I have never driven in Europe and I foolishly only knew that we needed to head southeast to get to Lyon. My dad had suggested skirting Paris to the east, but that was about as much preparation as I had made. I had read a quick tutorial on french rules of the road and street signs, so we struck out in our 6-speed manual diesel minivan for Lyon. Right away, I am pleasantly surprised to find the highway signs are very clear and we can just keep following directions to Lyon, basically driving on auto-pilot. Instead of just one city ("Sacramento") on the highway signs, they list the top three you might be headed towards. The other thing I found interesting was the law that if you can move to the right, you must. Even when there are three lanes of traffic, you will get flashed in the middle lane if there is space on the right. The upshot is that everyone is changing lanes all the time. The other result was that vastly different speeds are possible even when there are only two lanes. You never get stuck behind a slow driver. This is pretty cool! I really like driving in France.
We arrived in Lyon around 8pm on a dark and rainy night. Our address is on Lacassagne Avenue and the directions we had been given seemed a bit vague: "It's a big street right by the train station. Follow the signs to "Gare Part Dieu" and you'll find it." Again, following white directional arrows which point to areas of interest we quickly find the train station. This is easy, I love driving in France! Now all we have to do is find Lacassagne Ave.
French street signs still follow the quaint custom pioneered by Napoleon of being written on the sides of buildings. On a plaque about 6 inches square will be the words "Rue de la Republique" which has to be written in a tiny font to fit. This hasn't been too much a of problem for us in the past because we were on foot and could walk up to the building to read it. Also the streets change names every three blocks, so it can take a while to find on the map. The good part is then you are pretty darn certain where you are even if you can't find a plaque on a side street. For some reason every city and town has a Rue Victor Hugo too. There must be a law. Hurtling through traffic on a dark, rainy night down one-way streets is not the ideal way to navigate a new city in France. We can't read any of the street signs, there are also one-way lanes going the reverse direction sometimes, but these are only for buses as well as walled off lanes reserved for buses and tram track that we have to avoid and occasionally find ourselves on. There is no grid here, in fact I think through a marvel of geometry there are no two parallel streets. The whole city feels like market street in San Francisco. After some futile circling of the station we buy a detailed road map and find Lacassagne. There is no way in hell we would have found our way there on our own, plus it is one-way and we need to be near the beginning of it. Even with the map we have a hard time getting there. We block a bus, stop at a green light, make illegal turns in roundabouts, and the whole time we are not honked once. My estimation of the Lyonnais goes up. Still, our dialogue in the car is like this:
Make a left on the next street you can.
I don't think we can for the next 10 miles.
Well go right on Rue Encombe Vineuse.
Which one is that?
I don't know, where are we? Rue Something-or-other I can't read the sign.
Well park and ask.
Judging from the age of the cars, nobody has found an open spot since the Germans left.
My love for driving in France has waned. A little over an HOUR after finding the train station we make it to the apartment garage and check in. The receptionist has waited for us and is very nice, she has our keys and even some mail for us. We decide to leave the bags in the car and get some much deserved dinner. Dinner is wonderful and now we remember why we came here.
Lyon is regarded as the capital of french cuisine (even the Parisians give it the nod) which of course, since french food is the best in the world, also makes it the best place in the world to eat. If you don't believe me, ask any Frenchman. So, even if things don't go well during the day, our Lyon meals make up for it at night. If somebody asks where we live we can now tell them - about a 10 minute walk from the train station or an hour if you want to drive.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Friday, January 12, 2007
Getting to the Office
(Dave here) I've been settling into my Adobe office in Lyon (the french pronounce Adobe as "ah-Dohb"). Adobe's office is located out by the Bron airport, an area little served by public transit, but I found a route with only one connection using the buses. The bus is actually a relaxing way to get to work until I get to my last bus, bus 78. The french pride themselves on being fast drivers (although Laurent at my office admits they are not as crazy as the Italians). Signs or laws will not stop a french driver from attempting to pass you. However, the french bus drivers must consider themselves, as professional drivers, to be better and therefore faster drivers than those little trolls below them in their Peugeots or Smart cars. After boarding, you learn to brace yourself for the initial lurch as the driver puts the pedal to the metal and find a seat once you're in traffic. Buses zoom through the roundabouts and woe betide the driver who thinks the bus will slow down or yield according to law.
