heiks

I am currently moving this blog from my .mac site, so posts are from 2006, until I catch up to myself! If you've found this blog, you probably know me. If you don't know me, hello there! I mainly blog about my life in Paris (France) and what is happening in my life as an actor (or actress if you want to be British. Maybe ACTRON is less gender-specific. Shall we try that then?). So, yes, here we all are. Have fun.

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

My RER Driver


RER A is one of the busiest train lines in the world. I overheard a woman telling her friend that a few weeks ago, and then an employee of the RER A line confirmed it and added to that information some neat figures that I can’t recall.

I use RER A every Tuesday and Wednesday to get to the OECD. I always catch the same train out (12h44) and the same train back (14h24) between Gare de Lyon and La Défense.
Last Tuesday, I was flying down the escalator to catch the 14h24, when the door signal went off and as I ran towards the first carriage, the doors closed. I threw the driver an imploring look, wherupon he opened the door to his driver’s booth and invited me in, saying that he couldn’t open the doors again, or there would be an onslaught of running people storming the doors.

And so it happened that I struck up a casual friendship with this driver, who answered all my questions about the functioning of the trains. He demonstrated the dead man’s handle and the emergency braking system and explained what all the knobs and buttons on the oversized dashboard are for.

On Wednesday, I climbed into his booth again and the adventure continued. Next Tuesday and Wednesday he is off duty, but we have agreed that I shall just keep looking out for him and climb into the driver’s booth when he’s on duty and I’m catching his train, so I can get the best view and catch up on how his farm animals are doing.

In what I have learned is typical French culture, we have not exchanged names yet. That comes later - much later. I will let you know how long it takes me to earn the right to know it!

Labels: , ,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home