Only Lyon Pour Moi

After a bit of a rocky start, Lyon ended up being a fantastic city, mostly because I got to catch up with Astrid again.  Having a local to show me around paid off in spades, and I feel like I did a lot more and got a lot more out of the city than I would have had I been alone.  In fact, I ended up staying a little longer than planned, leaving Monday evening instead of morning, skipping my planned day in Geneva.  No big loss I say.

But it didn’t start well.  In fact, I think it would be safe to say it started horrendously.  And it started in Barcelona…

DAY ZERO

I’m going to include this day as part of the Lyon experience, though much of the time was in fact spent in Barcelona.  Certainly the start of the day was, as my alarm woke me at 7:30am.  I lay in bed for another half hour, thinking to myself that I would be able to wait a little before having a nice relaxed breakfast, checking out and heading off on the metro to catch the train at 9:38am.

This would have been perfect if my train had actually left at 9:38am.  Somehow my brain had jumbled up the numbers a little, so my train was actually to leave at 8:38am.  I realized this at approximately 8:03am, while on the toilet.

In a mad panic (I had told Astrid to meet me at a specific time so I NEEDED to catch the right train, and I only had an eight minute connection, so didn’t have time to catch a later train) I grabbed my bag, raced downstairs, skipped breakfast, checked out and powered to the metro.  The wrong metro.  I walked back up out of the metro and walked fifty metres or so to the RIGHT metro.

Waiting for the metro I counted minutes in my head.  The metro was due in 45 seconds, and with a minute and a half per stop I should be able to make it with maybe a minute to spare.

Well… two minutes later the metro arrived.  And then at EVERY SINGLE STOP it stopped for at least a minute.  It wasn’t long before I resigned myself to the fact that I had rushed and skipped breakfast for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

In Barcelona Sants I took out my laptop (glancing suspiciously at every decrepit old man walking past as I did so) in order to contact Astrid and check alternative train connections.  Thank God for free internet.

Now, a little information about the train I was to catch.  The train terminates in a town called Portbou, on the border of Spain and France (on the Spanish side).  It goes every hour.  Every two hours the train would go to Cerbere, the equivalent station on the French side.  These towns are both on the coast, by the way.  My connection was from Cerbere, as French trains don’t really go into Spain.  Every two hours, the train to Portbou goes one stop further, to Cerbere.  I needed to be on one of those, therefore the next train I could catch would leave at 10:38pm.

I basically just waited in the train station for two hours.  Eventually the train came up on the board.  I was a little surprised to see some writing (in Spanish) underneath the listing.  It said something about the French border and Cerbere – I just assumed it was saying that the train would cross over into Cerbere, and to remain on the train to cross the border.

I have to say, I was a little uncertain about this interpretation until I saw the train itself, which had Cerbere listed on it as the terminating station.  Awesome!

I think you can possibly see where this is going.

After the three hour ride (through Spaghetti Western country) we stopped at Portbou.  The voice said (in Spanish) that this was the terminating station.  The train’s information board said this was the terminating station.  Everyone got off.  I stayed on out of some vague hope that the train would move on, but it didn’t.  I got out and asked the grumpy lady at the ticket desk whether there was a train I had to change to in order to reach Cerbere, or whether that train would go there eventually.

I was informed that the French railway union had organized a strike for that day and that no trains would be crossing the border into France.

“Tomorrow there will be trains,” she said.

There honestly aren’t any words to describe the intensity and volume of expletives that ran through my head at that point.  I calmly nodded, walked outside and sat down to try and figure out what to do.  With the trains not running in France it seemed a little pointless to go there.  I had nowhere to stay and someone who would be waiting for me at the station in Lyon.  Surely there was something I could do?

Perhaps, I thought, the best option was to go all the way back to Barcelona.  I could stay one more night in the hostel, could send a facebook message to Astrid to let her know not to bother and leave it at that.  I would have to work out how to arrange my time in Lyon so I still got a reasonable stay – unfortunately I knew that the hostel would take the cost of my first night as it was too late to cancel my booking at that point.  Never mind.

It did feel awfully lame to be going backwards though.  And what a waste of a day – spending six hours on a train for nothing.  Perhaps I would find another option if I wandered down into Portbou.

Well, Portbou is a very small coastal town with nothing much to say about it.  It had a few little bars and things, but as it was winter there were no tourists.  I have my suspicions that it could become quite a popular spot in summer, as the view over the water was spectacular, and there are lovely walks through the Pyrenees.

