De l'est à l'ouest, par le Train

Éloyes Station (I think)

So, my journey to Cherbourg continued...

As I said in the last post, I had to get replacement bus from Remiremont to Epinal and then change to train for Paris. Helene had told me that there were no stops in between the two stations but she was very wrong - we stopped at Saint-Nabord, Éloyes and Arches. It was a nice scenic route and I was very glad to be getting further and further away!

At Epinal, I got off the bus and went to find the train! The French 'composte' their tickets before they board on trains - basically involves sticking your ticket into a yellow scanner which stamps your ticket with the location, date and time. I'm still not sure why you're supposed to do this though... Seems a bit superfluous to me!

It took me a little while to find the right platform and train. It wasn't too difficult but as I didn't want to drag my suitcases up stairs I got the lift, but I got in the wrong one twice as it didn't say on the lifts which platforms they went up to. Helpful!

I boarded the train after a little while searching. Helene had freaked me out with her constant telling me that sometimes trains split, check lots of times that its the right train because it might not be etc. so I walked up and down the platform about 3 times until I was convinced it was the right train. Thanks to getting the earlier bus there was plenty of time to wander.

Pretty Church in Arches

The train from Epinal to Paris was very relaxing. It left at 16:27 and was due to arrive in Paris at 18:46. The bus had been boiling so I had a freshen up in the loo, and then listening to Lana Del Ray's new album while watching the French countryside out of the window. It was a TGV train (fast train) so it didn't stop very many times, maybe only 3-4 times at the most. At Nancy lots of people got on but no one sat next to me so I still got to spread out.

Epinal Station

We were a little early arriving in Paris, at Gare de Paris-Est . I didn't mind too much. I had two hours wait in Paris and get the Metro west to Gare Saint-Lazare. Helene had given me a child ticket for the Metro that she happened to have but Frances told me not to risk it because they'll just fine you lots of money on the spot so better to just spend an extra 1.70euros on a new one. I had a bit of difficulty getting through the barriers with all my luggage - they didn't seem to have them for people with luggage in some places so I got stuck a few times!

Helene also told me to go via Opéra on the metro but that was stupid because going from Paris Est to Saint Lazare via Gare du Nord meant one stop on the Metro line 4, a change onto RER E Magenta line (after a 5 min walk through Gare du Nord), one more stop and you're there! Would have been able to do it in about 20 mins if I'd run/worked it out a bit faster/not gone on the Magenta line in the wrong direction... I asked a french person if it was going to Saint-Lazare. He said yes, but I shouldn't have believed him as one stop later I was in Pantin... (two stops in the wrong direction). I didn't mind too much as I just hopped off, went up the steps and over the bridge to the other side and jumped back on! I met a very nice english guy (probably a student) on that train. He asked if I needed help (in English!) as I was translating something on my phone. I told him thanks very much, but I'd worked it out now, and explained about getting on in the wrong direction. He told me to 'Never ask a French person anything. They really do not care!' Very good advice!

When I got to Saint-Lazare, I followed the signs out towards the train station. It turned out that the Metro was about 100m from the Station, and not just in the same building like Gare du Nord was. I had around an hour to kill at this point so took my time getting into the station. I worked out the general area where trains to Cherbourg went from and went to hang around there while waiting for the Platform to be announced. I was just considering going to get a burger when an english girl and her mother walked past, talking in english, and I think I blurted out 'Are you english?'

Nancy Station

They were very nice and happy to see an english person too! They told me all about their ordeal getting from Gare du Nord to their hotel, not too far from Saint-Lazare. Apparently they weren't sure about how easy it would be so just booked a taxi which originally quoted about 25euros but charged them over 50! I told them that I'd just come from Gare du Nord and explained how easy (and cheap) it was. They then told me that they were in Paris as a holiday before Charlotte (the girl) restarted her A Levels in September. She told me all about how she wanted to be an actress and was taking Drama but had struggled with the theory side of her A levels, although had got top marks on all practical sides of things. I told them about how I was going to be an au pair and had been in the mountains etc.

