Sometimes things don’t work out the way you want. Within the last twenty-four hours we’ve have two perfect examples of this.
The first one, is of a sports theme. Paul walked down to the Canadian bar to watch his Toronto Blue Jays in the American League Championship Series, something they haven’t been a part of it since 1993, when Kier was born. The Jays were up 3-0 in the 7th inning, but they ended up losing 6-3. But the evening was not lost. Paul got to know a student from Brantford, working on a Ph.D. in Art History; a couple who are now living in B.C. celebrating their honeymoon; a couple from London, Ont. celebrating turning 40; the bartender from Saskatchewan; and a lawyer from Atlanta hitting on Canadian women. Even though the game didn’t work out the way he wanted, he still had a little fun. The game wasn’t over until 2 am, so Paul got to see the night at an interesting hour.
This morning we decided to take the RER, the suburban train, out to see Chantilly, a castle located a twenty minute train ride from the city. We left at noon. First we took the metro to a connecting stop where we caught the RER. After we got on the RER, it stopped about halfway to Chantilly because of some issue on the tracks, no explanation was given. They loaded us on buses and proceeded to drive us from small town to small town, making stops that the train normally would have. When I tell you that this took hours, I am not exaggerating. There was no way to get off of the bus to nowhere, because you couldn’t catch a train to get back, we were all stuck. At each stop there was a minimum of ten people in red striped uniforms helping direct people.
When we got to the final stop, they said we could get back on the train to go the final stop, and then to Chantilly. By now our group was whittled down to two older French women, a Spanish speaking couple, and a young French woman. We banded together to find out how to get to the castle, but no one spoke the same language. Cali was the only one who could bridge the language gap with her Spanish and French. So people would talk to her and have her translate to others. The bus let us off at a train stop, but no train was coming. Ironically there wasn’t one train helper person at this stop, not one. We stood around trying to figure out how to get out of this tiny town at a train station where there were no trains. Eventually a man came from out of nowhere and said there would be another bus coming to take people to Chantilly. By this time the castle wouldn’t be open much longer and we had no idea if or when another bus would ever come by to pick us up. We hadn’t eaten since breakfast so I had two bags of BBQ chips and some madeleines out of the vending machine
We stayed on the bus and ended up at a train station where an express train was going back into the city. It was getting late. The two older French women, who we’d now spent much of the day trying to manage our train plight, were still in such good spirits. We said goodbye to them at Gard du Nord, and jumped on our metro line. We noticed we had gotten on the wrong direction after about six stops. Somehow it was a fitting way to end a day of transportation mishaps.
More than anything else, the day illustrated that sometimes the castle’s a no-show and the journey is all you have. We got to know some interesting people, and saw a beautiful countryside with its small villages, quaint city centers, small divided plots of community gardens, and rivers with swans lined with sunflower beds–it was absolutely lovely. We got a chance to talk in buses, trains, train stations, and deserted train stations. As our French traveling companions, two older women said to us with big smiles when we said goodbye, “Tomorrow will be a better day.”