Training Days. Sacré Bleu!

The driverless Metro flew into the station and stopped on a euro. The doors opened. There were so many Parisians crammed into the front car, I thought it might have been an AI-generated crowd image. Trois got off. Dix got on. Including moi. Yeah! But not my wife. Oh-oh! 

She mouthed, “See you at Saint-Sulpice.” I mouthed back, “What?” But the train started and Pat disappeared. I could only hope she remembered me. And called the Paris lost and found.

I looked at the station map above the door. I saw Saint-Sulpice! Whew. But the train was going one way, and the little red dot was going the other way. Les crap! I was going backwards! I jumped off at the next stop, whipped out my iPhone and took it off airplane mode, even though I knew Verizon would probably charge me the 10-bucks-a-day “courtesy” fee. 

“The dot is weird,” I yelled into the phone. “I’m going to reroute.” Before I could run around to the other side of the track, the next train came. Did Pat get my message? I looked into the jam-packed car. It was like trying to find Waldo in one of those cartoons. Only being France, a lot of people were wearing scarves. But there she was! She looked great. Hadn’t aged a bit. I leaped into the fray. 

“What message?” Pat asked. I pointed at the moving red dot. Huh. It seemed to be headed to Saint-Sulpice after all. 

“Guess they fixed it. Never mind about the lost and found.” Pat just stared blankly at me, as I have seen her do many times.

A week earlier we had tickets for the high-speed rail from Paris to Bordeaux. The train was so long I thought we might get to Bordeaux on foot before we got to our car. “Which one?” Pat shrugged in a very French way. So, we got on Car 11, put our bags in the back and settled in. I went upstairs to see if I could find seats with a better view. I did, but just as I was about to celebrate a guy came along and said I was in his seat. When I went back downstairs Pat was standing in the aisle. “We are supposed to be in car 16!” We had to leave our bags and run to get onto our car. The train took off before we could even say “Bonjour.”

“Hope they have underwear stores in Bordeaux in case we never see our bags again.” But no one grabbed them. Little did they know that some of my underwear was less than a year old.

Bordeaux was great and we rented a car and drove to Dordogne, staying in medieval villages and eating medieval food. “Should we get the foie gras pizza or the canard burger?”

But our week in the 12th century ended. So, we drove back to the station where we had to catch the train from Bordeaux back to Paris. We asked which train was ours. The helpful attendant pointed over her shoulder, so we “merci’d” her and dragged our suitcases beside the seemingly endless train. But this time we knew how to read our tickets. We were on the second level on car 18, the one near the caboose, if they have cabooses. We were definitely winded when we got there, but at least it wasn’t crowded. 

Matter of fact, the only other people on the second level was a couple from Oakland. We were having a great conversation about California and French cuisine and how the flaky crescent and café crème compared to an omelet the size of a Frisbee and 11 refills of coffee-of-the-day. They were fun and we were thinking we might join them in their four-seater if no one else showed up. 

Then someone did – a train official – to inform us we were on the wrong train. We ran off and onto a train on a different set of tracks. Once again the train took off before our butts hit the cushion! 

“What happens when we get back to Paris?” I asked Pat.

“We have to walk to the taxi loading area… somewhere.”

We are definitely going to need new shoes when we get home.