September 28-30: AMSTERDAM WAY-STATION

As I leave Gare du Nord, Paris cries/it's raining. Ah, the climate far north of the Alps. So it goes.

By some kind of logistics miracle which seems to have leaped the long security scan line, our massive Thalys high speed ear-popping electric leaves pretty much on time. Once under way a multi-language announcement comes across the PA, announcing a questionnaire doing the rounds of our 18 carriages, "Please fill it out, you're doing us a great favour," etc. I'm on my way to the buffet car when I spot Questionnaire Woman coming from the other direction, so I slide into a spare seat to do my statistical duty to both Paris and trains.

Nationality. There's a box on the lengthy form for Australia but none for Aotearoa New Zealand... which in spite of the size of the form has been relegated - presumably for reasons of space or size - to 'other'. I'm not the only one to note the exclusion. From the seat right behind me, "New Zealand's not on here." I turn around, "I noticed that too!" On the French-Belgian-German run train, I have landed in the Aotearoa New Zealand sector.

Our country may seem small, but our people lurk everywhere - on trains, sometimes behind flowers...

My compatriots are three sisters from the far north, one with her daughter along, in Europe for a family reunion with a large clan of Dutch cousins who they'd never met till a couple of weeks ago. Even without their two brothers, who couldn't come, they've been having a ball. They pull out a cardboard cut-out head and shoulders of their Dutch émigré dad (deceased a few years back), who they've just taken on a wee trip to Paris. I swap my story and we turn to common ground and events, such as the Silver Scroll music awards, which I've just spent my last morning in Paris with. Five women finalists for top single, Lorde winning with 'Green Light'. Here we are on the train, another five women. We get onto politics and the national election of the weekend before, which hasn't produced a clear majority for governance, meaning a coalition will need to be formed. For common social policy reasons recognizing that the neo-right conservative agenda will get booted in favour of a long-overdue return to greater social equity, I reckon it's going to be Labour-Green-New Zealand First. Our animated discussion goes on for quite some time.

Suddenly, in the middle it, the returning questionnaire woman looms. None of us, of course, have finished. "Well, it's only about 78 questions," jokes the guy on the other side of the aisle. Questionnaire Woman gets a bit short about my not having completed the inquisition, and attempts to steer me away from answering "not important" questions about trains. Obviously she doesn't know she's talking to a train propagandist. Obviously trains are way more important than Paris, even if it is probably that city paying her for her precious time. Obviously she wants to work no longer than she has to and beat me to the buffet car. I do bad cop, one of the sisters does good cop, and we good women hustle to complete our questionnaires.

Arriving in a damp and overcast Amsterdam evening I exchange good wishes and farewells with my countrywomen, and head for the ticket booking office. The electronic card processing machine switches languages when it sees what country my bank card is from. The nice service man gives me a short lesson in Dutch greetings. I meet my friend Tirza beside the piano in the main greetings hall. Everyone gets on and off the bus by paying with swipe cards. No cash. I remind myself that, in part, the Netherlands is sophisticated because it's been an international tax haven for years. They also have a highly representative governmental system, a more or less affordable health care system, and a fairly comprehensive integration system for refugees. Shame about the weather.

Yet another progressive thing about the Netherlands

Don't believe everything you read about Amsterdam house prices, gentrification is rife

I'm welcomed to my hosts' lovely apartment (in a block of brick, late 19th century renovated worker apartments in the Spaarndammerbuurt https://www.jlgrealestate.com/spaarndammerbuurt/ part of West Amsterdam, with almost-as-mad-as-in-France staircases) by a rain storm and with a delicious, home-cooked, designer-food dinner. The next day, a rest day, the bathtub beckons in the morning, and after lunch the sun comes out, shining its obvious message on the big, comfortable couch. At wine o'clock we head out to the extremely friendly neighbourhood wine shop, http://www.jacqwijn.nl/, to taste several wines at one of their regular tasting events. After 'suffering' several whites and being inundated by a massive downpour, the outstanding tipple for me is a spicy, fruity red from Portugal's Alentejo region. Research for future train trip destinations is demanding!

And then suddenly it's Saturday 30th of September, my final Interrail pass day, departure day, return to Berlin day. I'm like a reluctant Cinderella having to be finished by midnight, though no worries, tickets are booked to even make it back in time to visit my local supermarket well before it closes at 23:30. 