Each bus has a cool LED display which slowly shows four messages one after the other like this: "This is Line 25," "destination: Sept Chemin", "Next Stop", and "Rouget d'Isle". I think it uses GPS to figure things out, because the drivers don't interact with it. In keeping with french tradition about half the buses display this instead: "." Fortunately for me, my first bus is 25 and I take it to the end so I don't need to watch the signs, broken or not. Next I take bus 78 and here I have to pay attention. My stop is "Bron Droits de l'Homme" which comes right after "Bron Aviation." And, lucky day, this bus has a working LED. While bus 25 is frequent and packed, bus 78 is infrequent and nearly empty. Our highly trained driver knows that with less weight, he can go much faster. Faster than I'd ever have thought possible, we whip around corners and roundabouts, the two other passengers and I hanging on for dear life as we are tossed about. My driver looks bug eyed and perhaps holds a grudge that he has been assigned this backwoods route instead of a prestigious train station or commute route. The back of the bus fishtails 5 feet to the left as a rear tire clips a curb. I'm watching desperately for my stop. "This is line 78" - Yes, yes, I know that, where are we? "Destination: Memoz Pinel" Come on, come on! "Next Stop" Aaargh! "Ecole de Santé". Yikes! That's the stop after mine. We've been going so fast the sign can't keep up with the driver. We've zoomed past several stops between updates. We're in the right lane at the first red light of this trip. Just behind us is Droits de l'Homme! I only missed it by 15 feet! I jump to the front and say "Monsieur! Monsieur! Monsieur!!! MONSIEUR!!!" The driver stares red faced and bug eyed at the red light and I wonder if he's considering driving over or around the car in front of us. Desperate, I try again: "MONSIEUR!!!!!" He turns and I say "I forget my stop, please to open the door." I get a rush of angry french way too fast for me to understand, but he pushes a button and the door opens.
Over the last few days I've noticed I always get the same driver of bus 78 no matter when I catch it - day or night. I've come to think of him as my own driver and take pride in his crazy speed. I like to think he is even crazier than the other, lesser bus drivers. Yesterday, he caught up to bus 79 which shares a few stops in common with 78. He tailgated it, then I saw him leaning to the left looking for a chance to pass it! That's my driver! Beat him to the next stop! Darn narrow windy streets, you might be able to get the inside lane at the next roundabout!
Each bus has a cool LED display which slowly shows four messages one after the other like this: "This is Line 25," "destination: Sept Chemin", "Next Stop", and "Rouget d'Isle". I think it uses GPS to figure things out, because the drivers don't interact with it. In keeping with french tradition about half the buses display this instead: "." Fortunately for me, my first bus is 25 and I take it to the end so I don't need to watch the signs, broken or not. Next I take bus 78 and here I have to pay attention. My stop is "Bron Droits de l'Homme" which comes right after "Bron Aviation." And, lucky day, this bus has a working LED. While bus 25 is frequent and packed, bus 78 is infrequent and nearly empty. Our highly trained driver knows that with less weight, he can go much faster. Faster than I'd ever have thought possible, we whip around corners and roundabouts, the two other passengers and I hanging on for dear life as we are tossed about. My driver looks bug eyed and perhaps holds a grudge that he has been assigned this backwoods route instead of a prestigious train station or commute route. The back of the bus fishtails 5 feet to the left as a rear tire clips a curb. I'm watching desperately for my stop. "This is line 78" - Yes, yes, I know that, where are we? "Destination: Memoz Pinel" Come on, come on! "Next Stop" Aaargh! "Ecole de Santé". Yikes! That's the stop after mine. We've been going so fast the sign can't keep up with the driver. We've zoomed past several stops between updates. We're in the right lane at the first red light of this trip. Just behind us is Droits de l'Homme! I only missed it by 15 feet! I jump to the front and say "Monsieur! Monsieur! Monsieur!!! MONSIEUR!!!" The driver stares red faced and bug eyed at the red light and I wonder if he's considering driving over or around the car in front of us. Desperate, I try again: "MONSIEUR!!!!!" He turns and I say "I forget my stop, please to open the door." I get a rush of angry french way too fast for me to understand, but he pushes a button and the door opens.