They stayed talking to me for almost half an hour and at about 8:30pm I told them I should probably go and find my train as the platform was now on the boards - platform 25. It wasn't far so I headed over, and waited. Just as I got there the boards flashed 'Retard 5 min'. I wasn't too worried by this so just sat at the end of the platform waiting for the train to turn up. I remembered about the silly composte thing so moved over to scan my ticket at about 20:40. A few seconds later a station guard (what do you call them?!) came up to me and asked me what train I was waiting for and where I was going. I told her Cherbourg and showed her my ticket. She then told me that the train had moved (she'd worked out I was english and was thankfully speaking english for me!) and that it was now on Platform 23. It didn't say that on the boards - they still said Plat 25, delayed 5 mins! She said she'd show me and ran me over there. She pointed at the train and said 'quick, the train leaves in 3 minutes!' I hurriedly said thank you very much for letting me know and rushed over to the train to get backs and things on. This train was a non-reserved seating one so thankfully I didn't need to hunt for the correct carriage and seat and just jumped on. I put my suitcase on the racks and then found a seat. Less than a minute later the train left.

I'm so glad that she came and told me, and that she guessed I was waiting in the wrong place! I would have had no idea otherwise and would have missed the train completely!!

The journey was mostly uninteresting. The only thing that happened was some strange drunk french/eastern european guy was asking people if they had a phone charger he could use. I had my laptop out with my phone plugged into it and if I'd realised that's what he wanted earlier, I would have hidden it! He came along and asked, when I said no, he leaned over and took my charger out of my phone and tried to fit it into his phone! I tried saying it was a different phone and didn't work but when it did he told me thank you and then sat down and made himself comfortable! He told me he'd just be 2 mins but then made a long, loud phone call and kept trying to pass the phone over to me to get me to speak to his friend. I kept saying 'Non merci, Je regrette, je ne comprends pas' but he didn't get it. After a couple of minutes the train stopped at another station and everyone else in the carriage got off! At this point, I started to feel pretty uncomfortable so packed away my laptop and everything else, took my charger from him, and told him I needed to go to the toilet. He tried getting me to leave my laptop and charger etc. all there while I went but I told him it all needed to come with me. I picked up my bag, went to get my suitcase from the rack and planned to go into the next carriage where there were more people. The guy insisted on helping me carry my bags and then stood blocking the way into the next carriage next to the loo. I actually did need the toilet so took all my stuff into the toilet and took a good 10 minutes. By this point it was about 12am so I knew we only had a couple more minutes until we reached Cherbourg. I came out of the toilet and headed straight into the next carriage. Thankfully he'd disappeared, probably to bug someone else for a phone charger!

Finally arrived in Cherbourg at 00:05. Charly was there to meet me at the station and we were only about 10 mins drive from the house where I finally felt like I could relax again!

More about Cherbourg next...

Mon Évasion de Vosges

Getting out of there was pretty stressful. Despite agreeing to me leaving on Friday 29th August in the original emails, Helene was very reluctant to let me leave as planned. The closer we got to the day it was planned for me to leave, the more worried I got. Helene had refused to let me buy a train ticket saying that she didn't know when we would finish, and that I couldn't leave until we had. As I hadn't actually been anywhere outside of the house where I would have been able to find internet or a train ticket boutique either, I was starting to feel more and more trapped!

The Monday of the week I was due to leave, my Cherbourg family tried to contact me. Limited signal made this pretty tricky so I arranged to call them back the next day, and in the mean time try to get a definitive answer about time/day I would be able to leave from Helene.

I called Fran and Charly on Tuesday evening. I'd had no luck getting a clear answer from Helene but she definitely didn't want me to leave until at least Saturday. I tried explaining that she had agreed for me to leave on Friday but to no avail - she just told me I had definitely said the 30th (now I have internet again, I checked the emails. They confirm that she agreed to me leaving on Friday 29th!). Helene had offered, should it happen to coincide with the day/time I planned to go, to drop me off 'somewhere near Paris' on her way back home to Laval, but she was very vague about this and so I wasn't sure about taking my chances with that.