And still enough time at hand in the busy railway square of the central city to pop by jazz legend Chet Baker's commemoration plaque - for the record, he fell from his second floor hotel window here, out of it on heroin and cocaine. Death can be so undignified.


To make the heading east transition easier, today's foodie celebration is at the most outstanding organic food market I have ever been to. It's at

And our first stop is...

The gallant oyster opening hand approacheth (pre-donning the chain-mail safety glove), awaiting our ladies' bidding...

...and having slit, moves on: Empties

The rest of the market is similarly well provisioned with a cornucopia of delights and I need little encouragement to stock up on a few supplies for my ultimate train journey east, while my eyes drink everything else in. If I was living in Amsterdam I'd be shopping here every week, just as my hosts do. Aside from the oysters, grown by small-scale coastal fishers and sold on sustainably through transparent, short-chain suppliers https://www.goedevissers.nl/ ('good fishermen'), there are cheese mountains, pastry pinnacles, mushroom and herb meadows, brick houses...

Fakes

Real thing

We finish our shopping endeavours with coffee at some apparently very famous coffee shop that sits on a nearby, very famous 'most photographed in town' corner, and that's crammed full of local memorabilia and other historically illuminating stuff.

Then we traverse what my friend Tirza says used to be one of the nicest streets in the city but is now gentrified/touristified to hell and back. Marijuana smoke punctuates the drizzly air. Strangely - given my arrival trip's travelling companions - en route to the station is the 'Kiwiland' growshop. Obviously with this mystical bookend sign from the universe, it's almost time to go. 

Tirza and I sit in some swishy new bar lounge somewhere under the railway tracks at the main station and I down my last ritual "Goede reis" (bon voyage) drink, which in the Netherlands really has to be Jenever. Of course it doesn't shine a lamp anywhere close to the various delicious night-cap beverages my hostesses have plied me with on my two evenings here, but as a symbolic gesture it does fine. Proost!

And then I'm underway. Just as when leaving Paris, it's raining, the spray thrown up from speeding cars on the highway forming a mist a couple of metres high.

But unlike when leaving Paris, now we're heading east, the heating is on...

September 25-28: THREE MAGICAL DATES IN PARIS

Arriving at Paris Gare de Lyon, I navigate the confusing array of signage to jump onto an RER A train and ride it for three minutes to the thrumming hub of Châtelet - Les Halles, planning to head up, up, up the escalators towards the exit and Rue Pierre Lescot. Paris's comprehensive, reasonably priced (Zones 1&2 10 ticket carnet €14,90), public transport system is full of labyrinthine transfers and this connection is mercifully straightforward. But on my way out of the station (welcome to Paris, you person with a heavy, slightly frayed, safety-pinned, punky-looking backpack, a Rollkoffer, and a full handbag) I am plucked out of the matrix by a security guard.

Stained glass, Notre-Dame. If only the signage and transfers in Paris's underground were this transparent...

It's like being dropped back into the highly shielded procedures for the film festival in Venice, with the same amount of fashion and without a lagoon. I'm wearing the same blue linen dress as then but it's afternoon, underground, and the lighting's just not working for me. One passer-by sees how it is with my stopped luggage and rolls her eyes in sympathy. The guard and I quickly establish we can't speak any of one another's languages. The gates to the city are temporarily closed.

Hopeful Christian migrants rowing their boat in the centre of the city of lights

I slide my pack off, put it down on the stainless steel bench, wriggling my fingers non-committally at the numerous pins holding the broken zipper slot together, then, with a wave of my magical poetry hand, draw the guard's gaze toward the Rollkoffer, unzipping it in the same gliding move to reveal the colourful and glittering trove of single poem poetry books within. 

Voila!

"Poésie" I say. Yes, I actually know one of the most important words in French, surely the most important subject in the school curriculum from year dot given the way les enfants are brainwashed with it, and the word which to my mind most informs wordy French conversational, philosophical, and diplomatic culture. Of course, I am very thrifty with my own words: as you can see it has only taken four paragraphs to almost say "I got stopped for a bag check at the giant shopping mall/public transport hub, said I was a poet, and that near-instantly diffused the high security alert situation". For without the use of any concealed explosives, that single word functions as a little puff of bewitching smoke.

