Days like these
We have just wrapped up a another trip around Europe, accompanying Randy while he travelled for business. At three weeks, it was our longest trip to date. It is funny to think that the first time we did this, we considered it a crazy, once-in-a-lifetime event. The second time, almost two years later, it was a lightning-strikes twice opportunity. And then there was a third time, and we could no longer pretend to ourselves that we weren't going to try to do this whenever Randy could string six or eight or 10 meetings together in a few-weeks-span.
So close on the heels of Beijing Oktoberfest came this year's trip that we could not resist using the song "Tage wie Diese" as a sort of theme. We listened to it, sang it quietly under our breath, and toasted with the lyrics. These would be the days we wished would never end (wünscht man sich Unendlicheit).
However, something happened in the middle of our trip that woke us up from the dream, replacing our soundtrack with the sounds of security announcements and sirens. It was the November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris. While we were not planning on going to Paris on this trip, only through, it still had an impact.
More after the jump
On the evening of November 13, we were staying in Gorizia, a little town in Italy on the border with Slovenia. Randy had been in meetings for much of the day. The kids and I had taken an impromptu train excursion into Slovenia, returning by dusk. We were all tired after supper and gelato, so everyone turned in as soon as we returned to our hotel. I was just scrolling through the news before going to sleep myself when I started to see the initial reports out of Paris. As these grew grimmer, I kept myself awake. We were planning on taking the train to Lyon the next day. I finally surrendered to sleep once the news sites began repeating themselves. The last I read that night was that while the attacks (the full extent was yet to be released) were isolated to Paris, the French borders were "closed."
The next morning, Randy and I discussed the news and wondered what we should do. TGV, the French rail company, was still showing on their app our train out of Milan to Lyon and continuing to Paris still as scheduled. I was surprised, thinking that perhaps the information was wrong, that with everything else going on, someone had overlooked updating the train timetables. We concluded that at that point, our best bet was to continue at least to Milan as planned. If our train to Lyon was not going, or if something new happened that meant Lyon was a dangerous destination that weekend, we would be in a better position to change to somewhere else---stay in Italy, return to Switzerland, go somewhere else in France. Randy's next meeting was in Spain, so we really wanted to keep heading in that direction.
We had travelled through Milano Centrale earlier that week, and one thing that was really annoying were the young people who were grabbing at tourists' luggage and trying to "help" them to the train for "tips." We had travelled through Milano half a dozen times before, and that time was the worst we had ever seen for that. However, on the morning we were trying to get to Lyon, we didn't see them at all. In fact, the train platform areas were deserted except for passengers. As we left Centrale to find a cab to transfer to Garibaldi station, we saw why. The entrance to the platforms was guarded by police, restricting access only to ticketed passengers. There were armed police all over Milano Centrale.
By cab we got to Garibaldi with no problem, and, again we saw the armed police patrolling the station, though we were not asked to show tickets to enter the station. I found the little TGV office near the platform for the French train. It was a hive of activity, and I guessed (wrongly) that perhaps it were stranded passengers trying to get their tickets changed or refunded since the American news was still reporting that the French borders were "closed."
I was warmly greeted by a TGV booking agent who assured me, enthusiastically, that the trains between Italy and Paris had resumed that morning. He pointed to the train parked at the platform as the one we would board, and it would be open about an hour before departure. His eagerness surprised me, but Randy reminded me it was his job to put us at ease.
There were several armed Italian police blocking the platform until TGV was ready for us to board. Also there were quite a few television cameras and reporters, asking passengers if they were at all nervous about going to Paris the day after a terrorist attack. Sky News interviewed Randy in English. He had to admit that he wasn't at all nervous about getting on that train, but mostly because we were only going as far as Lyon.
Our passports and tickets were inspected once by the Italian police before we boarded the train. Once in our seats and the train started moving, police and military joined the train a few more times as we reached the French border. Passports were checked, all bags accounted for--on the whole it didn't feel as big of a deal as it could have. (In fact the only time on the whole trip we saw armed police board a train AND search luggage was when we were leaving Switzerland for Italy, several days before the attack)
Once we reached Lyon, we started to relax and resume our attitude of wünsch man sich Unendlichkeit. I really can't wait to blog the trip (which I will probably do in order) because Lyon was incredible. Our first full day was enjoyed quietly going around the medieval parts of the city, ending with Mass at the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière. After supper we started to walk back to our hotel. We passed a memorial to Paris in Place de Bellecour. There was one policeman monitoring the crowd, but other than that, it was peaceful and sparse.
We then started walking down the shopping street of Rue Victor-Hugo which at that time on a Sunday night was lined with dark and closed shops. I had almost expected to see another sort of makeshift memorial to the victims in Paris at the statue of Victor Hugo. Instead, we saw a growing assembly of police. They were standing around, chatting with each other quietly and familiarly, but growing in numbers.