In fact, it was a guide to one of these walks that gave me an indication of what to do next.  Looking at the sign it seemed to suggest that Cerbere was only a half hour walk from Portbou.  Portbou was surrounded by rather high hills, so it was impossible to see if this was the case, but given that I had the whole afternoon if it turned out to be a wild goose chase I decided to give it a go.

I started off up a path that took me along the road.  At the start there had been little signs indicating the walking track, but these soon disappeared.  It looked a bit as though I was walking up someone’s driveway.  It was steep and high, and I was carrying twenty kilos of gear with me.  And hadn’t eaten.  And my water bottle was empty because I had been in such a rush that morning.  Needless to say I was a little pissed off with my life at that point.

The path, as far as I could tell, appeared to go around to the side of a dilapidated house with a wire fence.  I started making my way around when a loud barking began.  So much barking!  There were in the vicinity of a hundred dogs (if that even is an exaggeration it isn’t much of one) behind this fence in this guy’s backyard on the side of a steep Pyrenees hill overlooking the coast.  All of these dogs had a great interest in me.

By the time I reached the top of the hill I was swearing and a little confused about which direction to head.  A sign indicated the walking trail, but at this point ALL trails were listed as heading to Portbou.  Obviously I was not interested in heading backwards.  I had decided that, at the bare minimum, I would cross be in France by the end of the day.

I could see a road on the other side of the hill, and as that seemed as good a place to head as any, I headed there.  The road led on to a tiny abandoned border crossing post, and I stumbled over the border into France at last.  Actually, it hadn’t taken as long as I had expected.  I quickly double checked that I had gone the correct way across the border (one side was in French, the other Spanish) before heading down the hill.  By now I could see a large train station, which I decided could only be Cerbere.  It was silent and motionless, as expected, but I held out hope that there might be a bus or something along those lines.

The walk down was very scenic, but to be honest I was not in the mood for scenery.  The town was completely silent.  I made a note of the tourism office (closed until 3pm) and any hotels I could spot, though I was half planning to just sleep somewhere on the hill so as to avoid the high cost of a hotel.

At a loss for what to do at this point, I decided to make my way to the train station just to get a look at it so that it would be easy to find my way there in the morning.  I was surprised to see a couple of people I recognized from the Spanish train inside the station.  As expected, other than those few individuals, the station was deserted.

I scanned the information on a billboard in front of the entrance to discover that some of the trains would, in fact, be running, albeit in a limited fashion.  It seemed to me that I had missed by about ten or so minutes the train that would have taken me to Perpignan (which was my next transfer).

Cursing (again), I got a waffle and soft drink out of a vending machine.  I needed something sugary.  As I sat, my attention was drawn to a large electronic train schedule over the entrance to the platforms.  The very first train listed was the one I had intended to catch in the first place, leaving at 3:27pm or thereabouts (I’m not about to remember every single train time, sorry).  Well, long story short, only some lines were affected, and my train to Perpignan was still running.  I was fairly confident the connection from Perpignan to Lyon would still run, as it was a TGV and I had a feeling they would not be affected by the industrial action.

Perpignan train station is famous for being designed by Dali.   I went outside in an attempt to see the influence, but to be honest, other than some squiggly numbers on the clock, it looks like pretty much any other train station.  In Perpignan I was a little worried I would have trouble getting my TGV ticket, as eurail only offers a certain number of reservations and TGVs are apparently notoriously difficult for pass holders to get seats on.

I had a little bit of French (you pick something up studying it for five years) but I wasn’t too confident I could communicate the complexities of my situation should it be called for, so I decided to wait for one of the booths marked with an English flag so that I could speak English.

The only problem was, the English-speaking booth had a woman at it that was taking forever.  I let a large number of other customers go past me in line before completely giving up and going straight to one of the French ones.

The whole ordeal ended with me ordering my ticket in French while the person I was dealing with spoke in perfect English.  I needn’t have worried about the reservation – in off season I guess there aren’t too many people travelling from Perpignan to Lyon, particularly tourists.

The TGV was nice and fast.  Other than that there isn’t much to say about it.

I got to Lyon at 20:50.  This was the time I had hurriedly given Astrid over Facebook sitting in Barcelona Sants that morning.  However, I hadn’t been able to access the internet since that point to see whether she would still be at the station or whether that was too late for her.  After a quick wander around the station I concluded that she had decided to stay home (she hadn’t) so I left for the metro.

