The Trip.....Day III

Day III





Tuesday was a travel day. We awoke to the cell phone alarm and my wife stated she did not sleep well for worry that it would not work. We went downstairs to call the cab and upon opening the door of the TV room were confronted by a rodent. A reasonably large rodent. It seems that my son’s housemates (geniuses all) had elected the night before to take a hedge hog in as a pet. Although this one seemed fairly docile (it ladi by the door as of dead), it was still a disconcerting thing to confron at 6:45 A.M. in Cambridge England. We got a cab. The hedgehog stayed.

The train ride out from London to Cambridge was very uneventful and pleasant and we were looking forward to a ride in with a newspaper and a croissant and perhaps a sausage roll for a leisurely hour long poke into King’s Cross at 7:30 in the morning. We are of course...idiots. I believe I have mentioned that fact before. &:30 on a Tuesday is rush hour. We got to the train station in plenty of time an I bought a sausage roll and she a croissant and then we stood towards the wall keeping our bags out of the way as the platform in front of us filled 8 deep. The train was delayed by a few minutes and when it came there was a crushing press and rush for the few available seats. We barely managed to squeeze on with our bags, standing by the door in a press.

That was bad because it was so unexpected, yet so foreseeable. We were traveling into one of the biggest cities in the world during rush hour. The hour long trip became more nightmarish when at every stop (5 in all) more and more people pressed into our little space. No one moved down the rows to create more space and the people who were seated were careful never to make eye contact with the rest of the crush in much the same manner as I imagine the German guards did not make eye contact with the prisoner loaded onto rail boxcars. It was also hot, and got hotter with each new stop. It was also eerily quiet. I have never commuted on mass transit in a big city and the lack of communication among the masses was disquieting and depressing.

We made King’s Cross and got off the train with our bags once again stupidly attempting to get out of the way of the crowd and let the commuters pass. We stood there for a solid 5 minutes as they thronged by before rolling our eyes and giving up and dragging our bags into the terminal with many “excuse me’s” along the way. It was at best a nightmare as we eventually found the Picadilly Line for Heathrow 123 and 5. No one ever explains what happened to Heathrow 4 and one imagines it is the dark secret of the Picadilly Line. I am thinking it might be the terminal which jets people off to Hogworts Academy. That train too was packed and we could not sit. Standing in the sweltering mass I watched one man get bonked on the head by the closing door in a manner that seemed violent.

We eventually made Heathrow terminal 5 which is obviously some modernist’s cruel joke on London, England and the traveling public. A nice lady at British Airways (very nice airline and it is hard to believe they have anything to do with American Airlines but they are part of the “one world” evil alliance) got us checked in. We went to the security gate and were stopped as the first ones to not get through and told they were closing that checkpoint, and we were directed to the other end of the terminal (about 1/2 mile walk).

We negotiated security fairly easily. There is something about post 9-11 security I have always found vaguely disquieting. It is the sense that I am guilty of something that they are tasked to find out, or perhaps that they presume such guilt and as such are entitled to ex-ray my bags, swipe them for bomb detritus and anally probe me if they deem me a threat. Anyway, we made it through though I did have to take off my belt, but I did not have to take my computer out of it’s bag. This Terminal 5 is a garish, sense offending place of bright lights, loud noises and useless eateries. Again a Starbucks with no iced tea and a duty free shop the size of Macys. I picked up a couple of papers to learn that the U.S. Congress in an act of political spinelessness which should no longer be surprising had voted against the 700 Billion Dollar Bailout Plan.

This plan might not be a good idea. But if these institutions fail we will all be poorer, quicker then if they are not propped up. I do not care what the terms are, they need to be harsh and draconian but to cow tow to the angry voters back home 5 weeks before an election when the world economy is dancing on the brink seems pathetic on so many levels. It is as I said kind of an embarrassing time to be an American. Every paper which discusses their own nations bank problems sites the “toxic debt” sold by the American banks. I do not know if it is true or not but our investment bankers were given way too much money and when they got a “historical model” of making their points with loaded dice, they thought they could rely on that model and then borrowed everyone’s money to make their bets. But who are the “winners” here. The casino analogy seems to fall because where indeed is the house? No one has been able to answer that question for me.

We boarded the plane and once again, other then a crappy sandwich BA is an excellent airline giving us a pleasant flight to Geneva. On the ground we were ushered through customs not being able to be stereotyped as drug dealers or fugitive investment bankers. here is where the day falls to shit. We believe we need to be in another train terminal (there is one hooked up to the Geneva airport) and we get on a train to the main terminal 5 minutes away. We get off and look for out train to Aneccy but cannot find it and conclude it leaves out of another terminal. No one speaks english and the train people are not remotely helpful. Finally a ticketing agent (who was trying to explain that we were in the correct terminal) acceded to our demands and handed us a card for “tram 16” to get us to that terminal.

In the mean time the clock is ticking down as we have 25 minutes till that train departs. Sandy is convinced that there is only one train to Aneccy and if missed we will be staying in Genva for a night. She is frantically looking on maps inside the bus for the hint of a train station. She picks a stop and we hop off and begin frantically asking directions of people who speak no english and... miraculaousy, we find a train stattion 3 blocks away. Miraculously it is the one my wife was looking for. Miraculously... our train was supposed to leave from the main terminal and we were missing it as we spoke to the agent. Miraculously...he could get us on another train which with one stop, would get us to Aneccy 1/2 hour earlier. We sat for a 1/2 hour. I bought a bad sandwich and admired the grafity of the somewhat sketchy area the train was in.

The ride and swithching trains was uneventful accept for the unrelenting beauty of the Alps. We got into the station, Sandy got her bearings and we headed to the Hotel Dejun, checked in and rode a tiny elevator to our room which was significantly better then the Cambridge dorm accomodations. We walked around. We had Fondu. We argued about tipping. We went to bed. Not a bad day to have survived.