"Vous êtes un poète?" (He probably says. "You're a poet?" the Babel fish whispers in my ear.) 

"Oui."

Somehow I also understand when he asks me where I'm from. Best Olympics French accent: "Nouvelle-Zélande." Given the history, saying "Berlin" is not going to cast the same beguiling spell. The guard uses his magical security pass hand to wave me on. I even extract the directions for Rue Pierre Lescot, "up the escalators".

Hand waving. International language. Non-threatening passport. Sorcery.  

I buzz-code my way into my friend's building in the second arrondissement then can't work out how to open the second internal door. I try to go back out to the street but I can't work out that one either. Trapped in a dimly-lit hallway! With incredible timing my friend Marie descends the stairs from the fifth floor. All I have to to is pull it, she says. There is a (concealed to my eyes) handle built into the entire height of the door-frame. I should have known - this happened to me in Antibes as well. Smoke and mirrors these French doors.

Notre-Dame's front door

But these things are not so important. What is important is getting ready for my first date tonight, one arranged before summer, and that has been desired for a couple of years - featured poet at Spoken Word Paris, tonight's theme 'Saying Goodbye/Leaving/Parting'. On Facebook, friends seem inordinately excited about this date of mine in Paris. Marie cooks me food, Google Maps provides some (slightly nonsensical) walking directions, I speed on foot across town through the fluster of dense evening traffic.

SWP's current resident poet Antonia Klimenko (L) and longstanding ringmaster, David Barnes. PHOTO: Sabine Dundure

Spoken Word Paris https://spokenwordparis.org/ is an open mic night and writers’ community founded in 2006 by David Barnes, with sister events in several other cities round the world. It takes place on most Monday nights throughout the year in the cellar at Au Chat Noir, in the 11th arrondissement, and welcomes all languages onto its stage, with English the dominant tongue. As an open mic participant you get five minutes to strut your stuff before the bell tolls. In my two visits (the first in December 2015) I've seen vast talent here, in what is an extremely international, highly recommended, and entertaining evening of great variety. In 12 minutes I do my best to maintain the standard, and make at least one audience member cry with a particularly raw rendition of an archaic Ukrainian wedding song that farewells a bride - success! 

Before the tears PHOTO: Sabine Dundure

John, an audience member, bought one of these books. Be like John. PHOTO: Sabine Dundure

On the walk back home Marie and I get stuck next to the road on Place de la République. Paris's air pollution situation has improved in recent years, although with so many people and vehicles concentrated in a small area, it's still rotten in spots, and this is one of them. The skateboarders behind us are going great guns, but both of us feel compelled to cover noses and mouths with our shawls. In spite of taking a chill-out day, within 24 hours of arriving I have a little Paris cough. 

On my third day I venture out into the city centre hunting for my second date, a miraculous healing performed by the most famous entity in the city, along with the trees, vegetables, and other wildlife in and around her beside the Seine River...

Detail, wall of public toilets behind Notre-Dame

Salvia gauranitica, garden at Notre-Dame

Galloping giant vegetables, Batman! Garden at Notre-Dame, participating in the city's floral decorations "olympiades végétales" (plant Olympics) contest

Amaranth, garden at Notre-Dame

Wildlife, exterior

Nest, window

The 'Rastafarian' window

Notre-Dame issues her own calm enchantment wrought in stone, wood and glass. When inside, the non-stop city traffic roar falls mute onto her thick-walled ears. She bestows wonder at the hundreds of gifted craftspeople who created her, in a period spanning over 18 decades during the great cultural flourishing of the middle ages. When I learned of her allures, 30 years ago when studying medieval history in Aotearoa New Zealand, I made a pact to see her, and I do so every time I come here. It's an unconditional, unrequited love.

There is nothing remotely like this old makutu in my remote South Pacific home country. I am quite some time. In spite of my slavish adoration being rejected once again by the impassive stone, I'm much the better for her hushed mojo working.

A quick hunting stop nearby yields gargoyle fridge magnets for me and my Berlin neighbour. 

Fakes

Real thing

Heading back to the domestic cauldron, I make dinner and head north on foot to Montmartre for my third date, at Open Secret, run by poet and musician David Sirois. Usually this open stage happens every Wednesday at Le Bistrot des Artistes, 6 rue des Anglais, starting round 21:00, again open to all-comers, and a bit looser on time-keeping. After the show and a little bit of chatting, suddenly it's midnight. With a sense of urgency in an unfamiliar landscape I make it back home south before the Metro shuts down, via a couple of the oldest Art Nouveau-influenced lines, the lovely rickety carriages that pass along their tracks, and a bewilderingly long and wending tiled transfer. 

Being in that transfer late at night felt something like this

To get out of town from Gare du Nord the following afternoon, I make my last (rainy) Paris walk in plenty of time, which is fortunate, as there's a snaking, distorted reflection of my entry procedure - a  slowish moving line of considerable length comprised of business-people, family groups and solo travellers queued up to run luggage through scanners before boarding. My scanner's staffed by a woman who must surely be the most bored and inattentive security worker I've ever seen. So much for France's continuing state of alert (since the mid-November 2015 attacks).

It is in equal parts discouraging and heartening to find that my carriage, number 18, is right at the far end of the extreeeeeeeeeeeemely long vehicle, which has extra engine power half-way along and two buffet cars. I've only been able to reserve a second class ticket for this one, it's so full. According to the booking clerk I had back at Gare de Lyon, everyone's using trains these days. Now that is magic.

September 25: SECOND PERSON AND VISUALS FAST TRAIN TO PARIS ACCOUNT POEM RIDDLE

While sewing up your backpack zipper 
which broke in the last ten minutes before leaving the house in Antibes, 
you go out into the carriage intermittently and gaze wistfully out the window at the sea

crying blurry projectile tears, of course

eventually you stop weeping inside but next time 
there is a road spoiling the view of
well, the whole world really

even when you look back for the last time, not knowing it is the last time

you wish you are on that beach anyway but
you've got to appear somewhere
tonight

so you finish sewing up half your bag opening with your wickedly curved book-making needle and hefty thread,
reattach your packed-for-an-emergency large safety pins to the rest of the gap
securing your underwear from spilling onto a Paris street
and return to your seat

making do with the beginnings of autumn

and a little excitement at French wildlife

you do not photograph the four nuclear station cooling stacks

but you do snap another passing fast train

which thrillingly sucks your train in towards itself at an extremely high speed
and you wonder, as your ears pop, exactly how fast you are going

it is a miracle of modern engineering
and in eleven seconds of video 
a good question for 
calculation
geeks

answers in the comments below

September 16-19, 22-25: ANTIBES: A HUNGRY ANIMAL SPIRIT JOURNEY INTO CôTE d'AZUR HELL, PURGATORY, AND PARADISE

PROLOGUE: NUMBER CRUNCHING
Where to start with Antibes and why do I have two long weekends here? 
1. A hoped-for meeting with a Marseilles writer acquaintance falls through due to miscommunication
2. A last-minute, middle-of-the-night request to a Couchsurfing host comes through
3. As that host and I get on famously I'm welcome to return in order to:
1. Hang out again
2. Catch up with a second acquaintance living thereabouts who's out of town the first weekend
Antibes is:
1. a fishing port 
2. a resort in south-east France with a population of 75,000
According to one of my friends, here on the Cote d'Azur, you are either: 
1. "serving", or 
2. "being served"...
As I am in the land which claims:
1. equality
2. fraternity, and
3. liberty, I choose both.
And ∞ (infinity), this wordy, occasionally worldly, humanimal loves the beach 

Look carefully (click on to enlarge), a letterary figure, not numbers, Antibes waterfront

ANTIBES: PART/WEEKEND ONE
Let's start with the train, because for me as a Permaterrailean, that's where it starts. Both my grandfathers worked on the Aotearoa New Zealand railways. When I was four I was given an electric train set for Christmas. My love affair with trains is deeply embedded, and it's generally the most comfortable way to travel. To get from Menton to Antibes, in spite of my first class Interrail ticket, I have to ignore my privilege, get to the root of things, and take the regional TER (transport express régional).

