Camino de Santiago reprise

Here I am, on the train again. It's the start of my second bicycle journey following the Way of St. James. I'm on the train on the way to the starting point in the Netherlands, so perhaps I should use the Dutch name for the route: de Sint Jakobsweg. Just as well I like trains, because I'm going to be spending the whole day in them, in four stages. Actually I suppose that technically the journey started this morning with the drive to the station, in the light drizzle that is spring in France at the moment.

The start of my journey - awful coffee

I order a coffee at the station restaurant (I use the term 'restaurant' with my tongue firmly in my cheek) and it is truly awful. Appropriately, it was served in a paper cup on a plastic tray. Why is it that in a country where the food and the wine is so good, that the coffee, even from supposedly good places, is so bad?

The TGV is right on time and we're now motoring through the greenery at something like 250 km/h, taking an hour to get to Paris. The trip didn't start completely without issues though. After finding my coach I find the entrance blocked by an enormous baby stroller (complete with baby). Why is it that baby strollers nowadays have to be designed like they will be able to negotiate mountains, ford deep streams, and generally take up as much space as possible? These strollers barely fit through a doorway and heaven help you if you're walking on a footpath and two of them are coming at you in the opposite direction. It must have something to do with the same fashion that mandates young urban professionals and young mothers with enormous strollers buying large SUVs and pretend 4WD vehicles. They also take up maximum space and transport you with minimal efficiency. Of course I suppose that if you've just bought your oversize stroller you'll soon discover that is too big to fit into any reasonably-sized vehicle and so are more or less obliged to purchase an oversize SUV to go with it. A triumph in marketing: perhaps the manufacturers of SUVs and 4WDs encourage over-sized stroller sales to encourage the sales of their vehicles: a symbiotic relationship.

But I digress. Once in the train (actually, I think the correct term is 'on' the train: you get in a car, but on a train or a plane or a bus) I find my seat, only to find it already occupied by a slightly disheveled older man. We exchange pleasantries and compare tickets. It's not that uncommon for people to get on (in!) the wrong carriage. But his ticket matches mine: same date, same carriage, same seat. He's already seated and so has a certain right of occupancy. I prepare myself for possible options, scanning the carriage for empty seats, but the train is very full. But it seems that something's obviously not quite right with his ticket because he stand up and mumbles something about going out to the passageway. I do not argue the point and am happy to have the seat. It's an odd conversation made even more interesting when he rudely snaps at the woman next to him who's trying to be helpful; "I was talking to this man, not to you" he says. I suspect that perhaps his ticket has been cancelled long ago but he's trying to travel with it anyway. In the strange way of TGVs, the passageway near the doors is full of people traveling with apparently invalid tickets. It's something I've never understood; how is it possible that on a train for which you have to book tickets and reserve seating, there are always people traveling without a proper seat? And there are always ticket collectors...

Paris Metro: busking and crowds

My train arrives at Gare Montparnasse in Paris, while my train to Amsterdam leaves from Gare du Nord. Despite my having bought a ticket that theoretically gives me a journey from Tours to Amsterdam, I am left to my own devices for the connection in Paris. Luckily I know Paris well, so that's not a problem, but it does seem a bit odd that there's no allowance made for the inevitable metro ride (fortunately a direct connection on line 4, but involving a lot of walking, not to mention the purchase of an additional ticket which many may not have factored into their planning). The metro is as it always is: frequent, noisy, smelly, crowded, and a fascinating place to study people. Eye contact is studiously avoided by all and smiling is definitely not part of the metro etiquette. You have to look like you're having a really boring or bad time down there.

The train from Paris to Amsterdam is re-routed due to bad weather in Holland (it is very windy) and so the arrival in Amsterdam will be delayed by half an hour. But at Amsterdam everything runs so efficiently that I make my connection anyway: I've arrived, found my way through the station, worked out how to and then bought an OV chipkaart (stored-value ticket), found the right platform, and I get on the train just as the conductor signals the (on time, of course) departure - and all this in the space of some ten minutes! Try doing that in France! I take out my phone and discover that there's free WiFi on the train and when I connect, the first thing I am presented is not some obscure and poorly-formatted page requiring me to enter my life's details before being granted the dubious privilege of being connected as is so often the case, but rather I am connected without having to enter anything and then told exactly which train I'm on, what the route is, what time it will arrive. This is the way it should be; clearly someone has done some work on understanding customer requirements. It just works. I look out the window: everything is very flat, and there are canals, cows, windmills, and the sky is grey and the grass is green. Everything looks efficient and clean. On my GPS, which I have on just as a distraction to see our position and check the train's speed (my engineering side coming out I suppose), I note that our elevation is shown as minus 7 metres. 

It could only be Holland.

Double-Decker bicycle parking at a small provincial station in Holland