Monday, July, 5, 2021
07:46 Fucked up Train to Rennes
You already know the time and I’m seeing blurred doubles…
Yet, I’m on the correct subway to the right train station, going the exact perfect direction, with enough time for any curve balls—even though my final Parisian stop was NOT clearly denoted on the lighted board like every other mutha fuxkin time I’ve ridden this snake!
Apparently, I was NOT at the correct train station!!! Nor nearly enough time to trek the additional half-an-hour to the RIGHT station.
Why do they name major stations similarly? There’s the ultra confusing New York, New Jersey Northeast Corridor train an others with the same name on opposite sides of the river, ocean, bay?
You’re drowsy and even the veteran commuter may rush to depart on the WRONG side of the water!!!
10:36
“Look for those in red.”
Another of today’s silly little jokes!! Those in red were supposedly station workers. Or were they?
OK so I’m in one of the main train stations in Paris, Gare Montparnasse, there is no information booth anywhere, one bathroom is way at the far OPPOSITE end, and the only place to buy tickets when you don’t know how to use the machines or the machines don’t sell to that station, is through the long line waiting to get to use 20 dilapidated machines inside the “main office”. All those touchscreen machines don’t allow my credit cards, YET fortunately they speak English.
So, after realizing my card wasn’t gonna work, I ask innocently, “Are there change machines here, or a bank?“ I get these looks like I just asked him if I could fuck their daughters. Others look like it’s the most bizarre question in the world to ask in a train station in the middle of a fucking major city in 2021. So after rephrasing the question – “where is the nearest bank, or an ATM, or anywhere where I can change money [casa de cambio],” and learning there may be one somewhere in the country, I realize maybe I should go to the bathroom first.
That’s when I learned the ONLY bathroom was on the opposite end of the station. What is it with city planning or designing any place – but especially pubic places where 100,000 people gather everyday to go places? I finally trekked my Blass over there with two backpacks and my homeless Ghetto heavy duty plastic bag with dirty clothes and shit in it.
Entrance to piss: one Euro COIN to get by this gauntlet; ultra narrow turnstile. In search of change, I go to the lovely salad place which is was the closest of the four cafes and “restaurants”.
“A salad s’il vous plaît?”
“Errrr, no salads till 10 a.m., he says, “but you can get coffee.”
I don’t fucking want a diuretic – in 23 minutes I’ll have to trek my Black ass BACK here to piss again
What comes out is, “Give me a cookie, s’il vous plaît.” I point to the broken one because it’s the biggest one. However, I think he had that set aside for him and his friends to eat, because he was reluctant to give me the broke-ass one. “You want that one?”
Yeah, I want that very motherfucking one. So he gives it to me – reluctantly. I pay and he says, “Oh you need change?”
“Oui,” that’s the only reason why my hung-over shitty self is buying a cookie the size of Gibraltar. Hanging with Alejandro for his birthday all weekend has caught up with me. I should’ve listened to him and joined him Arturo and others heading to Rennes for Vini and Lucie’s wedding TOMORROW! But, I thought, they need so help out there, and I’d promised to be available. After all, pulling off a Destination Wedding ain’t E-Z!! And….three nights of RAGING in Paris would’ve killed me.
Angrily shoving it into the bottom of my bag for later consumption – and pocketing the one COIN Euro to get into the fucking bathroom to piss.
Turnstiles: not made for fat people, people with more than one day pack or both. I travel with one pack on back, one on front, imitation Duty Free [Homeless] bag in one hand, coin in the other. Now that that’s done, I go on this half hour Mecca mission about a half a mile to find a change house. Going into the Postal Service System—like a FedEx Office, and learned that the change machine is across the street on the corner, but the man says, “…not open until 10.”
GREAT!!
I wander out and next to that casa de cambio are two or three others. I’m being blasted by air which this guy’s using to clean off his little shitty tiled area in front of the plexiglass. Why not use a broom? Why are people so incredibly wasteful and lazy. They say we can stay fit doing regular daily “exercises” cleaning and washing and picking things up and whatnot. It’s one of the keys to longevity.
So I’m gagging on this unnecessarily blustery alley of an entrance because I don’t have a mask on, while he says “Yes we are open,“ and I go back out, cough a bit and put my mask on.
Merci!
Transaction happens really quietly and I get a decent rate but I think one of the 20s is counterfeit? because the machine back at the station wouldn’t accept it when I went back 20 minutes later to get my train ticket.
So, back at the far end of the train station getting my ticket with cash now because now I have €240, and I get a voucher with a barcode on it which I couldn’t figure out how to scan and then pay. I’m trying to scan the voucher there’s things that might read a barcode, I move it up, down, left, right nothing happens. I finally scan and red light blink, but still NADA! I talked to a guy he says “Yeah, no just go to the machine and scan it.“
Where, exactly?
He follows me over and scans it like I’m a fucking idiot – he held it sideways and he just scanned it really easily. So then I took a picture of the ticket and it’s a very big ticket so it’s like I bet it’s only gonna be the strip the black strip on the back so I can’t bend it and I’m like this is 2021, however you guys have a 2001 system of buying tickets you have no information booths anywhere inside, so anyone who’s looking for information must intuit it or know the language or have been here before.
I talk to another guy just to double check that the ticket I bought was for this very station and NOT like one 30 fuckin minutes away!!! by metro…and he says “Yes, no problem.” and he actually stops, takes out this little gizmo, “The gate won’t be announced for a while because it’s an 11:49 train,” and then he’s kind enough to look it up on his machine and he also says — which is fucking gold mine—the name of the train will be called “Saint Malo”, its final stop. Not at all what I’d be looking for, “Rennes” or Nantes!? Lucky me, St. Malo is not posted at all on the fucking ticket. Which you’d think would be vital information. It doesn’t tell you that at all just a time and where it lands. He then says “here it says, Rennes will be the first stop.“
Yet, I suppose that’s like LIRR trains in NYC where you need to know the LAST stop or name of said train that’s or that particular route. Certain stops may have multiple trains stopping there. This is especially true with major hubs.
Still this one dude working in the main station was So cool!
So many couldn’t give a rat’s ass and this guy was kind enough, showing me exactly where and when!!
Seriously, not since China have I been so befuddled and discombobulated in the fucking train station in the middle of a large metropolitan city. Thailand not as complicated, where I didn’t know the fucking language. Vietnam not nearly so complicated where I didn’t know the fucking language. Anywhere in South America I kind of knew the language but not nearly so complicated.
Cranky old man fussing about nothing?
Perhaps…
Hung-over and tired raving about $0.75 for a slash? And walking a mile to get money changed?
Developed World peoples’ problems.
And, honestly, initial arrivals in both Thailand and China were exceedingly complicated. But in Thailand I got lucky and we eventually found my first hostel, and in China I had “Linda”, a sort of Handler for those Newbies arriving who help us find apartments, set up our phones, bank accounts, transportation and she was there nearly 24/7 for emergencies.
Sidenote: Bathrooms should be free if you’re in the fucking train station going somewhere or trying to do anything. If you’re worried about the homeless using your bathrooms and fucking them up build other bathrooms publicly outside that anyone can fucking use.
Nothing like running around for an hour and a half trying to do one simple motherfucking thing when I could’ve slept until now, arriving right now for my fucking train, leaving in exactly ONE hour!!!
And I’m reminded about the other silly little joke in the station. A woman just came up to me and was asking “Where’s my train up on the information board?” (Its end destination)
Weird though,,either her ticket was for another day, or I was looking at return info but apparently the train left two hours ago (08:13) but she’s looking for where it was on the marquee in the blue screens. She said, “Ooh yeah, they said to go find someone in red,” and since I happened to have taken off my outer shirt and my suit jacket, (no use trying to look sophisticated in this dung heap) thus she came up to me and thinking I know something and she’s like, “Do you speak Italian?” and I was like “I don’t speak French, but I speak Spanish and English!”
“And you have Wi-Fi?”
Yup
So going around in circle jerks she sees a bear of a Frenchie at the next table over and she gets what she needs from him.
I think they simply tell people, “Ask those in red,” as a joke, laughing their asses off watching all those in red bombarded with all of these most confused travelers fielding queries from these random “Blind leading the Blind.”
More Weirdness?
Returning to salad station and waiting for child to order through mother figure, running back and forth clueless to the Full Frontal+ backpacks on the Black man patiently waiting. I swear this girl kept walking the length of the counter discussing all the ways she was going to order what-the-fuck-ever? Why when we’re ordering shit it seems like it takes 5 seconds but when we’re waiting it feels like those in front of us are refinancing their condos?
So many questions?
Another Developed World Issue – FAR TOO MANY CHOICE.
Grab a Hot chocolate, an apple and a croissant and fucking call it breakfast already?!!
“Would you like chocolate powdered sugar on top or caramel drizzle. Or Madagascar vanilla bean sprinkles or Indonesian cinnamon?
And, as to you “milk”, there’s decaf, half-n-half, heavy whipping cream, 2%, 8%, 27.5% or any other incremental % all the way up to 93% milk…
OR
half-soy, 1/8 Armenian cashew, 1/8 Ecuadorian alpaca’s fresh, and 1/4 Siberian day-old yak’s milk? Or some other variation? We have a list of 83 milk substitutes from 27 countries.
How old are you, 9? The sooner you discern the intricacies of milks the sooner your life will be that much richer!!”
By the time she’d finished I saw and took a photo of the very salad I wanted. Then I noticed it was the same one prominently displayed 15 feet to Rafi’s left. Pointing to it, “That’s the exact salad I’d like, sil vous plait.”
Rafi confusedly goes to the back and then rushes to turn on the six blackened touchscreens, mumbling “Order from one of these. Menu’s changed.”
Two new parties come in and order and he sets them up while I’m tapping away on defunct screens; first one and then when that one fails to respond I moved to another.
I try that touchscreen, but perhaps since they’ve only JUST been turned on, they need a few hours to warm up?
It’s abundantly clear, whomever is making salads couldn’t be bothered…or Rafi?
No worries. My remaining €152 is good anywhere!
Oh, and my Citizen’s card works, too!! Finally a card works?? Just don’t fuckin’ overdraw!!
I’m down to $1.17, but I may have some international charges, so I’ve shifted $357 to Citizen’s immediately, meaning tomorrow it should be available.
Here’s the final kicker, while I’d informed all three of my credit cards I’d be traveling in France and several other countries, NONE seem to work?
Fun!!
@doepicshiiiiit4138
Shawn L. Carson
Do Epic Shit 