A jumbled adventure

I have been recovering for a couple days from my circuit around London, with an exciting day trip to Paris on St. Patrick's Day! I experienced so many things out there, it's still difficult for me to boil down at all. I saw a number of key things on the trip, but I didn't want to follow the standard tourist adherence to tour buses and rapid runs around cathedrals and Sites of Interest.

I wanted to try to really get the texture of the places, so instead I put on my New Balance sneakers and walked all over, assisted by my friends who knew the lay of the land.

In London, since my last message, I saw Parliament in session, the Tower Bridge, the Globe Theater, the Tower of London, Canary Wharf, places like historic Bank and Liverpool Street, the Greenwich Observatory (where I set my watch) and Downing Street, on the very day the Spanish announced they would ditch "Blair's war alliance," as the tabloids called it.

I took the Eurostar (Chunnel high-speed train) to Gare du Nord station in Paris, where I wandered into my first immersion in a city where I didn't speak the language. Following a map obtained at some difficulty from the gift shop, I ran into the Pompadou Museum and shortly thereafter purchased an all-important Royale with Cheese, which I ate on a quiet bench next to the Seine. Across from me was the Louvre, where I gazed at the glass pyramid and the grandiose adjacent garden.

Toward the Eiffel Tower, I wandered into an area full of embassies and ministries, eventually reaching Emmi via a confusing French phone card. I took too long to get ahold of her, so naturally she had afternoon class. I went to the Louvre and saw the Mona Lisa and other assorted art and antiquities. We met up in St. Sulpice with some other Mac kids, and sauntered over to the Luxembourg gardens, where we decided to visit the Church of the Sacred Heart on a hill overlooking the city (as featured in the happy flick Amelie). Then Emmi and I wandered off to see the Moulin Rouge on a classic filthy sex street, and finally the Arc de Triumphe. We also got around to the Notre Dame as well as the hangouts of Sartre and the Impressionists. I ended up at a youth hostel that night. One of the most magical days of my life.

Political upheavals all around me

I will have to explore this in more detail later, but as luck would have it, that week in Europe was one of great drama and political upheaval. It was hard to say exactly what the feeling was, but I came back with a lot of newspapers and magazines to try and sniff out this new connection between the Spanish Socialists, Al-Qaeda, democracy and terror. There were terror alerts on the Tube, which was quite chilling. I think that most people were sad that the modern style of mass terrorism had finally crashed into Europe. More on that whole can of worms later. (there was a new British national budget, as well)

'Mistakes we knew we were making'

(apologies to Dave Eggers)

I made some mistakes along the way but it mostly went smoothly until the return trip. I had problems getting ahold of people like Rob Beahrs in Paris--really wanted to hang out--and Boz and KJ in London. Telecom was really a pain.

Worst of all, I probably managed to destroy or severely damage 4 of the 5 rolls of film I shot, which is all but Paris in the evening and a couple pictures in London. This made me very sad, because there were tons of incredible pictures. Some people tell me that rolls in checked baggage have survived, but Alison says that they are pretty much certainly wiped out.

This photo loss (so far not confirmed) was because I, like a fool, didn't know that they use much more powerful scanners on checked luggage. At O'Hare, I was very stressed out, because I was already delayed many hours and trying to jump onto a departing flight. At O'Hare, a nice guy at the check-in desk tried to get me onto a flight just leaving for Minneapolis, but the horrible security people wouldn't let my big bag pass, and wouldn't even listen to me.

At that point I forgot that my film was in the big bag. When I gave it to the grinning Chicago bastards at the giant post-9/11 mega-scanner, they specifically asked me about the film, and I thought it was all in my backpack. My bag was fed into the machine and all those nice snaps of the Tower bridge and the Pompadou probably turned into another silver emulsified slate of sludge. Thanks, Homeland Security!

The Kodak domino effect

The tragic thing is that I might not have missed the first flight all along, if I hadn't forgotten my camera in Nick's room, then run back to get it, consuming several minutes. I might have been able to hop the previous Tube train to Paddington station, where another train, the Heathrow Express, took twice as long as advertised to get me to Heathrow.

So in other words, everything went well until the return circuit, where my Tube train "terminated" one stop before Paddington, delaying several minutes. The 11:10 Heathrow Express was supposed to get me from Paddington to the airport in 15, but instead it stopped dead and took 30. Then I got put on standby for a flight at 2:15, and I didn't make it on until 4:15. Had a beer at the TGI Fridays in the Duty Free lounge.

Cleared customs at O'Hare and nearly made it to a quick 8:30 flight to Minneapolis, but lost my wits a bit and willfully zapped my photographic record.

I will say that I learned a lot from how ugly that whole sequence was. Leave more time to get to the airport, and make sure not to check the film. How obvious.

But it only really rounded out once I got back to Minneapolis and the buses are still on strike. Upon making a withdrawal for a taxi, my bank account turned out to be wildly overdrawn, naturally. The suspenseful thing for Monday is to see if the money I dumped in Saturday night--to make my account well positive again--will be enough to avoid a whole barrage of overdraft fees. They'll have the last laugh, I'm all too sure.

What makes the trip special

I could not have pulled off anything of this scope without the help of my good friends from MPA and Macalester, the local agents on the scene who interpreted whatever we were confronted with. I hung out with some unexpected people, including Mary Dvorsky and almost all of Victoria Stanley-Simmonds' family!

Likewise, Nick's flatmates and other friends were all very gracious hosts who went out of their way to deal with my silly questions and late night showers. Seeing as how my pictures might be no more, I have only all those moments with them in my mind now, and I will never forget this exceptional adventure as long as I live.

Posted by HongPong at March 22, 2004 01:05 AM
Listed under From Abroad .