Among the only places open on Rue Victor-Hugo was a Subway sandwich shop. I saw one policeman in there. He was ordering a sandwich. I would return to this scene for days afterward in my head. The casualness of it was a reassurance to me then, but later I would be confounded by it.
There were still more police heading north, toward the statue of Victor Hugo, as our family continued south to our hotel. Myles at one point whispered to me, "I don't mean to alarm you, but I am pretty sure some of those police we just passed were carrying helmets with bulletproof face shields."
I had not seen this, so I asked him if he weren't mistaken. Maybe they were motorcycle helmets, I suggested, as we walked past some police cars and motorcycles.
No, he was insistent. Bulletproof face shields.
When we were almost back to our hotel we caught a whiff of a post-fireworks smell. Where we were was nearly deserted, save for a few evening dog-walkers, so we were surprised and tense. Was it related to what we only the next day would know about or not, we may never know.
Once we got back to our quiet hotel, we settled in for the night. The room phone rang around ten or so. It was the front desk, apologizing for disturbing us, but wanting to know if we had a car parked on the street because it would need to be moved. We didn't, of course. But was it a meaningful or routine request?
I refrained from tweeting about seeing the police, and the smell, and the growing tension I was feeling. I did search Twitter to see if anyone else was not similarly restrained. The online news had nothing from Lyon either. I decided to go to sleep, and I remember hearing the sirens sometime during the night.
It was late the next morning when the English-language news finally had reports from Lyon. There had been police raids that night all across France, and in Lyon there was a cache of weapons (including a rocket launcher) found. In English I couldn't find specifics about the precise locations of the raids (though in French I later saw mention of some place south of the city).
From then on, though, our next few days in France, first in Lyon and later in Bordeaux, were marked by seriously armed police in public areas (let's move along kids; they wouldn't hold such big guns if they weren't expecting company), security announcements, and sirens. So many sirens. I had to wonder, though, if there were really more sirens, or were we just noticing them now.
Even though we enjoyed France immensely, our Tage Wie Diese attitude did not fully return until toward the end of the trip and we were on a train pulling out of Paris and speeding through locked-down Belgium. We still enjoyed our time in France (and we need to return to Lyon!), and Spain was a perfect place to relax from some of the heightened feelings in France. But we didn't quite wish the days wouldn't end. Not like we had in other parts of Europe before the attacks in Paris.
We spent one of our last days in Köln, and I don't remember hearing a single siren. That couldn't be possible, even on a Sunday. Köln is city of over a million people. There had to be police or Krankenwagen or something. I do recall Myles asking me about the German word for ambulance, so we must have seen and heard one. In my memory, though, I have no recollection of sirens in Köln only a few days ago.
An Tagen wie diesen, wünscht ich mir Unendlichkeit.
So close on the heels of Beijing Oktoberfest came this year's trip that we could not resist using the song "Tage wie Diese" as a sort of theme. We listened to it, sang it quietly under our breath, and toasted with the lyrics. These would be the days we wished would never end (wünscht man sich Unendlicheit).
However, something happened in the middle of our trip that woke us up from the dream, replacing our soundtrack with the sounds of security announcements and sirens. It was the November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris. While we were not planning on going to Paris on this trip, only through, it still had an impact.
More after the jump
On the evening of November 13, we were staying in Gorizia, a little town in Italy on the border with Slovenia. Randy had been in meetings for much of the day. The kids and I had taken an impromptu train excursion into Slovenia, returning by dusk. We were all tired after supper and gelato, so everyone turned in as soon as we returned to our hotel. I was just scrolling through the news before going to sleep myself when I started to see the initial reports out of Paris. As these grew grimmer, I kept myself awake. We were planning on taking the train to Lyon the next day. I finally surrendered to sleep once the news sites began repeating themselves. The last I read that night was that while the attacks (the full extent was yet to be released) were isolated to Paris, the French borders were "closed."
The next morning, Randy and I discussed the news and wondered what we should do. TGV, the French rail company, was still showing on their app our train out of Milan to Lyon and continuing to Paris still as scheduled. I was surprised, thinking that perhaps the information was wrong, that with everything else going on, someone had overlooked updating the train timetables. We concluded that at that point, our best bet was to continue at least to Milan as planned. If our train to Lyon was not going, or if something new happened that meant Lyon was a dangerous destination that weekend, we would be in a better position to change to somewhere else---stay in Italy, return to Switzerland, go somewhere else in France. Randy's next meeting was in Spain, so we really wanted to keep heading in that direction.
We had travelled through Milano Centrale earlier that week, and one thing that was really annoying were the young people who were grabbing at tourists' luggage and trying to "help" them to the train for "tips." We had travelled through Milano half a dozen times before, and that time was the worst we had ever seen for that. However, on the morning we were trying to get to Lyon, we didn't see them at all. In fact, the train platform areas were deserted except for passengers. As we left Centrale to find a cab to transfer to Garibaldi station, we saw why. The entrance to the platforms was guarded by police, restricting access only to ticketed passengers. There were armed police all over Milano Centrale.