Lyon’s metro is nice.  It’s quite small but it is very clear, with every single connection listed for every single stop.  It wasn’t difficult to make my way to the funicular (a cute little cable car that goes up one of the two hills in Lyon) and reach the stop indicated by my hostel.

This was where things began to go wrong again.  The hostel’s instructions indicated that I should take a path on my left outside the station (which I easily found) and walk down it, continuing down the hill for 300 metres.  Well… a short way down the path reached a roadway complete with intersection.  Two of the roads resulting from this intersection took off downhill.

To be fair, one of them was the obvious road to take.  Unfortunately I was not really thinking logically, so I went down the steeper one, which was the wrong one.  I didn’t realize this until I ended up at the metro station from which I had caught the funicular up the hill.  Whoops.

After some faffing about I went down the correct road and found the hostel.  Entering my room after checking in I discovered that there were two people already asleep in there.  So as not to disturb them, I put my bag down and looked for a bed.  Only they all appeared to be taken – every single one had a messy, scrunched up blanket, except for one, which had the blanket draped neatly over it.  Guessing this one must be free I started climbing into it.

The door opened and an Australian accent said: “Oh, you were sleeping in that one were you?”

He had arrived that night as well and had just made that bed.  I asked if any of the others weren’t taken.  We ended up having to get the receptionist to come up to tell us which bed was free (though he was only guessing as well).  Finally, I was in bed and ready to sleep.  I was worried about missing Astrid, but was sure we would find one another the next day.  All I needed was an internet connection.

DAY ONE

Breakfast was sugary cereals, baguette with spread and orange juice.  At least the juice was real, though I feel like they could have made a little more effort what with Lyon being the gastronomic capital of the world (and this hostel being the most expensive I had stayed in thus far).

The Lyon Hostel was the first official Hostelling International (YHA in Australia) hostel I had stayed in, and I’m sorry to say that other than the one in Madrid (at least you got a decent sleep here) it was the worst.  It was also twice the price of any I had stayed at previously (my next hostel in Switzerland multiplies that again by one-and-a-half).  There were two showers and two toilets on each floor (at least they were separate) and the toilets didn’t have sinks – these were in the rooms.  The place just felt impersonal, but not friendly and fun impersonal like St Christopher’s in Barcelona.  It was not a place where people tried to socialize, mainly I think because Lyon tended to be a stepping-off point for heading to other places.

Anyway, I got in touch with Astrid and we managed to meet at the Place Sant-Jean, outside an enormous church in the old town.  We started by going to the top of the hill (known as the prayer hill because of the church on top) where Astrid gave me a quick overview of the city using the fantastic view provided.

Knowing all about my inclination for all things ancient and castle-y, Astrid suggested visiting the ancient Gallo-Roman amphitheaters.  Despite being in ruins they make a very nice trip, and still have very strong acoustics.

To be honest, I’m not sure I can describe much more of the day in detail.  We wandered around old town (I’ve been doing an awful lot of wandering, it feels like), chatting about the end of her trip, the last few days of mine, Lyon etc.  She would consistently tell me that if I saw anything I liked we would do it, but I was quite happy to be led around by the expert.

Walking through the old town we did come across a museum of film props and miniatures.  We kind of looked at all of the models in the entrance and then left.  I had more important things to see.  Noticing some stands on the streets selling crepes, I vocalized an intention to buy a crepe at the very next stand we came across.  We never came across another one.

Lyon is a very pretty city, though I’m not sure I would have enjoyed it anywhere near as much had I been properly by myself.  The fact is that the hostel I stayed at, an official Hostelling International one (the equivalent of YHA) lacked the kind of social atmosphere I had become used to.  Perhaps I was making less effort, knowing that I would be leaving fairly quickly and that I had someone with whom to see the city with already, but my experience of the hostel was sterility.

By the way, for those wondering about the title of this blog post, Only is the name of the lion that is the mascot of Lyon.  Since Lyon sound like lion in French.

Luckily I wasn’t there long.  For lunch, Astrid took me to a street of restaurants called Bouchons – typical Lyonnaise restaurants that serve what she described as Grandmotherly fare.  This being France, Grandmotherly fare is a step above bangers and mash.  I had a fixed Menu Lyonnaise, which included an entrée of chicken liver cake (yum), a main of saucisson (French for sausage, though Lyon’s saucissons are not quite normal sausages, being much thicker and served in slices) and a dessert of chocolate fondant cake (literally the best chocolate cake I have ever tasted).  Oh, and some French white wine.  Which Astrid remarked was only just passable.  She has been tasting wines since she was quite young, so is a bit of an expert.  I nodded knowingly and downed it anyway, not really working out how it was different to any other wine I had ever had.

