Antonio C. Abaya - Letter from Paris

We took the Eurostar train from St. Pancras Station in London to Gare du Nord in Paris. The train glided noiselessly under the English Channel in less time than it took me to read the International Herald Tribune, which has become my medium of choice, in London and even in Paris, even though I can read French passably. The IHT feels like an old shoe. When I was a student in Evanston (Illinois) in the late 1950s and early 1960s I used to buy the Sunday edition of the New York Times every weekend, to find out what was going on in the world, the Chicago papers being terribly insular and parochial.

The leading London and Paris newspapers are anything but insular and parochial, of course, but I felt comfortable in the editorial embrace of the IHT, which is the international edition of the NYT. Like slipping into an old shoe.

If you should think of taking the Eurostar, be informed that there are no porters, in either London or Paris, to pick up your luggage for you. And apparently no trolleys in Gare du Nord. We were a party of seven adults and two children, with 11 full-sized pieces of luggage and eight hand-carrieds. After unloading our impedimenta from the train, we waited vainly for a porter with one or two hand trolleys to transport our baggage to the station exit. The two young men in our party searched the station for some hand trolleys, but they could not find any.

While I was left alone with the women and children and our pile of luggage, a motorized trolley glided by on its way to pick up some official cargo at the other end of the train. When it headed back our way, I noticed that all the driver had picked up was some equipment the size of a fat DVD player, perhaps the cockpit recorder of the train. So I flagged him down and in the best French that I could muster I requested him to also load our belongings.

At first, he said he was not allowed to load unofficial cargo, but I pleaded that we were the only passengers left on the platform and we could not possibly move by hand the amount of luggage that we had. He must have taken pity either on our hopeless situation or on my bad French, because he relented and personally loaded all our 19 pieces of luggage on his mechanized trolley.

The moral of the story is: if you are travelling across the English Channel with more luggage than you can personally pull, push or levitate, take the plane.

The last time I was in Paris was in the early 1980s. I cannot even recall the exact year. But Paris has always been my favorite city. I think it is the most beautiful city in the world, and would gladly have visited it more often than I have, if it had not been so expensive to fly here and to stay here.

It was my children who zeroed in on the hotel we are staying in, after diligent search on the Internet. We are in the 7th arrondisement, less than ten minutes away from the Tour Eiffel.

We are enjoying the generosity of a wealthy friend, who has lent us a Volkswagen van with driver to take us around during our entire stay here.

Thierry has been much more than a driver. He is a knowledgeable tour guide with a wealth of arcane historical information, which flows effortlessly out of his mind in and outside the museums. He knows about wines and gourmandise. He knows about fast cars and motorcycles. He knows about films, with whom I agree completely that, after Au bout de Souffle ('Breathless'), the director Jean Luc Godard, one of the fashionable icons of the French Nouvelle Vague movement in the 60s and 70s, has created nothing but garbage. He is also a regular reader of the satirical and irreverent political weekly Le Canard Enchaine, which probably explains why he has such a low opinion of his president, Nicholas Sarkozy. How many drivers do you know possess such impressive intellectual credentials?

Thierry has also been something of a valet. He makes reservations for dinner, buys museum tickets, and even follows up on tax-refunds for purchases at the Galeries Lafayette. And he is a most capable driver, as well as a pleasant and amiable travelling companion.

The other day, he drove us to the Loire Valley for a balloon trip which, through no fault of his, was less than the exciting experience that we had anticipated: the wind speed was almost sedentary at three knots, the balloon failed to reach the chateau that I had wanted to fly over – Chennonceaux – and instead landed on a private hunting preserve near Blois, which angered the landowner against the operator. But she was gracious enough towards us innocent passengers, whom she kindly showed around the grounds of her chateau.

Yesterday, we spent the whole day and part of the evening being expertly driven by Thierry through Normandy, which was my personal itinerary for this trip, meaning that I wanted to see what I had missed on my two previous visits to France: the extraordinarily impressivre Mont Saint Michel; the 12th century tapestry in Bayeux narrating in Latin the events leading to the invasion of England in 1066 by Guillaume le Conquereur of Normandy; and the lovingly manicured American military cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach, scene of another, more formidable, invasion, this time of Normandy, by American, British and Canadian armies in June 1944. In the dark, because of the late hour, Thierry even took us to one of the concrete blockhouses, 155mm gun still intact, that the Germans had built in Normandy as part of their Festung Europa.

On my request, he took us on a tour of the Paris streets which I knew in 1961. We searched the length of the lengthy Rue du Cherche Midi for the Hotel du Cherche Midi, where I had stayed in April 1961, but alas the hotel seems to have disappeared. I especially wanted to revisit it because I recall that a few hundred meters from the hotel there was a historical marker honoring Jose Rizal. I could not recall what Rizal was doing on Rue du Cherche Midi in the 1890s. But the historical marker seems to have disappeared also. Perhaps, theorized Thierry, the area had been renovated and they forgot to put back the marker.

We also visited Rue Racine, off Boulevard Saint Michel in the Latin Quarter, to look for Hotel Racine. where I had stayed in October 1961. it too has disappeared, or rather has been reincarnated as a Best Western hotel, with a new name and a modernized facade. And the Vespa agency on Rue Lauriston near the Arc de Triomphe, where I had bought my Vespa in 1961, seems to have disappeared as well.

We drove to the suburbs of Aubervilliers where my Vespa had run out of gasoline and I out of money, in October 1961. The main street, the Avenue de la Division Leclerc, is still there, but the cross street, Rue de la Republique, has also disappeared. Instead there is now a wide Avenue de la Republique which, however, does not cross the Avenue de la Division Leclerc. (Leclerc was the commanding general of the French Army division which was given by the Allies the honour of liberating Paris from the Germans in 1944).

For those who may have tuned in late. I was on the last leg of my six-month, 18,000 km Vespa trip through Europe. I had spent the night before in the auberge de jeunesse in the town of Givet, near the Belgian frontier, about 270 kms from Paris. After buying a loaf of bread, which was my breakfast and lunch for the day, I tanked up the Vespa, which from experience I knew would take me about 250 kms.

Not unexpectedly, my Vespa sputtered to a stop before I reached Paris, precisely at the corner of Avenue de la Division Leclerc and Rue de la Republique in the suburbs of Aubervilliers. It was out of fuel, and I was out of money. I had enough coins left to make one telephone call, to the Philippine Embassy in Paris, where, as previously instructed by my sister – then visiting Paris – I was to talk to Nene Zacarias.

When I identified myself, Nene exclaimed, "Naku, itung batang ito, matagal ka nang hinahanap ng kapatid mo!" What to do? Nene told me to leave my Vespa behind , take a taxi to the Embassy – at 26 Avenue Georges Mandel – where they would pay for my cab fare. I asked permission from the owner of the grill-bar where I was calling from to leave my Vespa in front of her establishment. Instead she kindly allowed me to park my Vespa inside the courtyard of the building, for safe-keeping.

As instructed by Nene, I took a taxi to the Embassy and entered Paris that day in October 1961 with exactly ten centimes – the equivalent of two US cents – in my pocket.

But now, a few days more than 47 years later, Hotel du Cherche Midi has disappeared, Hotel Racine has disappeared, the Vespa agency on Rue Lauriston has disappeared, Rue de la Republique in Aubervilliers has disappeared. And inexorably, I too will disappear. Sic transit gloria Vespae.