Nice to See Nice, to see Nice, nice

[peterbirks]

No pictures with this post because I am going to take the 60 centimes a minute hit for three minutes max.

I had a great day today. I finally got my arse in gear and pushed myself to the train station to get the train to Nice.

It’s somehow touching to know that the problems we might have thought endemic to the English rail network on Sundays has at least a parallel in France. First of all I waited 15 minutes or so while two ticket booths dealt with two people. Neither, as far as I could see, wanted to change their nationality. It just appears to take 15 minutes to sell any kind of ticket at SNCF.

None of this annoyed me that much, although the Italians in front of me who wanted to catch a train to Milan were getting understandably vexed. My own train, however, was said to be a 15 minute retard. Before the two people waiting at the ticket booths for their transaction had seen their purchases completed, this delay had turned into 50 minutes, because the railways were “seriously perturbed”. Which is, I guess, what happens when the retards are in control.

It would have been oh-so-easy to give up and return to my hotel, but by now I had the bit between my teeth. This, dammit, was a challenge. I knew that the TAM100 bus went to Nice, so all I had to do was find a bus stop where it might stop. The TAM stops are different from the internal Monaco stops, and it took me a 25-minute walk to find one, but then a bus turned up within seconds.

The TAM110 to the airport (just past Nice) costs E16.60. I was therefore rather pleasantly surprised when I asked for a single to Nice to be told that it cot one euro. “To Nice?” enquired I. One euro it was. Bloody brilliant.

The bus trip gave the opportunity to see some of the towns between Monaco and Nice. Cap d’Ail has streets commemorating Beaverbrook and Churchill (must look up my biog of Beaverbrook to remind myself of the link that Max Aitken had with the place) while Beaulieu sur mer had a very “sub-Monaco” feel to it. Eze, which splits the two, was more to my liking, while Villefranche-sur-mer was beautiful.

Passing a 100 bus going in the opposite direction, I noted that it was considerably more crowded than the bus going into Nice.

But Nice, well, Nice is ace. Fell in love with the place, as simple as that. Following my nose, I walked up to the old castle, which is now a weird high-altitude gardens. This took up more than an hour, including a trip to the Jewish cemetery. Then I descended and went for a walk round the old village, which was packed, open, and busy. I treated myself to a yummy lemon ice-cream.

But on leaving the old town, passing a specialist Oyster restaurant and entering Grimaldi Square, the tow virtually shut, becoming a normal French Sunday. Most weird how the split was so absolute.

I made a quick visit to the Nice Museum of Contemporary Art, a small place on just two floors, featuring no more than a dozen artists. Alun Williams and Yves Klein were the artists that impressed me most. Klein appears to be something of a Nice hero.

Then, as is my wont, I continued my walking exploration. Nice has one tram route, ad the trams are fairly cool.

By now it was about 4.30 in the afternoon, so I decided to eat port-side. This is not to be confused with Port Said. I found a place that looked crowded, walked in, only to be met by a mélange of Australian and New Zealand accents. It was the Kookaburra. I had a superb squid and prawn salad, with the little things got right (tomatoes filleted of the inner seed part, for example). It was meant to be a sweet chili and fresh coriander dressing, but I thought that I detected Jan’s favourite trick, reduced balsamic vinegar. (Well, I did.)

The trip back was enlivened by, believe it or not, what the French would have assumed was an English nutter, since he was speaking and shouting in English. But, here’s the weird thing, he spoke rather poor English with a strong but hard-to-define accent. Russian? Polish? He left half-way along the route, thankfully, last heard screaming on the street. Madness.

I bumped into Daniel Zink on the way back (I had seen his twin brother this morning at breakfast) and asked him how he got on. Seventh, he said. Well, that’s a trousered E250k, which he said was by far his biggest win. He then said that he had bought in directly, which got me thinking. Joe Ebanks had also bought in for the 10k. Both cashed, but how much was that buy-in as a percentage of their entire bankroll? I wouldn’t mind betting that it was a good deal more than 5%. Given the large number of 10K direct buy-ins, either there are many more players with $250k bankroll floating around than I had previously thought, or too many players are directly buying in at levels rather higher than they should be.


A final whinge about this hotel, the one with an Internet connection slightly inferior to that some players said they had experienced in the Third World Poker Open in Somalia. I left some Petits Fours Patissiers on my desk in my “air-conditioned” room. What could go wrong? Well, the fridge underneath the desk, that’s what. It contributes more to global warming than a 747 crossing the Atlantic, and it managed to melt all of the chocolates on the biscuits. This, I feel, is not up to scratch.

