used to fly for Vietnam Airlines enjoyed her stays there .

At last on the RER train which has seen better days .. I have noticed that there are more and more young black women working in Public Relations posts in service industry and they are certainly very friendly and most of them speak English and thus easier on the millions of visitors who come to Paris

After a long flight, actually the flight was not long but the lounge visit and the champagne had distorted my vision of time and the strength of my muscles, to go up and down six times with 20 kg bag with no wheels (whoever suggested the bag deserves some jail time) began to feel like 100 kg. By the time I got to the Montparnasse railway station I was exhausted and there was a long lay over in the cold station with thousands of french looking to join their families on that Christmas Eve (they are completely secular but not averse to celebrate at the drop of a hat )

I was struggling with my bags and shuffling along when I thought I might try my luck (I am very lucky during my trips, let those stars shine till I am cured of dromomania) at the machine and change the ticket and imagine my surprise when the machine spews a ticket out on a very comfortable train leaving in 30 minutes (I was not looking forward to that four hour wait at the cold in more than one sense railway station at Montparnasse).. it would leave me at Vannes and it would be just another 20 minutes train ride to Auray where I would be met and driven to Quiberon.

I was also happy that I would be in Quiberon for the usual nice meal that my hosts prepare.

Before arriving at the Railway station I had managed to tantalize my taste buds (after torture by the talented teenaged chefs of north america) and managed a fish meal, of suitable portion size

Ah Welcome to France..

My voyage to Vannes was onboard a very comfortable train and was able to catch up on some sleep

I can write a lot about my anthropological observations about the social convulsions in France.

Vannes Station was a least charming station of the SNCF network and would win for the least welcoming prize or something similar. A group of young middle eastern men, possibly Afghanis were loitering in the station all eager to connect with someone or other with their cellphones while shivering in their inappropriate garb for this northern winter. A somali woman reluctantly made me a cup of coffee as she was eager to close the only shop that was open in the train station.

The night had fallen and the faithful french must have already delved into their meat and their sauces and mouthwatering recipes for this time of the year. The train station at Vannes was eerily deserted and a near empty train belong to the Bretagne Breizh railroad took me to Auray.

Nearly 24 hours after leaving Kendall in Miami, i arrived in Quiberon..

View from my room in the house where I stay in Quiberon, a small town that I like in Brittany France

A friend had kindly sent this photo of the Hanukkah candles so that instead of the red wine I drank champagne and thought of the heroes under the command of Yehuda Maccabee all those centuries ago, and felt good .