Over the last few days I've noticed I always get the same driver of bus 78 no matter when I catch it - day or night. I've come to think of him as my own driver and take pride in his crazy speed. I like to think he is even crazier than the other, lesser bus drivers. Yesterday, he caught up to bus 79 which shares a few stops in common with 78. He tailgated it, then I saw him leaning to the left looking for a chance to pass it! That's my driver! Beat him to the next stop! Darn narrow windy streets, you might be able to get the inside lane at the next roundabout!
Monday, January 08, 2007
Pizza and the Perfect Tour
Spend enough time in a country and you find out things that make that country unique. But even a casual tourist can spot some things right away. For instance in Italy, literally everything you want to take a picture of, has scaffolding on it. In some cases I think the scaffolding could be old enough to warrant being called an historic structure by itself. In France, everything is futuristic and cool and broken. When I try to buy a rail ticket to visit downtown Paris, I confidently walk up to the spiffy electronic ticket machine. There is a sign taped on it that says it is broken and only accepts the TravelGo debit card. Visa/bankcards aren't accepted. Looking around I see all the ticket machines have the same sign taped to them. I fiddle with it for a while, but eventually break down and join a long line of people waiting to talk to a human ticket vender. Apparently nobody has a TravelGo debit card (good only for french rail tickets) as I watch a steady stream of people attempt to use the machines and eventually give up and join the queue to talk to a person. Along the same lines there are debit cards designed to solve very specific needs. There are debit cards for phones, the metro, the trains, and even a bike debit card designed to operate the downtown rental bicycles.
On Thursday, Monica and I set out to visit "the prefecture" to get our long term visas approved. We've been calling it the "perfect tour." There is a note in our passports that says we have eight days in which to go there and knowing we'll probably get bitten by delays and the weekend we figure it better get done today. Our receptionist says the prefecture is easy to find - it even has its own Tram stop. We head over to the train station to get a packet of Metro tickets. The automatic metro ticket machines are down and there is a large line forming for the closed office which should re-open at 2:00. This looks like a good time to stop for a late lunch. Monica orders a pizza and when it comes it is gigantic. She can only eat about 1/4 of it, so she asks for a To-go box. They don't really do that sort of thing in France. Maybe it's some macho thing or tiny refrigerators, but you eat everything given to you and if you can't do it you shouldn't have ordered that. Fortunately we're in the train station, so says "we'll eat it on the train." Then Monica, I, and the pizza head over to buy tickets. We get some amused looks standing in line to get the tickets. Then more looks when we're standing at the tram stop. Ok, maybe we look a little weird, like we're delivering a pizza, but we're not THAT strange. The stop gets more crowded and we're the only ones carrying anything large and it's not like I can tuck the pizza under my arm. Boarding the tram it gets VERY crowded and warm. You can smell the pizza throughout the car and where I am wedged in, the pizza box is taking the place of another person. But I think I would look even weirder holding it over my head to make room for another person. We get to our stop and there is a big old fancy building - the prefecture. It's now about 3:00 and we have to circle the building to find the entrance. Around the back we find it, guarded by a few police who kindly inform us we are at the wrong prefecture for visas. We need to go to a non-descript building by the water and they close at about 3:30. It's now 3:15. One of the gendarme gives us directions, but his "lefts" and "rights" don't match up with his gestures. I ask if he can draw a map. He whips out a pen and I hand him the pizza box. Map in hand we jog along, eyes glued to our pizza box. His directions are wrong and we head into the nearest building to try for new ones when we see that we have, in fact, entered the prefecture. It looks like a rundown DMV, but without so much happiness. The other building must be for show, this must be where the actual work gets done. A little later they lock the doors to newcomers. We go through various lines and talk to the personnel who seem amused that we have brought a pizza with us to our interview. The result of our visit is that we've advanced our visa to the next stage of (I kid you not) its SEVEN life stages. We're now in what I call the "crawling" stage where we can go back and forth to the US as much as we'd like for short periods, but in March our visa will enter the "pupa" stage where we must hunker down in France, but fortunately that will only last 7 days before another stage begins, etc. Actually, it's amusing how complicated things can get. Well, we've finished our visit to the perfect tour and we can walk around downtown carrying our pizza to the bus stop and on the bus home. Oh, and the pizza? Although we had grown attached to it and its incorrect map, we still ate it.
