Sleepy Suffolk

Following the train mishap that saw me whizz away to Harwich, I eventually made it to Theo’s house in Colchester and after a short night during which I kept on waking up anguished over the possibility of missing my flight, I finally woke up to a nice cup of coffee and a taxi driver eagerly waiting for Theo and I outside the house.
The trip to the airport went smoothly save for the fact the drive decided to hit the M25 from the M11 rather than going down the A12. For a few endless seconds, I thought he’d misunderstood which airport we were headed for and was driving us to Stansted in lieu of City.
This wasn’t so and luckily soon enough, the familiar City skyline with Excel, Canada Tower, and the Tate Lyle factory rose in the morning sky. And as the dawn dew lulled us into a quiet sense of security, the second scare of the day hit us when suddenly we realized Theo was not on the passenger list for the Paris flight. No amount of argueing could convince the Air France staff and our fella had to book himself another ticket after an interesting experience with our travel call centre.
We eventually jumped the hurdles, wiggled past the hoops, and landed at the departure gate well in time. London City Airport is a marvel of an airport. It’s small - minute in fact. And all gates are apron-level and within meters of the small jets (Embraer, Fokker-like). To walk out on that apron as one boards the plane, on a beautiful crips fall morning, with the City and the Thames as backdrop entirely redefines the whole flying experience - you could nearly feel Mermoz tap you on the shoulder.
Fifty minutes of flight - nothing to report - slightly late arrival - Orly Sud here we are.
Once I had gone through immigration (Schengen space), I walked up to an airport agent to inquire about the departure hall of our next flight. Knowing there are two terminals at Orly, one of which being Orly Sud, I innocently asked whether the Tozeur-bound flight was due to depart from Orly Sud (South) or Orly Nord (North). My questions got no less than a long blank bewildered stare following by a wide grin, one of those that tries to suppress a ridiculous giggle. The agent - a forty-odd old lady - then added there was no such ‘North’ terminal. It was either West or South. How so convenient. One would assume some logic. After all Gatwick has North and South Terminals. Heathrow’s got 1 through 5 (with its share of luggage doom). It was only natural to think Orly would have a North and South terminal. Think again, this is France. Nothing is quite like what it should be.
We eventually found our way, termnial, and gate (we cruised over to Terminal Ouest using the slick Orlyval); with some five or so hours to kill off, we settled at a café and enjoyed a well deserved coffee soon followed by an Auvergnat sandwich.
Now if you had to go to a city to enjoy a nice sandwich, I reckon Paris would be one of the places I’d start hunting in. The place litterally crawls and oozes with half-baguettes filled with savory hams, cheeses, and pâtés. And in this rainbow of flavors, the Auvergnat stands out by a mile.
Most French will naturally guess the Auvergnat is called so because of its cheese filling. Not just any cheese. No sir, the Rolls Royce of cheeses, the Bentley. None other than roquefort. Add a few walnuts casually tossed here and there, some country ham, and you’ve got yourself a serious taste bud teaser, a whacking swirl of creamy nutty filling food. Aaaah, get the sandwich right, the rest will follow.
And so, I picked one of those baguettes and devoured it.

