De Paris à Montrond-les-Bains (no, not Feurs)

September 28, 2010 – 10:00pm

Sunday morning, Caroline drove me over to the Gare de Lyon and saved me the trouble of another pricey taxi ride through Paris; she would have picked me up from the airport on Friday except her mother needed the car for work. Having never taken a train in France and certainly never by myself, the train station was very confusing at first, but I was in no hurry and had plenty of time to figure things out and get a nice (if unintentional) workout in the process. After lugging 100 pounds’ worth of suitcase up and down escalators trying to figure out which voie (track) the train would come to and accosting a few unhelpful train station employees, I finally figured out that they don’t post that information until about 15 minutes before the train arrives. The first-class upgrade was definitely nice, though; huge seats with plenty of legroom made for a nice ride down to Saint-Etienne, even if it was a little overcast.

I had to change trains at St-Etienne Chateaucreux, which was a much less intimidating train station than its Parisian counterpart. It’s under construction right now though, and the elevator to take me over to the farthest voie was unfortunately out of commission. Faced with the prospect of carrying my suitcases up and down two sets of stairs, I must have been a pretty pathetic sight at the top of that first set of stairs, and thankfully a really nice security guard offered to carry my 70-pound monster of a suitcase across the station and up the stairs to Voie E for me. I was still an hour early for my train, but I found that waiting out in the cold for a bit was well worth having had some help with the bags. At the time, a bit of cold air felt like a nice break from Georgia’s overbearing summer heat… oh how silly I was.

The original plan had been to meet my contact at Feurs, but since she she lives closer to Montrond-les-Bains (the stop before Feurs), that’s where I descended. Actually, I almost didn’t descend; between heaving the suitcases down the couple steps from the seating area to the doors and then not realizing the doors weren’t going to open by themselves, I almost missed the stop. It was only after standing there like an idiot for a few moments that I realized I had to push the button to open them up, and the train had started rolling (albeit slowly) by the time I was pulling off my second suitcase. As I was the only one getting off the train at Montrond-les-Feurs, I was evidently easy to spot by Françoise, and we loaded up my bags and drove to her house.

I’m really glad I got the chance to spend a night at Françoise and her family’s house not only because it saved me the hassle of a hotel, but their house itself is a gorgeous converted and renovated farmhouse. The first sensation I had upon walking in was of being in a giant aged oak wine barrel, except one filled with adorable little French children. Françoise and her husband have three kids from the ages of 6 to 12, so it was especially generous of them to take me in for the night. I learned to play a card game called “Sept Familles”, a French version of Go Fish, with Lana, the heart-meltingly cute if rambunctious six-year-old. I felt kind of bad for beating her at it, but her reactions to losing points – T’es dégolasse! (You’re disgusting!) and Tu regardes mes cartes! (You’re looking at my cards!) – said while still grinning and hiding behind her cards – wouldn’t let me allow her to win. Françoise cooked meat lasagna for dinner, and then instead of the usual French practice of having yogurt for dessert, we had a strawberry and white chocolate cake with almond ganache from a local patisserie instead. The kids reacted to it like it was a special occasion thing, so if it’s because I was there, then I have even more reason to thank Françoise and Jerôme for their hospitality. Also, it was pretty freaking delicious.

I got up at 6:00 the next morning (Monday) in order to be ready to have breakfast at 6:50 and head to the school and my new apartment by 7:30. It’s taking me a little longer than usual to get used to the time change, so between not being able to fall asleep at midnight like I should have and then still waking up at 3:00am feeling wide awake for the third night in a row (I guess my body still thinks it’s just an early evening nap?), I’ve been in a little bit of a fog. Hopefully soon this fatigue will catch up with me and I’ll be too tired to wake up in the middle of the night.