Gare d'Enfer

I know it seems like I'm on permanent holiday here, but I've just got a bit behind on uploading my blog entries; it's now warm and sunny and a completely different holiday from my Lausanne adventures.

I head down to the Calanques for a blissful few days of sunny sea-cliff climbing on the most amazing limestone cliffs. Undoubtedly one of the most beautiful climbing destinations in the world and the ice-cream's not half bad, either. In a typical attempt to Have Fun in the most stressful and time-pressed way, I decided to go home for one evening then head off to Fontainebleau for another few days of chilled out forest bouldering (mucking around on boulders with giant crashpads and toothbrushes). This was also excellent, particularly because of the presence of a pizza van on the campsite.

Climbing paradise: sea-cliffs in the Calanques.

Unfortunately, in-between these two snippets of serenity, these two nuggets of niceness, these two pockets of paradise, I had to earn my way and survive The Train Station From Hell.

I am not built for big cities. I have to run across main roads unless the little green man is there; I look the wrong way at crossings, I get lost all the time. Suddenly being thrown into the capital city's busiest (I hope) train station is not a good situation.

I have 30 minutes between my trains.
I have to get a train to Fontainebleau. This sounds easy.
I queue up at the ticket desk. Wrong ticket desk. Go downstairs.
I go downstairs. The wrong downstairs. Go upstairs then downstairs again.
I go downstairs. I queue up at the ticket desk. Wrong ticket desk again.
I go down more stairs. Wrong floor.
I go upstairs. I find a ticket machine. On the 3rd attempt: success! I have a ticket.

Now to find the platform...There are signs for the metro, for buses, for mainline trains, for RER trains, for TGV trains...a veritable maze of different pastel colours, squared numbers, circled letters and so on. I followed one for a while until ending up back at my starting point and join a very slow queue to find out where to go. This is the first queue I should have joined, but I'd been avoiding it because it was so very long and crawling along.
Back at a different upstairs again and I finally find my train.
Sit on train and breathe. Briefly.
Run back out of train to find composting machine (in France, you have to stamp your tickets before getting on the train).
Look at watch: this Mega Faff took an hour and a half.

Turn up at Fontainebleau to find out the car picking me up is 2 hours late.

The things we do to hug rock...