It was late, one of those wet fall evenings where dusk has disappeared into a premature night. As often, our meeting had overrun and by then we were the only ones to go back to central Charleroi. A colleague kindly gave us a lift to the city. But not knowing the street name I had given him let alone the location of our hotel, he dropped us somewhere convenient. And ironically enough it so happened, he left us off right next to Waterloo Underground Station, on the busy eponymous avenue. Coincidence or Belgian sense of humor? Surely my colleague knew I’m French, surely he knows what Waterloo is. A Belgian city? Well… yes.
So there we were clueless, helpless, shrouded in darkness, with a mere few rays of hope emanating from a handful of shady bars’ neon signs. Theo pulled out his Blackberry in the hope of pinning down our location and that of our hotel but the fruity mobile failed us. I had to resort to pulling out my conspicuous laptop, snif around for a wifi point and go to Google maps…And Larry Page saved our poor wandering souls.
The actual hotel wasn’t actually that far off - a mere couple of blocks down. The thing is direction: you always end up going down the wrong direction lest you have a map with you (and even so, I know some folks who’d read the map the wrong way round).
So it was with much relief that we entered our hotel lobby and settled down in the adjoining restaurant to enjoy a well-deserved meal.
And being in the land where beer flows as freely as age-old camembert in France, we resorted to triying a local ‘cereal-based’ drink (does that make it part of your five-a-day?). Asking the waitress what they had, she replied the usual Grimbergen, Heineken suspects and also mentioned a scotch. Now, the conversion being carried out in French, scotch doesn’t immediately sound as if referring to those hairy folks on the other side of Hadrian’s wall. A Frenchman would probably first think of sticky tape (sellotape on either side of Hadrian’s Wall). And I thought no less. When the waitress came back with a S curve-shaped large glass containing an amber-dark beer, I read the label and immediately thought ‘darn, I picked a Scottish ale’. But again I was wrong. The labelling certainly felt from up North with a tartan-patterned St Andrew’s cross as if the beer were begging for shortcake. But the taste, the flavor, and the fizziness were altogether sweet, rich, and very continental. Nothing of the radically different insular ales we find from Plymouth to Inverness. And the head was a staggering 8-10 cm tall barely adequate for the English pub drinker (see CAMRA’s take on this).
During the later part of my meeting the following day, I started googling a bit to figure out who was behind this nifty not so Scottish (or is it?) beverage.
It turns out it’s brewed in Belgium by Alken-Maes (Belgian folks) which is owned by Scottish & Newcastle (across the North Sea). The brand Watneys (or Watney’s - I found both spellings) refers to an old, now deceased, brand of beer for which most Internet users have unkind words that I shan’t repeat here.
The Belgians, in their whimsical way about life, are probably the only ones who would disguise one of their own beers as being from Scotland, brewed locally by a local brand yet now in the hands of a UK brewing magnate.
And to top off this dizzy post (on the account of the staggering 8% alc. content), here are a picture of Watney’s ale and its head alongside CAMRA’s campain for full pints.

Midnight faded into dawn, dawn gave way to early morning traffic which eventually yielded to my alarm clock. A quick breakfast of French bread, croissant, and unsalted butter (Parisians…) took the final yawns and wrinkles out of my face. The day seem daunting. With a three hour presentation in the morning in front a twenty-odd crowd of academic people, I was going to be the unwilling star & start of the show.
The underground stole past Central Paris to drop us off in the southern suburbs of Paris where our meeting was to be held. The meeting in itself wasn’t worth mentioning. It’s all work and no play for poor little Jack. However, there were two items to remember. Firstly the food which, in these premises, is as good as ever and so much better than those grim triangular club sandwiches which make you feel like Pascal. Secondly newcomers. The project I work is an EU funded piece of work and is not in its infancy - far from it. But over the past few months, it’s been accepting new members two of which were at the Paris meeting. Two Spaniards from Galicia with whom I hit off very well. Probably the liking of Spanish culture in general and the friendliness in particular of the two new members, Daniel & Marta (I’m quite tempted to write it the English way, with an h tucked in between the t and a). I also met up with familiar faces from past meetings.
The meeting eventually gave way to the evening which I spent with my brother made single for the week as his wife was off to a photography exhibition in Southern France and his toddler was in the good caring hands of the in laws. With no family about, there ain’t nothing like quality time with the bro’ round a bottle or two of cool refreshing beer. Belgian beer might I add. Coming from England, it’s a treat. Ollie (that’s his nick) and I split a pizza over a game of foozball. I won the first leg easily and we drew the ‘return’ leg. The game’s still a bit rusty (maybe fading away altogether). We had a nice chat about family, work, life in general, and rooftops. Well yes rooftops. Not that my brother’s recently taken to the roofs like Giono’s hussard. It’s just that having only just bought a house, he sorely discovered the roof needed work to be done: reshingling if there be such a word. Those things are not cheap (no matter how real the word is). He did need that beer after all. We soon parted - Ollie walked me back to the underground (RER) and I headed back to central Paris to sleep the pizza and the beer off.

