Stessi joins us at our table. It's that kind of brasserie: friendly and with happily flowing drinks. 'Oh, I very much like trains,' she says, as she calls for a glass of red for herself and continues singing the city's praises. 'Oh yes, it's going on zee up for sure. It's a lot cleaner and safer here now.'
We toast Bordeaux – and drink more red wine. Stessi orders a dish of oysters, on the house. The oysters arrive and we slurp them down, accompanied by an additional glass of white. 'They come from an hour away, all are fresh!' says Stessi, referring to the oysters, not the white. She proceeds to show us a webpage on an iPad listing 620 wines. About 80 per cent of Bordeaux wine is red, we learn. The most expensive bottle here is 2,800 euros.
French taxes are discussed: 'Zee French pay too much taxes,' says Stessi. 'Too much! Seventy-five per cent taxes. Then zere is ten per cent on zee food, twenty per cent on zee alcohol. Since President Hollande it has changed: now we pay even more taxes!'
Gérard Depardieu crops up: 'He's is in Russia now.' The prolific French actor was granted Russian citizenship a couple of years back. 'He was complaining about too much taxes, so he left.'
We order more red wine.
Stessi reminds us that Bordeaux is on zee up.
Danny asks Stessi what she thinks of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the French former head of the International Monetary Fund, whose career hit a rocky patch after allegations of sexual assault made by a New York hotel chambermaid.
Stessi looks into her wine glass. 'Oh!' she says. The very mention of 'DSK' seems to provoke a shock. 'I am ashamed!' she says. 'He is brilliant. But his family life: not so good.' She pauses. 'We prefer things to be done behind closed doors – rather than knowing zee private lives.'
We raise a glass to French discretion… and drink more red wine.
Danny and I say goodbye to Stessi and shuffle onwards to the next wine-tour stop, round the corner: Aux Quatre Coins du Vin. Here, we discover, you buy cards with euros stored in them and then slot the cards in a machine to sample some of the best wine Bordeaux has to offer in either 'tasting size' glasses, half glasses or full glasses. We are assisted in this endeavour by Christelle, who is in her twenties and seemingly amused by the two already slightly shambolic Englishmen who have just spent an hour or more with the wonderful Stessi.
'A taste of black truffle. 2005: a very good year!' says Christelle. 'A Bordeaux Superior – that's a type of appellation.'
Danny and I nod in a manner we hope appears knowledgeable, even though it is quite clear that we know close to nothing at all. We roll the liquid in the glass (copying Christelle) before downing our tasting-size wines. It's très bien indeed. We press another button at Christelle's behest, sampling a fine red with a taste of 'black fruit, liquorice and cassis' from Château Franc-Mayne, followed by a delicious glass of Château Clinet.
'Very strong, smoked and round in the mouth,' says Christelle.
We murmur our approval.
Danny compliments Christelle on her language skills and she says, 'I learn speak English in seven years.'
Then we move on. We witness a street brawl. Two gangs wearing sports clothing seem to be attacking each other near a convenience store. One set of guys wearing sports clothing appears to be on the retreat, but a member of their gang has been caught by the other gang wearing sporting clothing and is getting a battering: kicks to the body on the ground. Even from a distance of 50 yards, it makes us wince. Windows and shutters have flown open on the narrow street and people are yelling down. The fight quickly breaks up and the gang members scatter.
We stop at a bar named La Ligne Rouge, which is down near the river Garonne, for another glass of red on the official wine tour. The owner tells us that Bordeaux is like 'a beautiful sleeping woman'. A local who overhears our conversation strongly advises us against going to La Plage nightclub: 'Who tell you to go to this place?' Apparently, a couple of tourists might stand out a little among the tough Friday-night crowd. Instead, he informs us, although we had not enquired, that 'all the prostitutes are in the south' of Bordeaux. We appear to have reached a stage of the evening in which we look as though we are interested in 'all the prostitutes in the south'. Which cannot, on reflection, be all that good.
We stop for an ill-advised final pint at the Sherlock Holmes Pub near the hotel. This has Victorian-style booths and signs advertising a quiz night.
'They're trying to be a pub here, to be fair,' comments Danny, 'except the beer's very expensive and all the lads over there have half-pint glasses whereas in the UK you'd be embarrassed to have half pints.'
On this profound note, so ends our Big Night Out in Bordeaux.
We do see some of the non-alcohol-related local attractions of Bordeaux, including a modern art museum and the cathedral, but the highlight of our trip is a tour in an open-topped vintage 2CV car named Desiree, owned by Martine Macheras, an outgoing former English-language teacher who set up her tour-guide business a couple of years ago. 'It has been hard to start with, but now tourists are coming,' she says, echoing the upbeat mood that we've encountered throughout the city.
The next morning, feeling slightly less than très bien after last night, we are soon puttering along in the bumblebee-coloured car, examining the remains of a Roman amphitheatre, passing a park next to a square where Mayor Alain Juppé has an apartment, and pausing to see the statues of the philosophers Montesquieu and Montaigne in the wide-open Esplanade des Quinconces.
Martine drives on, skirting a recently re-landscaped area of parkland with a large fountain that's known as the 'water mirror' due to its reflections, and passing a statue of Louis-Urbain-Aubert de Tourny, who oversaw much of the eighteenth-century design of the elegant buildings that remain in Bordeaux. We visit the shell of the soon-to-open wine museum in the rejuvenated docks, cross the stunning Jacques Chaban-Delmas bridge and pull in to the Darwin Centre.
This is the perfect place to understand the new side of Bordeaux that's growing up in anticipation of the faster trains from Paris. Set in a former military barracks dating from the 1850s, the Darwin Centre consists of a laid-back restaurant and bar, with a 'wellness centre' offering yoga classes, a food market, open-plan offices for online start-up companies and a down-to-earth atmosphere. We sit in a big atrium, drink hair-of-the-dog organic Darwin beers (motto: 'where is your fresh vibe?') and eat organic burgers.
'It would be silly not to try an organic beer,' says Danny, who is still looking a little green from the Urban Wine Tour.
'Everything is organic!' says Philippe Barre, the centre's founder, overhearing him as he comes over to say hello. Barre is excited by Bordeaux's future and pleased that the local authorities did not allow the grand old barracks to be destroyed to make way for apartment blocks, as had been planned. He shows us the smart offices, now used by 140 companies and an art gallery. He explains that 'this is international urbanism' and that he has connections with similar set-ups in San Francisco, Berlin and Lisbon. 'We exchange ideas… We have to change our ways of doing cities,' says Barre.
There are now 500 people employed at the Darwin Centre, many formerly unemployed. More or less everything at the centre is made from recycled materials. 'We believe that it is not the more intelligent who survive: it's the people who adapt. That's what we have tried to do: adapt. We don't believe in technology for technology's sake. It should be used for humans,' says Barre. He goes on to explain that before the old buildings were used as barracks, they were where France built many of the trains used in the wars against the Prussians in the nineteenth century: 'This was a strategic place to do that, away from the action.'
Barre has had to break local bureaucratic planning rules to get his centre up and running but it has the backing of the mayor and the future looks rosy. 'Before, this was a neighbourhood that was sleeping, there was nothing very much,' says Barre. 'Now look.'
It's a positive message in a vibrant corner of a city where the future seems pinned to the new trains coming soon. Danny and I have another organic beer in the cour
tyard among Bordeaux's new movers and shakers, then return to the city centre thanks to a lift from Barre, who's going that way and tells us: 'I love trains. In Europe, I only travel by train or cars. Even if I go to Morocco, I go by train. I love it. It's real travel. It's quite expensive, but when you mix trains with cars it can be economical, and if you travel by night, you don't waste any time.'
Train lovers: they're everywhere.
Two Liverpudlians from Lourdes
Bordeaux to London St Pancras
After a repeat night out with a few variations of bar venue, we return to London via Gare de Bordeaux-Saint-Jean. Danny is drinking bottles of water and seeming less keen on travelling by train. 'I suppose you can't put it in your book but it would have been better if we'd flown back,' he comments.