Then we walked around a bit more before it started getting cold and Astrid suggested we head to her place to drink something hot.  She rents a room (well, half an apartment really) from an older couple in a nice building a few streets from the Rhone river.  The drink we had was some kind of coffee-based thing with herbs in it… I’m not really sure what it was, but it basically tasted like coffee.  She had her computer out in her room, so I showed her Brisbane on google maps and she showed me photos of all sorts of stuff.  I had made a comment that the river was a funny colour (bright green) and she had said that she had a beautiful photo where it was brilliant blue.  She couldn’t find it, but the process of searching took us on quite a few interesting tangents.

By this time it was like 5pm, and suddenly we were painfully aware that we hadn’t seen everything.  So out we went once again.  I had mentioned that I needed to go to the Institut Lumiere (of course), but I didn’t want to drag her along to that.  Instead we went up the ‘working hill’ where they used to make silk products (you would not believe how long it took me to work out that Astrid was trying to talk about silk – “Textiles?  Cloth?”)

Then it started to snow.  Nice big clumpy bits.  Unfortunately it wasn’t enough to actually stay on the ground, but it was very visible and very appropriate.  And I got covered in it, which was the most important thing.

Anyway, apparently the big thing to do in France is to buy some bread, cheese and wine and just eat it, so that was our dinner (cultural experiences are pretty easy to do in France!)  With a lot of places closed at that point, we went to a shady little corner store and bought all the necessary ingredients, except the bread, which we found a real boulangerie for.

Back at the hostel, we went and found a table and had our feast.  The cheese was amazing.  The bread was amazing.  The wine was, according to Astrid, fine – I’ll have to concede judgment to her on that count, but I thought it was amazing (a whole half bottle of amazing…)

I had intended to leave Lyon fairly early the next day, just getting a quick look at the Institut Lumiere before heading to Geneva for the day, then on to Bern in the evening.  I asked Astrid about her plans and suddenly the day was rearranged to be another day in Lyon, hanging out with Astrid until her university class at 2pm, when I would check out the Institut Lumiere before heading off.  Astrid offered to keep my bags at her place, so we would meet there.

DAY TWO

I hadn’t really opened my bag the whole time I had been in Lyon, so packing was very quick.  Astrid walked out of her apartment just as I reached it and offered a further suggestion regarding my bags – her university was very close to the train station and had a left luggage area.  I agreed that this was a good plan, and off we went on a walk along the Rhone, up to a park that had a free zoo in it and around to the university.  In the zoo there were a bunch of ducks trying to murder one of their number.  They would bite its neck and then try to push its head underwater.  I actually thought I would see it drown, but it managed to escape and kind of floated off.

At the university, the baggage area was closed (“Bastards,” cried Astrid).  As a final option, Astrid suggested I leave my bags with her during her class, go to the Institut Lumiere, and meet her after her class finished and we would go to the train station together.  This worked for me, so with that decided we needed some lunch.

Astrid had another typical Lyon dish planned for me that day – tartine.  These are basically bits of toasted sourdough with various toppings, including pate, cheese, tomatoes – pretty much anything, really.  The place we went had one with foie gras.  Being in a decadent mood, I ordered it (Astrid had been craving foie gras the previous day, but today just had regular pate.  Sigh.)  Foie gras comes served as a big lump on the bread.  Apparently it is not supposed to be spread like pate – you eat it in slices as it is served.  Whatever, it was delicious.

Then we had dessert (Astrid asked if I wanted dessert, and I hesitated, not wanting to seem decadent if she wasn’t going to have one, but she wanted one anyway and my hesitance ended up making us both confused for a good minute or so).  Lemon meringue pie (well, technically citrus tart with meringue).  Astrid tried teaching me how to pronounce meringue in French, then I tried my new word on the waitress, but she just looked a little confused before saying, “Tarte au citron?”  She didn’t even say the meringue part.

(For those interested, in order to pronounce meringue in French, you need to make that guttural throat sound for the ‘ng’.  I thought it would be easy until Astrid started laughing at my every attempt.)

Astrid’s class started at that point, so I headed alone to the Institut Lumiere.  Which was closed.  Because it was Monday.  With three hours to kill, I wandered around the building, saw a couple of wooden panels from the Lumiere Brothers’ very first film set, Workers Leaving the Factory, and went to the toilet.

