More travel

Date: Nov 7 1993

Just a quick letter before I take off to Cambridge, UK again.

So about 2 weeks ago, just as I'm getting ready to go to a conference in Paris I get this call:

'RJ, I need you real bad in Cambridge in 2 days. Get over here NOW'

So I hop on a plane for Cambridge. Actually, it's a 0 horse town called Hinxton that I had a really boring meeting in. Just to be goofy, I wore a tie with skulls all over it (proceeds for buying it from Scientific American went to Richard Leakey to dig up more skulls). It's the most conservative tie I own. Everyone at EMBL hates my ties (when I can think up an opportunity to wear and show off my latest).

So I stay in this place called Greater Chesterton. Some dude picks me up at the airport running around with a sign for Dr White (I always seem to be Dr White whenever I travel - I don't know whether this is an assumption on their part, or whether whoever books things for me tells them that). So at 9:30pm I go on a quest for food. The only restaurant (actually, a large bar) doesn't serve food after 9pm. Great. I go back to the hotel where I know from experience that their bar is open till 10pm. Maybe I can get some peanuts. All the lights are out. I'm fairly certain I'm the only person staying in the hotel. There are no cars in the parking lot. Good thing I wasn't staying in Lesser Chesterton...

So I got the best room in the place - the Four Poster room - meaning that my bed has one of those big canopy things on it. Big tacky looking fake brass rods inserted together with curtain things all around it. Mirrors all over the place. Some kinda weirdo contraption that I think was either a torture rack or something for ironing trousers.

Wandered into Hinxton around 11am looking for people who wanted to eat. Still haven't eaten. My boss unloads the UK DEC sales dude on me who wants a piece of the action for the new institute. Says only five minutes. I ditch him about 1.5 hours later, manage to get a sandwich at a pub before the meeting that I came for starts.

The meeting was real boring, I was the tech person representing the EBI (European Bioinformatics Institute), it wasn't very technical at all, and the way I remember it, I sat there sulking and didn't do anything. But I just read the minutes today and it claims I did a lot. It even claims I said things I know I'd never be stupid snough to claim. Have to fix that tomorrow...

Anyway, I bailed outta there and took off to Paris. Paris is kinda cool, when you're awake. I went on a quest for food down this one street which turned out to be nothing but sex shops all called 'The Sex Shop'. I wonder how you distinguish them when you tell your Significant Other that you're going to the sex shop... Anyway, so there are these slimy dudes that stand out in front and grab you as you walk past and try to drag you in. When you fight them off, then they try to give you some kinda card. They're really insistent. Even if you avoid eye-contact with them, they chase you down the street and grab your arm and try to drag you back to their shop before you go into somebody elses.

You always get ripped off in Paris. And they assume that just because you don't speak the language, you forgot how to count too. Three days in a row I had the same thing for breakfast - orange juice and a lump of something, and three days I paid different amounts. One time after counting the money, she claimed I owed her 10 FF more. I didn't argue. I didn't want her to call the police and get charged with not letting her rip me off.

When I took the taxi from the air-port (which was still on strike and a war-zone (for those of you that watch CNN) by the way), I gave the taxi-dude a 834% tip because it's not my money, and he starts waving his arms and making a commotion. So I motion him to keep the change. That wasn't the problem. He writes down the amount he wants. Oh, silly me, a 834% tip isn't good enough, he wants a 3,648% tip. Well, like I said, not my money...

The subways are excellent, and I don't think I ever had to wait more than 2 or 3 minutes for a subway. But super-packed. I ended up almost always standing. At first it's neat when you go to change subways and you get lost in the caverns looking for the right subway, but after awhile it gets annoying when you just wanna get from point A to B.

Food is expensive and small. I ended up eating in hamburger joints alot (a chain called 'Q' (Quick)) since I was in a hurry alot or real tired and wanted to eat fast. But I had steak in a couple of killer expensive places.

The hotel was a 3 star hotel, around $140 CDN a night. I ended up staying another night after the conference to see Paris. I didn't bother looking for a cheaper hotel, now that I was paying. So I did a bunch of touristy things. I climbed the Eiffel tower to the 2nd level two nights (the highest you can get by stairs). I didn't bother taking the elevator to the very top because it was packed with tourists and I was happy on the 2nd level.

I went to the Royal Palaces and saw the weirdo results of French architects on dope. I went through this place with a billion antique shops. I wandered around in Notre Dame. You could buy a candle for 10 FF and light it. The sign said: 'A candle is a witness to your prayers. It stays burning after you have left' (or something like that). Mostly people stole other peoples burnt out candles and lit them and stole their prayers. You could see all the sinners too since they had a confessional. I didn't bother since I haven't done anything real bad lately. Come to think of it, I've never been in one...

I was reminded while there, of the lyrics of a song by Marianne Faithful, 'The Ballad of Lucy Jordan' which says something like:

At the age of 37
She realized, she'd never
Ride through Paris, in a sports-car
with the warm wind in her hair.

well, I wouldn't want to ride through Paris in anything. Its a good way of getting killed. More than once I was about three feet away from very close large accidents. Plus people just try to run you down. If the Italians are worse like I've heard, that really must be something to see...

I got ripped off again in the taxi from the hotel to the train station. I figured out in the 1st one that the reason it started off at 12 FF was because I put two things in the trunk (@ 6 FF per item). So this time I put two things in and the newly acquired third thing in the cab with me. This time it started at 24 FF. The sign of prices in the cab was the same.

The hotel adds in a hidden breakfast charge, even though you didn't eat there.

So I did a bone-head maneuver on the train trip back and didn't reserve and didn't take 1st class. So I ended up in various reserved or mutilated (seats for handicapped) seats in a enclosed smoking booth. I don't know which was worse - the smoke - or the American dude trying to impress the American bimbo he's trying to pick up, that he's going to be a brain surgeon.

After walking the full length of this French train going 3,876,237,834 mph looking for the restaurant car, I was getting really dizzy after being smashed into walls and people on a empty stomach as the train was bouncing all over the place. It really felt great to be back in German territory where I understood at least some of what was going on.

Strange that many times in France when I started to use my very limited French vocabulary, several people responded to me in German. I figured it was obvious my accent was North American, not German...

well, thats about all I can think of now, and I gotta go get ready to take off to Cambridge tomorrow. This time I'm gonna stay in Cambridge instead of any of the various Chestertons, all of which have no food.