Day 7 Part 1: The Train Station and Cecile's Apartment

loved the detail above her fireplace

Sunday, 25th June 2017

Cecile's couch where I slept

Here I am sitting on the train watching this beautiful countryside lush with gardens and animals, and villages with so many houses of earthy yellow walls and clay tiled roofs that it’s hard to tell if it’s 2017 or 1817. Sometimes it does feel as if I’ve gone to live in the past in France. It’s hard not to with all the ancient handcrafted architecture. Modern buildings don’t have the embellishments of the past, and I wonder when did we stop appreciating craftsmanship and let industrialization take precedence over beauty and art?

            In the train station a man played a piano right in the middle of all the people with their luggage waiting for their trains. As I walked past the platform entrances, and listened to this music from another age, I could see the men in top hats and women in swishing dresses and parasols walking up and down the aisles to find their trains.

the toilet room: every place I stayed the toilet was in a separate room of its own

            The station was easy to navigate and I had no issues finding my platform. Many thanks to Cecile for insisting I take the bus to get there. I had intended on taking the metro because I didn’t want to risk getting lost on the way and missing my train. (I think the experience getting to Versailles has traumatized me a bit, I never want to have that feeling again). The problem with the Metro is there’s a lot of stairs, and it would have taken me a long time to lift my big suitcase step by step in and out of the metro stations. This morning Cecile surprised me saying she had found a bus route that would take me straight to Gare de Lyon without any transfers. Since there was no time for me to study the map, she walked me to the bus station. I felt like a child, but a very grateful child, as I would not have to lift my baggage on stairs.

tiny tiny kitchen

            I’ve just realized that I never wrote about Cecile. She is my age and is one of the editors of a video game magazine. Like Eleonore, she also went to school here in France for journalism. She would like to write someday as well, and she has some writers in her family. Her grandfather wrote about his experience as a POW in WWI, and her father wrote about his 2 years spent serving in the French military. She edited these books for her family, and they had them bound and printed. Cecile is also not from Paris, but grew up in a large house. Large compared to the tiny apartments in Paris. I think the kitchen of Cecile’s apartment was like 6ft x 4ft. I didn’t use a tape measure, but just imagine, tiny tiny tiny.