As befits my basic constitutional status as 'often hungry', and because in Menton I have been constantly on the go, before I embark on my gruelling one hour journey I am looking for something to take on the train to eat. Having just said goodbye to Sophie, in a perfect life moment I run into her flatmate and my other Couchsurfing host, Anna, on the street, and get to say goodbye again. She recommends somewhere with good snacks close to the station. Sadly I can't find the quality food stop and am forced to settle for a pain o'chocolat (choose to be 1. literal or 2. figurative in interpretation) from the little hole in the wall 'sells-everything' at the station. As an 'often hungry' I am truly missing Italy, where, in my experience, pretty much every station has minimum one place where you can get good food and good coffee, including the ritual, alcohol-laced, bon voyage variety of the latter. You never leave hungry and you always leave in a good mood. I suspect when Dante wrote of the descent into hell and purgatory he was thinking of train station food in France. 

For while according to historical legends of good French food and drink, at the Cote d'Azur rail portals to the country, I can only say, "Au contraire!" Compared to the train station cafeterias paradise I have recently departed, a lot of places this side of the invisible line in the clifftop rocks and sand still can't spell espresso, the price of said liquid is double, and the quality halved. e.g. the awful Relay chain 'cafes' whose coffee lacks human touch, the vital elixir extruded from a... dispenser machine. Sacré bleu! I admit it, I am a food and coffee wanker. 

I hunker down in my second class seat and bite into the (not so) terrible French pastry, saving the chocolate bits for last. I'm disappointed about not managing to better arrange the informal writer's colloquium in Marseille, but the coastal views are softening the blow. The train is empty, I start to relax. And then the suffering hordes embark. 

Suddenly I discover a TER is more or less a commuter train. To give one gentleman a seat, I start moving my giant backpack from the seat beside me. TERs have, pretty much, no luggage storage space. No decent backpack-size racks, not even overhead shelves. The gentleman, seeing how it is with the luggage and being a gentleman, shakes his head, it's ok. But a wee way down the line some woman standing in the aisle starts bitching at me to move my bag to give the man a seat. I say to her in English - because I can't vociferously bitch back in voluble French - that he was ok with it. She continues nagging for quite some time. One is in France. One must complain about something. She gets off.

I move my Rollkoffer under my legs and the backpack onto the floor. Someone else can at least sit down and swivel their legs out into the aisle. A woman sits down and complains about where she can't put her legs. I apologise and say there is no storage space on the TER train. She sneezes. I say "Bless you". An uncomfortable truce ensues. We both get off at Antibes.

Not me with either of the remonstrative women on the TER

Once again, Couchsurfing is marvellous and generous humanity in action. My new host, Rodrigo, a Colombian IT/engineering ace, is mega-organised. He's sent me a PDF complete with maps, phone, reasonable house rules, address, and wi-fi access codes for his place, and he has a 'welcome to Antibes' bottle of rose (sic. Blogspot won't accept the wine's French accent) in the fridge. As the sun sets we drink it on his balcony and talk tech, music and life, segue onto Japanese whiskey, and he offers to take me out for dinner to a great place he knows. My host likes showing off his town and thinks I need to be spoiled. If somebody must be sacrificed, let me be the lamb...

Large nocturnal cats stalk Antibes alleys, hunting for prey

Unfortunately the chosen restaurant can't take us till later so we're forced to go a short way down the road, round a corner, and descend into a cellar, entering the unworldly bardo state of the Absinthe Bar, a.k.a. tourist-packed-hell. (All very nice people of course.) As water drips from tapped carafes through large sugar cubes on slotted spoons into hallucinatory substances at the bottom of their glasses, patrons wearing an odd assortment of hats - which have emanated with lives of their own from a large trunk - sing along with a lyrical consummate piano pro whose soul must surely be entirely drained by the end of every night.  

 

The owners are making a killing. We are saved from this nightmare by a summons to go back up to the restaurant. Pass through a portal to paradise...

Rodrigo claims the Italian chef Davide Bolzoni to be "a shadow dancer". He's looking pretty solid in the open kitchen to me, though he is solo, cooking up amazing culinary acts (while his charming partner runs front of house). This is his spectral menu http://www.cafemilano-antibes.com/menu/ A lot of fresh foodstuffs and a good few crushed grapes et al. fall into the abyss of my stomach in here. My head is reeling and I cannot hear them scream. In spite of a monstrous sleep deficit I am also forced to stroll the painfully picturesque waterfront afterwards. Everywhere along the town walls there are images forbidding one from flying from them into the sea. The soft, seductive beating of the waves upon the shore is torment.