After a chat about train times with Fran, it was agreed that the train I had originally planned to get on (11:04am from Epinal on Friday 29th) would be best however Helene wasn't being clear about whether she would take me to the train station. Not only that, but she also said that we were an hour away from Epinal and that it would be very inconvenient for her. Fran asked me to find out where Helene had planned to drop me off in Paris to see if they would be able to arrange to pick me up/have a friend collect me/something similar. However when I went to ask Helene she continued to be vague and wouldn't give a clear answer, or a time that she would be able to drop me off. Fran decided that Helene was actually being really difficult and said that they'd speak to her instead.

I put Helene on the phone with Charly who spoke to her in French. I didn't get much from the conversation other than Helene's "She is a big girl" and "That's a big problem for me". After a couple of minutes she snapped 'Au revoir' and hung up (I was pretty annoyed about that, I still had another 25 minutes left on the call without needing to pay more but hanging up meant I'd have to pay to call again to finish the conversation!)

Helene was very annoyed after this. She told me that it was the strangest conversation she'd ever had and that Charly was a scary man that had used the word 'summon' which she'd never heard in conversation before, had talked about me like I wasn't a person and that she thought I wouldn't be able to cope with him in Cherbourg because he was a very hard and strict man. I found all of that pretty hard to believe. I'd spoken to Charly a few times and certainly wasn't scary! She talked about how scary and authoritarian he was, how his wife must be really repressed etc. for about half an hour, but still had refused to agree on a date and time for me to leave.

After calling them back they told me that she'd just told them that it wasn't possible to agree a time because she hadn't finished the work she needed to complete yet and that she needed to keep me until it was complete. Charly was quite angry about how rude she was to them and about the way she'd been treating me and agreed to see if he could find a way of buying me a ticket for the Friday so that she had no choice but to put me on it, however given that the house had no address and it was coming up to 2 days before the train he didn't think that it would be possible. Before saying goodbye they told me not to worry, if I needed to leave earlier than planned, or even late at night, that they would be able to pick me up or find me somewhere to stay in Paris at short notice, assuming I could get there. Very kind of them!

Charly had told me he would call her the next day to try and get an answer from her so the next day her phone rang and she ran off to answer it. She came back 5 mins later to tell me that it was another strange conversation with 'your french man in Cherbourg'. She told me that never before had someone called just to apologise and that it was very odd behaviour. I asked if he'd said anything else but she said that he hadn't, that he just wanted to apologise. (When I spoke to Charly he told me that he'd just been trying a different approach, eg. "I'm sorry for getting annoyed in our phone conversation last night but we really do need to have a set time for Cate's arrival?? *Hint Hint*", but naturally she'd missed the hints and just seen it as an apology. Ridiculous)

On Wednesday night, I couldn't sleep because I was feeling so worried about the fact that I hadn't bought a ticket, or even had Helene agree to a specific train yet! I was supposed to be leaving in less than two days time! In an attempt to calm myself down a bit I decided to pack up all my things so that I would at least know I'd be ready to leave whenever Helene finally agreed to it.

The next morning, after very little sleep I came down to tell Helene about my lack of sleep caused by worry. She couldn't understand what I could possibly be worried about, unless it was 'your scary french man in Cherbourg', which it obviously wasn't. I tried to explain that I hadn't bought a ticket yet, or even got a day or time confirmed from her. I was concerned about the price going up, not being able to reserve a seat, not being able to get on a train etc. but she told me that I was being childish and worrying about silly things. Personally, I thought I was being an adult for actually caring about being organised and wanting to make sure that I kept the commitment I'd previously made to Fran and Charly in Cherbourg but she didn't see it that way.

The lack of sleep, stress, worry and now Helene's ignorance and failure to understand, or to even listen to me, drove me to tears at which point Helene told me I was a baby and that 'I'll just drive you to the train station so you can buy a ticket right now then, just so we can work'. This seemed a bit extreme so I said that I was happy to just buy one using the internet on her phone so she didn't have to go out of her way, and that all I needed was for her to confirm a time so that I could actually do that, but she refused. I went upstairs to get my purse and coat and then came back downstairs. I repeated that it really wouldn't be a problem to just buy one on her phone given that it was about an hours drive to and from the station and I knew she wanted to work, I added that given the journey time to the station that it didn't make sense for her to go today and then again the next day to take me. Helene told me she didn't care, all that she wanted was to do work and I never ever wanted to work because I was such a baby, oh and that she was really cross. This was too much. I'd worked 14 hours a day for 8 days in a row at this point with barely any sleep in between and it was her that was hindering us getting started with work by having a strop and saying she'd drive to and from the station just to buy a ticket! Eventually she just said 'oh, so if everything is such a big problem for you then maybe you just want to leave today instead?'