London Saint Pancras - The train is due to leave at ‘five past eight’. It’s nearly 7:30PM and still no sign of Theo. The fellow made a desperate dash from his home in Colchester at six and if anything he should be arriving in a couple minutes. Surely enough, I soon receive a phone call and down the main hallway of the newly renovated train station I can make out the man’s familiar silhouette. Spot on time.
While I was waiting for him, I strolled around the station stopping at a bookshop (Folger’s I believe?) for I had forgotten a book I had bought for my niece in Ipswich and wanted to make it up to her by getting another. I found the perfect nugget in a nursery rhymes book illustrated by the very same illustrator as the ‘Gruffalo’ series. At the same time, I also picked Bram Stoker’s notorious ‘Dracula’. During the following two weeks I would share Harper’s and Seward’s trek throughout England and Europe against the fiendish Transylvanian Count.

It’s finally 8PM gone and rung at London’s main belfries, the last Paris-bound Eurostar is slipping away past the capital’s cityscape. Soon we reach the eurotunnel (which would be more interesting had it been equipped with windows and been built on the seabed rather than under. I’m sure engineers will disagree on that point so would perhaps aquaphobic passengers) and after having downed a glass of red Merlot along with some spice-stuffed olives, Theo and I eventually set foot in Gare du Nord. We talk of upcoming meetings & work while he nervously puffs away on a cigarette. I stare at Mercure’s Hotel Terminal wondering whether this is where they filmed Hotel Chevalier, a short starring Natalie Portman. No time to check. Duty calls. Theo throws his stub in a nearby bin and we make our way to the underground. Line 4. Purple line if memory serves well. I truly don’t know why we took the regular underground. We had to stop by what seemed like every single station in central Paris before actually making our way to Denfert Rochereau. Those more familiar with the ins and outs of Paris metro life, will know that in fact Gare du Nord is merely a handful of stops away from Denfert provided one takes the RER fast train which runs on a special track and only stops at certain major stations.
Nonetheless, once our touristic deambulation ends in Paris, we make our way hastily to the hotel. It’s nearly midnight and although September is barely starting, the air is fresh with a pungeant automnal scent - a mixture of fallen leaves with night dew.
The hotel is a five-storey XIXth century building typical of central Paris. Its elevator is so minute we’ve difficulty fitting the four of us together (Theo, myself, and our suitcases) but at least the porter found our reservations, gave us our keys, and even provided us with free wifi access codes. To IT professionals, a free WIFI access code is like free candy to an eight-year old boy. It’s not often and always well appreciated.
Unfortunately, as we were to find out soon enough, the said wifi wasn’t all that good. Free, yes. Functional? Not quite. That - now - is a bit like finding a sour candy in your stack of sweets. It takes another three lollypops to wear off the taste.
That didn’t matter for my room, though minuscule, had a view on the flat across the street: a top floor apartment tucked under the rooftops and with bookshelves spanning the whole width. Whoever lived there must have been a literary person. One might have thought in a lurid fantasy that I would have started telling the tale of the neighbor, some tall blond French lady, slipping seamlessly out of her clothes, to shyly exhibit herself to any onlooker such as myself. But unfortunately, this sort of mishap (for the subject) only happens once a week - on TV only. And it’s pay TV too. Not that I’m an expert of course. It’s just hearsay.

After a few hours of sleep only, a hearty breakfast, and a quick trip in the Athenian Subway, I finally set foot in the center of the historic city. Unfortunately, I missed the real center by a couple of stations so I tried to trace my way back to the main part by using my small freebie map and the sun for orientation. Yes, in the mornings, it does work.
I eventually managed to get back to the Acropolis where I stayed for a few minutes to snap a couple of pictures before heading back to the hotel and from there on to the university.
I’ll leave the description of my voyage to the campus and how I fared for a later post.

Until then enjoy the view: