Lanessa leading me on my first trek through Étampes. Spoiler alert : I arrived successfully.

Arrival in paris

I tried sleeping through the misshapen hours of the early morning between midnight and 3am; times which would be mid-afternoon to evening on top of my Washougal mountain.

But first I watched the second episode of HBO’s Snowpiercer. It’s the future. Earth is dying, or rather, Earth is dead. The temperatures across the planet top out at a hundred degrees below zero. But before this happened, a prescient man invented and created a perpetual motion train that cycles an endless loop around the planet, keeping its 3,000 passengers alive indefinitely. The cars are divided into sections by both function and class. The final cars consist of Tailies; passengers who illegally got themselves a survival pass from the apocalypse, but their lives are barely threaded to humanity and basic needs: the paying and legal passengers up front travel around the globe, perpetually, in comfort and luxury; the Tailies plot a rebellion that will gain them access to the other cars and a better life.

It’s a story about Class, Privilege, and Resistance. How is this relevant to my travels?

Well, I looked at the time. Midnight-ish. I looked around. Blue-light peering out from screens everywhere; several watching Black Widow, some watching A Quiet Place II, a fellow making his way through Donnie Branco, and others playing games or doing something on their smart devices. And some sleeping.

I’m in 50D. There are three sections traversing the aircraft’s length: ABC, DEF, and GH.

I was in D. The aisle to my left. Nobody on my right in E. And nobody in F.

I had an entire row to myself. I felt bad. Do I really lay down here? Most everyone else has seatmates, can’t afford the luxury of lying down across three seats…

I thought of what Lee Long would do, and i thought of what others could have done if they wanted, which was to simply ask to use these other seats, and the answer I came to was: yes, you are going to have a three-seat bed.

So I did. I felt like a Tailie in First Class for an hour while I dozed.

0144am ET / 09444am France (the eight-hour time difference kicks in)

Finally, we began descending to Charles de Gaulle, then wheels down, and finally, almost eight hours later, we came to a stop. France, here I am.

0951 Customs

The sign said it would be ten minutes. It was more like 30-40. The woman checking my passport and vaccine card was pleasant, and her computer was not. I waited, and waited, and waited, and finally she got it going again, and checked my documents, and…voila! Stamp. Welcome to France, Monsier, au revoir.

I set out to find a bathroom, and was reminded that in France, you pay for the privilege of using a public toilet. I didn’t have French coinage and didn’t feel like getting out a credit card so I could pee. So I headed for RER 2 to Paris.

A lot like Portland’s MAX, except cleaner and people chattering in French. I carefully watched at each stop, matching the up with Lanessa’s directions, and hopped off at the correct one, proud of myself for having not only successfully bought a train ticket, but for using that train ticket to get on the correct train.

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Except I couldn’t find the next train. I got off at Chatelin, and walked all over, finally thought I had the right one…but realized several stops down I didn’t. Through a series of pseudo-comical missteps on my heart and fumbling through my French utterances, I finally hopped on the correct No. 14 to Mitterrand. From there I took RER 3, and eventually, close to four hours after touching wheels down, I made it to the little 26,000-strong town of Étampes, satellite city of Paris, temporary home to Lanessa and school of world renowned clown and professeur Philippe Gaulier.

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After turning down a woman wanting to talk to me in French, or at least distract me, and after smoking with an older fellow, or at least he was smoking, then…

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…Lanessa showed up with her Lanessa scream and her Lanessa laugh and her Lanessa hug and we embraced like Americans in Paris, or the Longs Anywhere, and began walking the cobblestone to her flat.

We talked and laughed and ate Trader Joe’s trail mix and watched videos of my two-year old helping pack yesterday. That was followed by discussion of travel and schedule plans over the next few days, and a general agreement to obey our Mom and Have Fun.

Two siblings, nineteen years apart, finally in France together.

Meanwhile, across The Pond

From the Discourses from Home came a single image depicting a pre-7am clot of people in the living room: my mother surrounded by three boys, wrapped under a red blanket, pajama-ed, reading and surrounded by various toy automobiles and books. The morning joy was contagious.

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Lanessa and I discovered that not only do we have a variety of Salty Raven apparel, but we also have a vest and coat that are unmistakeable, inimitably close cousins; this clear realization was made clearer by comparing notes on the source: in all the afore-mentioned cases,

Our Mom, who clothed us as children, and kept right on going, and we are some kind of, as Becca would say, “…matchy-matchertons.”

Yes we are.

1735 Market

We trod through the town market; a phrasing which makes it sound as if Étampes is a tiny village or hamlet with single service stores to serve its tiny community. Reality is that at 26,000 locals, it’s five or six times bigger than Tillamook, the Oregon coastal town Lanessa and I grew up. There’s plenty of shops and stores spread out amidst the cathedrals, residences, alleys, shops, and businesses.

But I liked the idea of simply saying “the town market.” It is not Costco.

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We ate a pastry. Probably the only one I’ll have while I’m here. Or, I might have one more. Or two more. Or we’ll see how things go.

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An elegant array of colors from Kashmir Indian Restaurant in Étampes

We ate Indian food from a restaurant twenty seconds away. Lanessa ordered with confidence. It’s probably the only time I’ll have Indian food while I’m in France.