I don't think she was expecting me to say 'Yes, ok. I will. I'll go and get my things'. She completely lost it at that point, knocking books onto the floor and stomping out, slamming the door and swearing continuously. I was pretty upset by this point. I think it was perfectly reasonable to want to buy a train ticket in advance so that I had a definitive day and time of departure from the mountains, and an arrival date and time to give Charly and Fran in Cherbourg!

I went upstairs to pack up my last few things - pretty much just had pyjamas, laptop and wash things to shove in the bag - and then called Fran to let them know what was going on. Fran completely understood and told me that it was no problem for me to arrive early, she'd just need to clear off my bed! She started telling me about the next available train times when the door bursts open and Helene stormed in through the door telling me I was being ridiculous and just needed to calm down. I told her I was on the phone, which she ignored, and then I eventually just ended up passing the phone over to her so that Helene could talk to Fran.

After about 15 mins, Helene passed the phone back to me. I had packed my things, brought them downstairs and was just filling up a water bottle for the journey by this point! Fran told me that Helene had told her I was having a huge panic attack and that she wasn't comfortable putting me on a train in my state because I would definitely get lost and she was very worried about me. Fran thought I definitely didn't sound like I was having a panic attack, but actually quite calm despite being a bit upset, and that the cause of my stress was clearly Helene. She'd told her that it was probably best to let me come to them today as they were fine with it and it sounded like I needed a break! Fran also told Helene that she'd need to pay me so that I would be able to buy a ticket (she hadn't paid me for 4 weeks!), and then told me the next train was at 16:27 from Epinal. It was about 11am at this point so I had quite a bit of time to wait, but I didn't care. It was supposed to take an hour to get to Epinal anyway so thought it was probably best that I had some more time to spare, in case Helene managed to be any more difficult, which it turned out she could!

I went to tell Helene about the train from Epinal. She told me I wouldn't be going from Epinal, but from Remiremont, a tiny little station only a little bigger than Yate (and that's just because it had somewhere to buy tickets from Humans and was located next to the bus station) because it was about 20 mins away rather than an hour. I discovered that I could get a connecting train at 15:27 so still had plenty of time, though I was a bit annoyed that she couldn't even be bothered to take me to the train station she had originally told me she'd take me to. She kept telling me that I could stay if I wanted to, that I could even stay in my room and not do any work all day if that would make me want to stay. I didn't want to stay there anymore, I'd only left that house 5 times in a month and was desperate for civilisation, the internet, shops etc.

When I told her what time the train was she said that we didn't have to leave immediately if I didn't want to and that we could go whenever I wanted, and that I should eat first. I told her that I would prefer to leave before 2pm to give me plenty of time to get there, get tickets, find out where I was going, and for her to go and find an ATM to pay me from! I took my time having something to eat, during which she kept shouting questions about English grammar and vocabulary as she was trying to add some last bits to her lessons. She then asked if, just before we left, I could check the paragraph she had just written. I didn't mind but then we ended up working for an hour and a half!?! So much for, 'you don't have to work today'.

At 2:00pm, I packed my suitcases in the car and at 2:30pm, we finally got to the train station. Helene asked the station person (what are they called?) about train tickets. I understood enough to hear her asking about trains tomorrow morning and saturday. I told her that I was adamant about leaving on the train at 15:27, and then she told me that it would be 79€ for that train, or 69€ if I got the one the following morning. "It's ok if you want to stay an extra night, it's 10€ cheaper so it might be better?"

I bought my tickets and then waited at the station for her to go and find a cash point. When she got back she told me that there wasn't a train, but it was actually a replacement coach instead, and that I could get the earlier one at 15:04 if I wanted to. I did so I said an awkward goodbye to Helene and the two younger children and hopped on.

And so my escape from the Vosges began!

A few pictures from Remiremont station...