There is probably no way to travel today more civilized than a European train. Forget 1st. class air travel, which may give you thrills and frills in the air, but is almost as hopeless as cattle class on the ground. You may get a faster check-in and wait in a lounge with free newspapers, drinks, canapes and peanuts, but those peanuts are precisely about all it amounts to. You are still submitted to the indignity of having to prove you are not a dangerous member of Al Quaida or FARC or the Brady Bunch setting out to blow up the plane. You aren’t spared the striptease, or the agony of having an often bare-handed security person paw through the dearest and most intimate items you can’t travel without(I always mean to ask them to put gloves on,but then I chicken out, afraid that they may take revenge by turning all my belongings out on the counter and poking their gloved fingers into every one of the 50-odd little bags and cases I carry to hold everything from my make-up to my contact lenses to my phone, Palm and computer chargers to my diet snacks, but never,never, a drop of liquid, I promise). So that is why, whenever the distance allows, I choose to sit in a sublime carriage like this one, on the
Thalys from Paris Nord to Köln Hauptbanhof, with plush seats, miles of legroom, a decent sized toilet and even a nice complimentary snack of cold roastbeef, potatoes and artichoke hearts, port salut cheese, crème aux fruits rouges, a drink of your choice, coffee or tea and a delicious square of dark Côte d’Or chocolate (at an age when airlines are charging you for a sip of water!). Not to speak of the fact that you don’t need to turn off any of your electronic devices at any time. Sheer bliss.
So here I am, writing away, with the Quarteto Italiano pouring the op.18 Beethoven quartets directly into my avid ears (forgive me, Onkel Heinz, for not sharing your aversion to the IPod), on my way to Cologne after five lovely days in Paris. (We have made a stop in Brussels, and, believe it or not, the little cart has just made another round, offering hot and cold drinks and sweet and salty snacks, all this also included in the 60 euro fare – I am, alas!, a reluctant senior citizen – tempting me to let out a very undignified yell of SCREW THE AIRLINES!).
Before I arrive in Cologne, let me just say that Paris in August is like Paris in an oxygen bubble. I simply love it. I even rented a little Clio at Orly, knowing that I could park anywhere and travel at the speed of lightening through the deserted streets. The only thing you have to be careful with is not to run over one or more of the several tourists from all over the world (with, along with the usual turnout of EU, US and Japanese, a strong show of Brazilians this year, the real having reached unheard of heights) who are normally either looking up at the monuments or, more often, at their minuscule replicas on the little screens of their digital cameras, and who pay little or no attention to the city’ s native fauna, and much less to the occasional cruising vehicle.
There is no music to be heard in Paris in the summer, except for pasteurized Vivaldi (The 4 Seasons), Bach (the cello suites, a crime of lese-majeste if I’ ve ever heard of one!) and Mozart (Eine kleine Nachtmusik) played by obscure groups in dark churches for the after-hours entertainment of those of the above-mentioned tourists who either don’ t fancy or can’ t afford the Crazy Horse and the Moulin Rouge. So what does one do? One goes to the movies, bien sûr, and preferably to see a good French film, as those rarely cross the border.
Two new productions were being advertised on the Colonnes Maurice. One, a Fabrice Lucchini comedy called “La fille de Monaco” and the other “L’empreinte de l’ ange” a thriller with two splendid actresses, Catherine Frot and Sandrine Bonnaire. Again, the month of August is the best to enjoy a French movie in Paris. The ubiquitous tourists aren’ t the least bit interested and the Parisians are not there, so you have rows of ultra-comfortable plush seats in small intimate theaters to choose from. Both movies are excellent. The fantastic, understated comedian Lucchini, plays a famous lawyer who gets roped in to defend an indefensible murder suspect in Monaco and is assigned a taciturn bodyguard, famously played by a wry, poker-faced actor called Roschdy Zem. The lawyer proceeds to make a fool of himself getting involved with a local bimbo, a small-time weather-girl and aspiring journalist (a ham of a young actress, more than a little overstated), in spite of the bodyguard’s wise advice to the contrary. The comedy turns sour, but the film does not, although a thorough understanding of French humor (the intelligent kind, not the farce) is absolutely necessary to enjoy it. The other movie, on the contrary, is a somber, spine-chilling thriller based on a true story which is pretty good in its original version, but would certainly be a smash hit if expertly remade in Hollywood. Not that I think that Hollywood does everything better, oh la la, non! But a bigger budget and a more lavish production could turn an excellent intimate thriller into a blockbuster. All right, I know – I should stick to music.