• SA CONNECT
  • SA NEWS
  • SA DATING

South Africans in New York

SA News for SAPeople

  • Home
  • Interviews
  • Health
  • Fab!
  • Eish!
  • Videos
  • Photos
  • Blogs
    • Cape Town
    • Durban
    • Italy
    • Johannesburg
    • L.A.
    • London
    • New York
    • World
  • New York Blog

Archives for May 2010

If It’s Tuesday, It Must be a Strike

May 25, 2010 by Ted Botha Leave a Comment

When Train Travel is Good

When Train Travel is Good

Actually the strike on SNCF, the French national railways, happened on Wednesday, right after Easter, but it could have been Tuesday. The one event caused no trains (the French railworkers went to get cafe and pastis), the other caused the trains to be overcrowded (because Europeans, unlike most Americans, travel by train on holiday weekends). So much for a whizzbang, smooth-as-a-train-track Eurail trip through Europe that I had planned.

But if anything, traveling reminds you not only of the bumps in the road – sorry, on the platform – but also of what home is (or isn’t) like. Yes, people everywhere complain about their hometowns and their countries! And they have lots that they complain about.

A Bumpy Ride in Europe

A Bumpy Ride in Europe

I took the Eurostar from London to Paris (a measly 240 pounds return!), tried to buy a Eurail ticket in St. Pancras (although the English had no idea what I was talking about, and said it could only be bought via the Internet and mailed to you a month before your trip), but eventually managed to buy a Eurail ticket from a very helpful woman at the Gare du Nord in Paris (so much for sulky, useless Parisians – per the British).

By the time I had caught the nighttrain from Paris to Barcelona, I was ready to meet a bunch of nice people – expats mostly, seeing Barcelona has lots of expats – who talked about their Spanish city being the pickpocket capital of the world. One South African among the group recounted how his mom in Johannesburg always complained of the bad service she got over the phone from government employees at home. He told her: Mom, come live in Spain and see what you get. It’s exactly the same.

Personally, I was more struck by Barcelona’s dirty roads, although they paled in comparison next to the dirt, graffiti (you have never seen such avid street artists in your life) and potholes in Rome, which has caused an Italian friend of mine there to consider moving to Australia.

On the train to Rome from Nice, a young woman behind me was telling her friend via cell phone about how she’d been harassed by some guys the previous night before they tried to get into her apartment. In Paris, a young friend told me about how a group of her women friends, all in their twenties, had gone out the previous night, and all they could do was trade stories about having been mugged.

In London, the couple I stayed with – in a very nice suburb, I might add – barred their downstairs floor at nighttime. They also told me that if you have a country house in France, you cannot leave it for two weeks without an alarm, or it will be stripped bare by robbers.

Yes, it’s the same the world over. People complain, and this was especially true for the chap opposite me on the train from Barcelona to Montpellier. His version of the Rain in Spain was was to Complain in Spain (And Everywhere Else Too).

A Frenchman who had emigrated to Canada fifty years ago, he ascribed the downfall of the world to the Haitians, the Chinese, the strikers at SNCF. “The world is going to war,” he said, and all he wanted to do was to move to Florida.  This diatribe I (and everyone else in our coach, which was nice and quiet before he arrived) heard him tell his neighbor, a woman from England who complained on those plains of Spain just as much as he did.

Thankfully, we arrived in France, she got off, and he had no one to talk to anymore. And the rest of us were left to enjoy one of the best pleasures in the world (when there isn’t a strike, potholes, barred windows, harassed young women, or robberies) – and that is train travel in Europe.

Filed Under: New York Blog Tagged With: eurostar, gare du nord, italy, london, paris, rome, sncf, train

About Ted

Ted was born in New York and grew up in Japan, South Africa, and Washington, D.C. He has written for numerous publications, including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, Condé Nast Traveler, and Outside. His books include Apartheid in my Rucksack, a personal account of discovering Africa as a white African; Mongo, Adventures in Trash, where he follows the people in New York City who collect what others consider garbage; and, with Jenni Baxter, The Expat Confessions, about South Africans abroad. His latest book, a nonfiction thriller about a forensic sculptor titled The Girl with the Crooked Nose, comes out in January 2012. His novel, The Animal Lover, is on Kindle. He is a swimmer and a runner, and has done his share of triathlons as well as long-distance swims in South Africa and New York’s Hudson River.

Archives

  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • November 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • February 2011
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009

Ted’s Blog

coffee shop new york

Moer, It’s Coffee! In New York

When Die Antwoord played in New York a couple of weeks ago, Neville Ross was trying to get them to pay a visit to the coffee shop that he has opened with Nick Carnavale. … Read More...

“Chronicle,” a Movie Shot Where?

I don't know about you, but if a movie is shot in South Africa I can tell. Within five seconds of a Volvo ad screening on TV, I can detect Chapman's Peak or the Karoo or a … Read More...

Pasop, Goldman Sachs!

The New York Times today carried an op-ed piece by South African-born, Rhodes graduate Greg Smith decrying the state of his employer, Goldman Sachs. Titled "Why I am Leaving … Read More...

Farewell, Oh Bicycle!

New York City finally got my bicycle. I knew it would happen sooner or later. The warnings were there. The last time I went to the bike shop to check on which locks were best, … Read More...

Safe House

We all know that Cape Town is being used a lot for movie shoots and ad shoots, often doubling for a city in America or elsewhere. This week sees the launch of Safe House, an … Read More...

Copyright © 2023 · Metro Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in