By cab we got to Garibaldi with no problem, and, again we saw the armed police patrolling the station, though we were not asked to show tickets to enter the station. I found the little TGV office near the platform for the French train. It was a hive of activity, and I guessed (wrongly) that perhaps it were stranded passengers trying to get their tickets changed or refunded since the American news was still reporting that the French borders were "closed."
I was warmly greeted by a TGV booking agent who assured me, enthusiastically, that the trains between Italy and Paris had resumed that morning. He pointed to the train parked at the platform as the one we would board, and it would be open about an hour before departure. His eagerness surprised me, but Randy reminded me it was his job to put us at ease.
There were several armed Italian police blocking the platform until TGV was ready for us to board. Also there were quite a few television cameras and reporters, asking passengers if they were at all nervous about going to Paris the day after a terrorist attack. Sky News interviewed Randy in English. He had to admit that he wasn't at all nervous about getting on that train, but mostly because we were only going as far as Lyon.
Our passports and tickets were inspected once by the Italian police before we boarded the train. Once in our seats and the train started moving, police and military joined the train a few more times as we reached the French border. Passports were checked, all bags accounted for--on the whole it didn't feel as big of a deal as it could have. (In fact the only time on the whole trip we saw armed police board a train AND search luggage was when we were leaving Switzerland for Italy, several days before the attack)
Once we reached Lyon, we started to relax and resume our attitude of wünsch man sich Unendlichkeit. I really can't wait to blog the trip (which I will probably do in order) because Lyon was incredible. Our first full day was enjoyed quietly going around the medieval parts of the city, ending with Mass at the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière. After supper we started to walk back to our hotel. We passed a memorial to Paris in Place de Bellecour. There was one policeman monitoring the crowd, but other than that, it was peaceful and sparse.
We then started walking down the shopping street of Rue Victor-Hugo which at that time on a Sunday night was lined with dark and closed shops. I had almost expected to see another sort of makeshift memorial to the victims in Paris at the statue of Victor Hugo. Instead, we saw a growing assembly of police. They were standing around, chatting with each other quietly and familiarly, but growing in numbers.
Among the only places open on Rue Victor-Hugo was a Subway sandwich shop. I saw one policeman in there. He was ordering a sandwich. I would return to this scene for days afterward in my head. The casualness of it was a reassurance to me then, but later I would be confounded by it.
There were still more police heading north, toward the statue of Victor Hugo, as our family continued south to our hotel. Myles at one point whispered to me, "I don't mean to alarm you, but I am pretty sure some of those police we just passed were carrying helmets with bulletproof face shields."
I had not seen this, so I asked him if he weren't mistaken. Maybe they were motorcycle helmets, I suggested, as we walked past some police cars and motorcycles.
No, he was insistent. Bulletproof face shields.
When we were almost back to our hotel we caught a whiff of a post-fireworks smell. Where we were was nearly deserted, save for a few evening dog-walkers, so we were surprised and tense. Was it related to what we only the next day would know about or not, we may never know.
Once we got back to our quiet hotel, we settled in for the night. The room phone rang around ten or so. It was the front desk, apologizing for disturbing us, but wanting to know if we had a car parked on the street because it would need to be moved. We didn't, of course. But was it a meaningful or routine request?
I refrained from tweeting about seeing the police, and the smell, and the growing tension I was feeling. I did search Twitter to see if anyone else was not similarly restrained. The online news had nothing from Lyon either. I decided to go to sleep, and I remember hearing the sirens sometime during the night.
It was late the next morning when the English-language news finally had reports from Lyon. There had been police raids that night all across France, and in Lyon there was a cache of weapons (including a rocket launcher) found. In English I couldn't find specifics about the precise locations of the raids (though in French I later saw mention of some place south of the city).
From then on, though, our next few days in France, first in Lyon and later in Bordeaux, were marked by seriously armed police in public areas (let's move along kids; they wouldn't hold such big guns if they weren't expecting company), security announcements, and sirens. So many sirens. I had to wonder, though, if there were really more sirens, or were we just noticing them now.
Even though we enjoyed France immensely, our Tage Wie Diese attitude did not fully return until toward the end of the trip and we were on a train pulling out of Paris and speeding through locked-down Belgium. We still enjoyed our time in France (and we need to return to Lyon!), and Spain was a perfect place to relax from some of the heightened feelings in France. But we didn't quite wish the days wouldn't end. Not like we had in other parts of Europe before the attacks in Paris.
We spent one of our last days in Köln, and I don't remember hearing a single siren. That couldn't be possible, even on a Sunday. Köln is city of over a million people. There had to be police or Krankenwagen or something. I do recall Myles asking me about the German word for ambulance, so we must have seen and heard one. In my memory, though, I have no recollection of sirens in Köln only a few days ago.
An Tagen wie diesen, wünscht ich mir Unendlichkeit.
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