On Thursday, Monica and I set out to visit "the prefecture" to get our long term visas approved. We've been calling it the "perfect tour." There is a note in our passports that says we have eight days in which to go there and knowing we'll probably get bitten by delays and the weekend we figure it better get done today. Our receptionist says the prefecture is easy to find - it even has its own Tram stop. We head over to the train station to get a packet of Metro tickets. The automatic metro ticket machines are down and there is a large line forming for the closed office which should re-open at 2:00. This looks like a good time to stop for a late lunch. Monica orders a pizza and when it comes it is gigantic. She can only eat about 1/4 of it, so she asks for a To-go box. They don't really do that sort of thing in France. Maybe it's some macho thing or tiny refrigerators, but you eat everything given to you and if you can't do it you shouldn't have ordered that. Fortunately we're in the train station, so says "we'll eat it on the train." Then Monica, I, and the pizza head over to buy tickets. We get some amused looks standing in line to get the tickets. Then more looks when we're standing at the tram stop. Ok, maybe we look a little weird, like we're delivering a pizza, but we're not THAT strange. The stop gets more crowded and we're the only ones carrying anything large and it's not like I can tuck the pizza under my arm. Boarding the tram it gets VERY crowded and warm. You can smell the pizza throughout the car and where I am wedged in, the pizza box is taking the place of another person. But I think I would look even weirder holding it over my head to make room for another person. We get to our stop and there is a big old fancy building - the prefecture. It's now about 3:00 and we have to circle the building to find the entrance. Around the back we find it, guarded by a few police who kindly inform us we are at the wrong prefecture for visas. We need to go to a non-descript building by the water and they close at about 3:30. It's now 3:15. One of the gendarme gives us directions, but his "lefts" and "rights" don't match up with his gestures. I ask if he can draw a map. He whips out a pen and I hand him the pizza box. Map in hand we jog along, eyes glued to our pizza box. His directions are wrong and we head into the nearest building to try for new ones when we see that we have, in fact, entered the prefecture. It looks like a rundown DMV, but without so much happiness. The other building must be for show, this must be where the actual work gets done. A little later they lock the doors to newcomers. We go through various lines and talk to the personnel who seem amused that we have brought a pizza with us to our interview. The result of our visit is that we've advanced our visa to the next stage of (I kid you not) its SEVEN life stages. We're now in what I call the "crawling" stage where we can go back and forth to the US as much as we'd like for short periods, but in March our visa will enter the "pupa" stage where we must hunker down in France, but fortunately that will only last 7 days before another stage begins, etc. Actually, it's amusing how complicated things can get. Well, we've finished our visit to the perfect tour and we can walk around downtown carrying our pizza to the bus stop and on the bus home. Oh, and the pizza? Although we had grown attached to it and its incorrect map, we still ate it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