It may seem a little odd that I would mention a trip to the loo in a blog entry, but this was special.  The toilet was a modern-looking grey plastic structure in the middle of a large square.  Fixed to the outside was a set of instructions.  A light on the outside indicated whether the toilet was free, occupied, in its cleaning cycle or out of order.  Pressing the button caused the wall to become detached and slide aside, revealing the loo within in all its glory.  Once the door slid shut automatically behind me, a woman’s voice spoke in calm, comforting French.  Not having any idea if I was doing the right thing, I dropped my pants and did my thing.  Then I pressed the flush button.  The woman’s voice spoke at me.  Assuming I must have done something wrong, I pressed the button again multiple times with the same result.  Then I listened to what she was saying and realized that she was telling me the toilet would flush once I had left.

Outside again the door closed behind me.  I waited to see what would happen and make sure I had done the right thing (I’m a considerate guy – I don’t want the next person to enter to have to suffer my unflushed business).  I needn’t have worried.  There was a whirring, a buzzing, a splashing, a splooshing, and the light switched from ‘cleaning’ to ‘vacant’.

I still had a bit more time to kill, so I decided to have a tarte praline, perhaps the final typical Lyon fare.  These are basically tarts containing nuts and sugar syrup, but the syrup is dyed bright red.  It was very, very sweet.  Astrid later informed me that I should have had the praline brioche instead, and I chastised her for not telling me that sooner.

After we’d met back up it was off to the train station.  We had a coffee (well, a hot chocolate) and I asked Astrid how long she’d been learning English.  She responded that it was hard to say, as she had started watching movies in English quite young – particularly Toy Story.

“Yeah,” I said, “but you would have just had the French subtitles so that wouldn’t be all that helpful surely?”

“No,” she responded.  “No subtitles.”

That kind of dedication impressed me, but being Australian I had to get a jab in – “Well, I guess learning that way is easier with English.”

And then I left.

I was a bit down on the train ride, but was occupied with writing about Barcelona.  It was dark, so there was no view.  Really the only thing of note from the journey was that the conductor was the first ticket inspector I had come across who asked to see my passport.

I had timed it to have a fifteen minute transit time after arriving in Geneva before the train to Bern.  Well… the train was fifteen minutes late to arrive.  I raced through Swiss customs (they didn’t try to stop me) and got to the platform just in time to see the train leave.

No problem, I thought, the next train is in ten minutes.

That train apparently didn’t exist.  I found myself waiting for the next Intercity train, a wait of one hour.  That gave me plenty of time to be hassled by three separate (and really creepy) men for money.  I also felt a little uncomfortable about all the police I had seen around, as they looked very serious.  I should also mention that Geneva is the only train station that I have come across with no seats on the platforms.  It was not the most comfortable hour I’ve ever had.

Thankfully it was over in… an hour.  The train was to reach Bern at 11:30pm, half an hour before my hostel closed its check-in (it was another HI Hostel).  I was armed with comprehensive instructions on how to get there from the station – I was ready.  The first step was to go past the church and LOEB.

Leaving the station, there was no sign of a church or LOEB.  Erm…

I walked up the street.  I walked down the street.  I walked around the block.  Eventually I picked the most populated-looking street and just followed it.  Soon I spotted the LOEB sign.  Unfortunately it was across two buildings.  I walked between them.  I now had fifteen minutes left.

None of the streets had names from the hostel’s directions.  I was starting to panic, so moved to the street adjacent and kept walking.  Then turned around and went back.

Ten minutes.

A lady spotted me pacing, glancing at my notebook.  She spoke to me in German.  I blurted out, “Do you know where the youth hostel is?”

She did, and told me to go towards the federal parliament building until I saw the Casino, then go down the stairs and the hostel was at the bottom of the hill.

In a fluster I thanked her and raced off before realizing I hadn’t actually listened to a word she had said.  Seeing the casino, I vaguely guessed she had said something about walking to it and seeing some steps… so I walked towards it.  There were no steps, but there was a slope.

Down the slope I went.

Six minutes.

At the bottom was a sign with a symbol I really, really hoped was the youth hostel sign.

Five minutes.

Fortunately, it was.  Rounding a corner I saw the hostel.  With four minutes remaining I entered and checked in.

Boom.

And with that exciting finale, I suppose it is time for me to reveal that this story is

TO BE CONTINUED