There I was, standing in the Paris Gare de Lyon looking like an idiot staring at the trains on the platforms. I was about to experience my first trip on TGV!
I took a few photos then loaded my gear on the train (big bag in the luggage space at the end of the carriage, smaller stuff in the overhead rack), then went back onto the platform to get a few more photos. I’m sure I was still acting like a stunned mullet as I wandered around the station!
As departure time drew closer, I headed back to my train and got comfortable. I faintly heard the sound of the doors closing and then, without a sound, the train started moving. It picked up speed as it started to snake along the lines heading out of Paris: there were a couple of curves where I could see the front of the train as we went. Even though we were still in the suburbs and the tracks were eight-wide, the TGV was moving at quite a pace as we headed south.
Some breakfast came by, and the next time I looked out I noticed that the other tracks were gone and we were moving a lot faster now. At no time had I felt any great acceleration, I suppose for comfort’s sake they let the train wind up gradually.
Then we got faster still. And faster. And faster. And faster.
Again I have to reiterate: if you’re not a train-fan, you probably won’t appreciate how exciting, exhilarating and mildly terrifying it was for me. I realised that I was actually on the ground at 300+km/h, and that if I was in a plane I’d be airborne by then! In the dark the night before, I hadn’t been able to appreciate going through tunnels or passing under bridges at that speed. The line ran near a highway at one stage, and I just couldn’t get my head around seeing the cars that I knew were going in the same direction as I was moving backward!
I could see trackside distance markers, and did a rough timing of our travel over one kilometre: “one-onethousand-two-onethousand … 12-onethousand”. Math it out: that’s 300km/h.
I expected that the train would stop a couple of times, but there was only one stop (Nimes, about 100km from Montpellier). The remaining run from Nimes down to Montpellier was fast, but not TGV-fast. As we pulled into Montpellier, I gathered up my gear and got ready to leave the train. My first TGV journey was over!
When the train did arrive, it was three minutes late. I was amazed: over all those hundreds of kilometres, we only accrued a delay of three minutes.
I used a map in the Montpellier railway station to find that my hotel was literally a stone’s throw away. I hauled my bags up the street and into what seemed like a dingy alley to the hotel and checked in. My room had a dodgy double doorway onto the dingy alley, and I looked out at the street and watched a few cars go by. I also got my first spectator view of French contact-parallel-parking! That evening I met up with my residency colleague and a couple of his workmates over a couple of Belgian beers, and went for a stroll through the city after taking a slightly wrong turn when I was dropped off near the station.
The next day, since the plan to go to IBM didn’t work out, I had a chance to look around. First order of business was to do some planning for the drive to Germany the next day, so I did some internetting before going to pick up my car. The car was a diesel Peugeot 308, and I went for a bit of a drive to familiarise myself. Thankfully the streets of Montpellier are a bit more forgiving than metropolitan Paris! I managed to get lost a couple of times, but did my usual Zen navigation to get back on track (thank-you, Douglas Adams).
After the car adventure, I went for a bit of a walk around the old part of the city and took a couple of photos along Esplanade Charles de Gaulle. Once again I saw that although large cities around the world are starting to become more and more alike (town square, shopping mall, etc.), European cities still have the charm of the “old town”. I really like the narrow cobbled streets with people walking along seemingly day or night, and the food stalls and shops every couple of doors — real food shops, like a patisserie or coffee shop, not your chain-of-the-week like Starbucks or McDonalds. Yes, I could really get the hang of Europe: I need to put more effort into learning more of the local language though. I found myself too cautious about my inability to order from those patisseries and coffee shops to be able to enjoy them. Dinner one night in Montpellier was Subway, and as I walked back to the hotel to eat I found myself looking at the local shops and regretting that I wasn’t confident enough to try.
The time came for me to leave Montpellier though, and start my journey to Sindelfingen in Germany. My research on the route yielded an interesting fact: the Millau Viaduct is only a little over an hour’s drive from Montpellier…
Crossed Wires 