Through the tunnel
Today I’m leaving London for the continent of Europe (this has become a de facto travel blog, hasn’t it?). After extensive negotiations with the Eurostar people, I managed to get a train to Paris, where I will stay overnight. It turns out that one must book and pay for a seat on the Eurostar train under the channel to France, even with a Eurail/Interail pass. Still, the pass earns a massive discount (about 85%), so it’s very much worth it. The problem is that there are only a limited number of seats available for Eurail travelers, and that it is often necessary to book far in advance. I, of course, had no idea. I couldn’t get a discounted ticket to Brussels or Amsterdam for another two days, but I can get on a train to Paris tonight. So I’m off to Paris. It’ll be nice to be there for a bit, even if it was an accident.
Xerxes got to my cousin’s house last night and is settling in nicely. The whole transaction went off without a hitch, astonishingly enough. I miss him a lot, but I know that he will be happy at my cousin’s; she is going to take excellent care of him. Last night, he seemed happy enough, but I heard from her today that he is hiding behind the furniture and hissing. She and I agreed that this is a perfectly understandable attitude and that we would do the same if it were acceptable for us to do so. I’m sure that he’ll calm down, but I feel bad for him: moving isn’t easy for anyone.
As for me, I am now in France. The trip through the Euro Tunnel was as uneventful as could be expected: besides occasional emergency lights, the tunnel is dark. I suppose that it is this quality that makes for a truly great engineering project: digging a tunnel under the English Channel (“la manche” en Français, which translates to “the sleeve”) was an enormous and unprecedented feat; yet, now that it is dug, going through it is no more exciting than any other train journey. In fact, less exciting: there is no scenery at all. This is an example of what Graham Harman, after Heidegger, calls tool being: the infrastructure, when it works, disappears. Thanks to the Euro Tunnel, France and Great Britain simply are connected; there is the political rigamarole of crossing the border (more of a rigamarole now than before because of Brexit), but practically, travelling from London to Paris is just as easy as travelling from Edinburgh to Londom. Easier, actually: the Eurostar trains are more comfortable than the LNER, and the international terminal of St Pancras is luxurious indeed. Even so, the 50 kilometer tunnel under the channel is a miracle and an enormous challenge to build (to put it lightly). So the implementation was an enormous pain, but the interface is extremely straightforward. May all of our engineering projects be so successful.
Passport control was actually a complete breeze: I showed my passport and my French COVID app, and I was through. France now accepts NHS vaccination certificates, so I could upload my proof to the mobile application easily; now, it is as though I had been vaccinated in France. France, also, is relatively relaxed about COVID: negative tests are only required for those who are not vaccinated (unlike the Netherlands, who may or may not require a negative test result from all those coming from a “high risk” country, regardless of their vaccination status (I say “may or may not” because there is varying, conflicting information on the Dutch Government’s website)). In any case, there shouldn’t be any more checks when I arrive in Paris: we’ll just walk off the train and into the city.
I booked a bed at a hostel in Paris tonight. This will be the first time I have stayed in a hostel since the summer after my first year of university, when the touring company for the student opera in whose chorus I sang (Händel’s Xerxes, hence my cat’s name) stayed in a hostel in Berick-upon-Tweed. I’m looking forward to it: if nothing else, it will be fascinating to see who all is staying there.