Read the signs: Absinthe and amazing food may turn you into a shadow dancer

It is all I can do the next day to go swimming, be treated to lunch (more Italians talented in the kitchen), eat ice-cream, walk insufferably around the old town, etc. The day after, too overcome with ennui to walk one short block down to the waterfront to take photographs of the historic fortifications, the cliffs, the palm trees, or the little stone houses with foundations built directly onto giant rocks...

Big stone houses with foundations built directly onto giant rocks

 

 

 

Proof of overcoming seaside ennui

 

... I at least do some work then head out to visit the Irish fish shop man across the road from the waterfront to gather up mussels, oysters, king prawns and salmon. I finally manage to summon up the energy to prepare them and treat my host back.

Before too much more dolour ensues, fortunately it is time to jump on a first class TGV the next morning and leave. Damn electric-powered train doesn't even emit sulphur.

ANTIBES: PART/WEEKEND TWO

I like small towns. I've lived in several big cities - Seoul, Moscow, London, Berlin - but in spite of all that is on offer in such places, the air quality is terrible, in large part due to not enough greenery, bad design, too many roads, and the fossil-fuel burning vehicles upon them. There are cars in Antibes, but both my friends here (like many others) walk and use buses, and in spite of way too much air traffic emitting non-taxed fuel particulates over the beaches, the air is fairly good. Perhaps many big city dwellers wouldn't like living here - except in July when the big international Jazz à Juan festival happens - as it's a bit culturally quiet. But because I do like it I'm visiting again, just like Picasso did. Unlike Picasso, who returned for six months 20-odd years after his first visit, I don't get invited to stay in the castle, which used to be known as Château Grimaldi. Mainly that's because it is now the Musée Picasso (Picasso Museum) http://www.antibes-juanlespins.com/culture/musee-picasso and numerous of his works are held here, taking up far too much room to accommodate poets.

Reinstalled at Rodrigo's, and still recovering from Marseilles/Montpellier's leek sprout heartburn sleep deficit I catch up with some work and sleep. The next evening I catch up with another friend, Alexandre, who lives a wee way along the coast. We prologue and epilogue the evening in two excellent, albeit empty except for us, Antibes wine-bars. In between we go to Café Des Chineurs, a really busy restaurant on a market square where he's a regular, and get spoiled with Gwen's cheeky and excellent service, and aperitif-digestif treats. Local knowledge wins the day, and this place saves France's reputation for good food and wine in spite of its lack of trains. Looking around the outside dining area and deeper into the restaurant, I notice (strictly as an outsider) that the grey hair and grey hair dyed blonde quotient of patrons is pretty high. Yes, the Côte d'Azur is a bit of a retirement village.

During another soporific postprandial stroll along the waterfront I surveil the large number of lit-up yachts... apparently the marina is so full that a lot of really big boats - think little floating villages - have been forced to moor just offshore. One, quite far out, has disco lights flashing the full length of its lower deck... 

Not a large yacht with disco lights but a massive metal bear staring into a happy disco-lights-like accident. SCULPTOR: Davide Rivalta

The next afternoon Alexandre and I jump on one of the one euro Envibus buses and go to a beach on the peninsula so I can do my ritual last Permaterrailean swim of summer. The beach is in a mansion-packed area packed full of rich Russians, the free beach is covered in Russians, and although their conversations don't carry that far, I suspect the private beach's deck adjacent is even more bedecked with them. Another thing noticeable about the Côte d'Azur these days, is there are a lot of 'property for sale' signs that read something like this: продается. There is even a Russian Railways return train service that runs between Nice and Moscow every week http://pass.rzd.ru/static/public/en?STRUCTURE_ID=5125&layer_id=3290&refererLayerId=162&id=2039#nice Please note your dogs, other small animals and birds travel for free. I guess if I decide to forgo the five hour TGV to Paris, and instead opt to take 84 hours to travel there via my old haunt Moscow I can't smuggle on my bears...

Gratuitous ice cream consumption. The only way to do bear back

Seeing double again: Daylight-bear-on-a-dodgy-cellphone-camera PHOTOS: Rodrigo Merchán