I ignore this.
Two Liverpudlians sitting near us are returning from Lourdes, where they have gone to take the holy water. I get talking to them. One of them has had a 'twisted bowel operation' and can't fly for 18 months. The problem with Lourdes, they say, is that there are a lot of hills and it is 'hard on the legs'.
And so, via the Paris Métro and a bit of waiting around, we return home, somewhat subdued by two days out on the town. At St Pancras, the Daft Punk song 'Get Lucky', featuring Pharrell Williams, is playing over Eurostar's sound system as we eventually pull in after our 62-hour getaway in Bordeaux. And it is only the next day that we realise we have been very lucky indeed.
The following morning, French ferry workers on a wildcat strike cause massive disruptions by setting fire to barricades by the Channel Tunnel. All Eurostar trains are cancelled. Thousands have to seek last-minute hotels in London and Paris, and the backlog of passengers takes days to clear.
C'est la vie unfortunately – once or twice a year something of the sort seems to happen. CHAOS AS BLAZING TYRES BLOCK CHUNNEL, screams the Express. HOLIDAY PLANS GO UP IN SMOKE, says the Mirror. Meanwhile The Sun takes a different tack: THE BEAST OF CALAIS: THE WEALTHY FRENCH LEFTIE WHO IS RUINING BRITISH SUMMER HOLIDAYS. The article goes on to describe the 'bearded' Syndicat du Maritime Nord union leader as a 'shell-suit-wearing socialist with a £1.5 million property empire and a taste for posh cars' who earns £6,000 a month from being a landlord on top of his union work. The report reveals that he has a 'beauty therapist wife' (seemingly regarded by The Sun as unsuitable wife material for a union leader) and that the 'wealthy French leftie' owns a Peugeot 508, though he apparently once possessed an Audi (hardly a fleet of Ferraris or a garageful of Bentleys).
I look back over our couple of (overindulgent) days away, trying to think 'trains', not red wine and nights on the town. What is striking is how often, without prompting, people kept coming back to the new railway in conversations: the speedier link to Paris being seen as some sort of magic key to rich new possibilities. Nobody we met disagreed with that. A boom time could be round the corner, everyone seemed to agree. Bordeaux, as Stessi reminded us so often, appears to be well and truly on zee up, and likely to rise even further very soon.
Already there is the investment by the old port, plus the trams, bridge and Darwin Centre schemes. Parallels, I suppose, could be drawn with the railway mania of the nineteenth century, when railways lifted places from obscurity in the then modern world (though that might be over-egging it just a bit).
Yet new lines definitely do still make a difference: or why else would anyone be building them? Across Europe it's the same – from Zaragoza and Valencia in Spain, to Łódź and Poznań in Poland, to Würzburg, Nuremberg and Stuttgart in Germany – as well as within France itself, with more fast tracks opening up the likes of Vaires-sur-Marne, Vendenheim (near Strasbourg), Rennes, Le Mans, Toulouse, Orléans and Caen. The decades to come will see new lines open by the dozen and the shape of Europe change for travellers as connections become easier.
The high-speed train revolution on the Continent has only just begun.
11
CHINA; NORTH KOREA; ITALY TO POLAND; PERU; SPAIN; SWITZERLAND TO ITALY; POLAND, KALININGRAD AND LITHUANIA: TRAINS, TRAINS, TRAINS
OVER THE YEARS I have been on a fair few trains in faraway places. Like souvenirs or stamps on my passport, I've picked up train memories that have lodged in my mind more firmly than other aspects of travel such as planes, boats or staying at hotels. I can't say why that is. I'm not a train obsessive, no matter how this book may seem: and I never will be, though I can see nothing wrong in being one. I've just come to the conclusion that trains almost always make for a more interesting way of getting about. Why is that? Well, from mutinies in Australian gold class to the secrets of rail enthusiasm in Kosovo, health tips from the Dalai Lama's cardiologist in India and debates on the pros and cons of fracking in America's Badlands, I've begun to realise that there is a random factor that makes a rail journey quite unlike any other form of travel. You're never quite sure what will happen next.
