You Want To Go Where?
As you know, I have complained a lot about the
infrastructure in Bangalore a lot. There
has been so much urbanization and an incredible, unpredictable amount of
immigration to the city from the outlying rural areas, that the city is
crushing itself under its own weight from the lack of infrastructure. The traffic is a mess, and the only form of
intra-city public transportation is the over-crowded busses. Needless to say, it is very hard to get
around the city via rickshaw. They are
great for short distances, but if you wanted to get to anywhere over eight
kilometers away, good luck. First, you
have to find an auto driver that will understand where you want to go, and then
one that will take you there. As I said
before, most auto drivers are very selective in where they will take you. If they don’t want to go that way, too bad
for you; find another driver.
Coming to Europe, specifically France was such a welcome
change in public transportation. I flew
into Frankfurt Saturday and then took a short flight to Paris. I have a few friends in Paris, so I asked
some of them to meet me at the airport, but sadly, no one could. I needed to do it myself; no problem. I took a train and the metro. After less than ten minutes of waiting in
the airport at the luggage carousel, I had my luggage and started my solo
voyage thru Paris. Charles de Gaulle
airport is about __km from the center Paris and the Gare St. Lazare, the train
station I needed to get to. I left the
airport on the RER B and took the metro right into the center or Paris. I left the metro station and walked up the
stairs right into the center of Paris. It was a scene right out of a movie! I walked up the stairs and when I reached the top stair, I spun in
circles and proclaimed to myself, “Je suis en Paris! Je prende le metro et j’ai
un travail bon.” Now all I had to do was
go the GSL, a five minute walk away. This was one of the harder short walks in my
life, I found it quite hard to actually walk there only for the fact that I
wanted to walk around Paris, not to a train station. But, it was a little hard with my bags. I did find it funny when someone asked me in
broken French where something was. “Excusez-moi?” I said. Then he
repeated his question in English. And I laughed, I said to him, “Sorry, I do
not know where it is, I am not a Parisians”. He looked at me, chuckled, and said, “Sorry, I thought you were” That
made me happy to think that I at least looked the part to someone, or he was
just really lost and asking everyone.
I had arrived to the train station. Quel bon chance! I remember this train
station from when I was here 15 years ago! But, I didn’t speak any French then, and I was a lot smaller too, so it
was a whole new experience. Well, I had
already booked my ticket, so all I needed to do was go pick it up at the ticket
window. Again, I needed to use my
French, and success. I was able to speak
enough to say what I wanted and now I just needed to wait for my train to
leave.
The next thing I knew, I was on the train headed
to Le Havre. It was quite exciting
knowing that I had gotten myself from the airport and was on my way to Le Havre
with seven months of studying French and an independent travelling spirit. Two hours later, the train arrived in Le
Havre and I was greeted by my grandmother and my great-uncle. They were so happy to see me! My grandmother feared the worst and my uncle
was confident that I would arrive. It
was nice to see some familiar faces after travelling alone thru foreign
countries for over six hours.