Trains seem to rattle out stories, as though the motion of the track acts to shake up thoughts and loosen tongues. There's a world outside the window and a whole separate world within.
Here are some snapshots from before I started Ticket to Ride.
'Happy troubles' and no mobile phones
Beijing, China, to Pyongyang, North Korea (2008)
I'm on a shiny green train from Beijing to the capital of North Korea, sharing a cabin with a man in a grey suit with a red Workers' Party badge on his lapel. He seems unsettled by my presence. He has placed a jar of blueberry jam on the cabin's small table, and beneath the table the red cap of a bottle of spirits pokes out of a bag. My companion's eyes briefly acknowledge mine, before flitting nervously away. This is as close as we are to come to communication. Seeing as he does not appear to want to say hello, I decide to call him 'Albert' – the first name that pops into my head.
Albert makes a fuss about storing his case. He ventures onto the platform to smoke a cigarette, watching me through the window. Another man in a grey suit pauses by the door to look in at me. He has big, brown, deadpan eyes. He moves away, and so does the train, through the dusty Beijing haze. Albert returns and, without looking my way, wordlessly and methodically collects his blueberry jam, bottle and luggage – and goes to the next-door cabin, where I hear him jabbering to other passengers. Maybe he doesn't want to be seen with a westerner: in cahoots with the 'enemy', hatching revolutionary plots on the 17:25 from Beijing.
Another neighbour, a rotund man with a squint, has a box of beer delivered to his cabin. These North Koreans seem to know how to party on a train. Albert and the men next door already have drinks on the go. These are accompanied by a feast laid out on pink plastic dishes. I walk slowly down the corridor with its blue carpet and grimy curtains, checking on the state of the various festivities, feeling a bit left out. At the end of the carriage I find the toilet, which consists of a hole in the floor. Between carriages, small men with oily hair and white shirts are smoking. There's always one or two of them there.
Beyond Beijing, heading east, the sky reappears out of the fug of city pollution, turning lavender in the twilight. I eat noodles using hot water from an urn and drink 'Tony's firewater'. My guide in Beijing, named Tony, gave me a little bottle of spirits: 'It will help you sleep well.' A flick and shuffle of cards comes from Albert's cabin. Laughter breaks out down the hall. The rotund man's cans open with a click and a fizz. The parties are now well under way, though I have yet to receive an invite. I close my cabin door. The seats have a burgundy-green-and-white checked pattern. An oval mirror hangs on the door by an empty magazine rack. I fall asleep quickly, enjoying the reassuring judder of the track.
Morning sun casts yellow beams on jagged hills. The train enters a tunnel. We exit and come to trees with delicate white blossoms, lakes and a valley with terracotta-roofed houses. We stop and Chinese immigration officials check my passport. Outside is a concrete town, with the Yalu Hotel in the foreground. A roundabout is decorated with fake plastic deer. We are shunted about a bit. Silence reigns in the other cabins. Two hours pass. Then we
cross a long bridge into North Korea, where I can see a rusty, empty funfair near the riverbank: is this for show so the Chinese imagine everyone in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is having a grand old time? From a distance, although not up close, it must look that way.
We stop near the funfair by concrete steps to an immigration building. My passport is taken by a man in green. There's a long wait, so I close the cabin door, lie down and snooze. I wake to find two officers sitting cross-legged opposite me, watching intently.
One wears a rough, green military uniform with a cut-off collar. He has a broad, moon-like face and an inscrutable expression. The other has flinty eyes and a slick grey suit. They wear red circular badges featuring the face of North Korea's founding father, the Supreme Leader Kim Il-Sung, who helped defeat the Japanese and set up the country in the 1940s (he passed away in 1994). Their shoes are neatly placed on the floor.
Ticket to Ride Page 26