An early start tomorrow, with the aim of being back at home by noon.

Comments

[real-aardvark.livejournal.com]

Well, I just can't resist: "Nice Museum of Contemporary Art." If that doesn't bring in the knotted-hankie brigade, I don't know what will.

You haven't exactly sold me on Monte Carlo, but I've gotta admit that your description of Savoie is appealing.

I not only share your pain re. the French public transport system on Sundays proximate to bank holidays; I'll shove. Normally, I will admit, the French rail system appears to be almost Swedish in its devotion to passenger satisfaction. ("We are most sorry to announce a serious lapse on platform seven, where the 8:10 to Alvskjo will be precisely 89 seconds late. Bjorn the sacrificial goat will hang himself at the end of the platform to demonstrate our sincere regrets.")

However, on Sundays proximate to bank holidays, it all appears to turn to shit.

I was the victim of this over the New Year. I made it in good time to the Gare du Nord, expecting to queue up for a simple ticket to CdG. Bad mistake.

First of all, do not go anywhere near the Gare du Nord without a battle plan drawn up in almost Napoleonic detail. Finding a place to buy a toupee for your bald camel is trivial, providing that you want a toupee studded either with diamonds or with overpriced kebabs. Finding a ticket office is not.

(For those without such a plan, I can only suggest heading for the nearest exit. This is logical, in a Descartian way, in that an exit is also an entry. In the bizarro world of Paris on a bank holiday Sunday, however, this does not quite work. Oh no. If you want to be mugged by a Gypsy, then that's the way to go. If you merely want to buy a ticket, then you need to find an exit that isn't marked by a big blue sign saying "Exit." I'm sure this is all crystal clear to the locals. The gypsy bit certainly is.)

Secondly, you find yourself in the only queue in the station. This is not because, as per normal, the French disdain queues (outside the banking system, which appears to have quarantined the horrible anglo-saxon things). No, this is because there is only one ticket window open on that particular floor. Consequently, a queue ensues.

(I'm lying about the solitary open window, btw. When I got to the queue, there were three. It being half past one, however, two of the three closed ten minutes later, at a point when I was solidly mired in the queue.)

Situations like this are not a good time to reflect on the finer points of the French national character: viz., that they are considerably more Latin than they are Germanic. I was stuck there for fifteen minutes while the lady at the front of the queue exchanged baby pictures with the teller (don't know why; she was carrying the baby at the time), waved her dog's bottom at him in a friendly way, and negotiated a E1.50 discount for a round-trip to the Swiss border, based upon being a single parent with a dog to support.

The next loon in line was a very nice Algerian bloke. Whilst waiting for the inevitable bureaucracy and 'les papiers' to pass, I reflected on the fact that his French was considerably better than mine. Which was not, to be honest, a consolation.

The upshot of all this was that I missed my flight; was mired in pointless ticket-counter banter ("You are a naughty, naughty, aardvark, isn't it?"); discovered that HSBC ("The World's Favourite Bank") will not, in fact, allow you access to a single Euro of the thirty thou that you have in your account unless said account was opened in France -- or, quite possibly, the branch next to Stalingrad -- and had to phone relatives that I haven't spoken to in years to beg an emergency ticket out of the place. I finally got home to the sound of bursting water pipes because of the Big Freeze that had caused me to spend a night sleeping on the floor of CdG, surrounded by excitable and indeed almost inflammatory Italians who just wanted to know what the fuck was going on.

No.

Public transport in France on a Sunday near a Bank Holiday is not a good thing.

Interesting to note the price differential between a bus to Nice and a bus to a place that's only about five kilometres outside Nice, though. I'd have thought that triple would be ample. Obviously I've never quite grasped the idea of the "free market."

[(Anonymous)]

Ah, the joys of Charles de Lost Luggage, one of the many reasons I try and all costs to avoid the place. Air France staff are usually either at your feet or at your throat - the mere words "Monsieur, je suis desolé" at the ticket desk usually mean that you are in for a "reticketing fee" or even better a chance to delay you for several hours before suggesting a re-route through their new tax-dodge at Clermont-Ferrand. Could be worse, it could be the Luftwaffe lounge warden at Berlin Tegel, she's ex-Interflug (and probably ex-Stasi) and will stop at nothing to deny you access to her sanctum sanctorum. Last time, she spent several minutes holding my entry card up to the light at various angles before declaring "Diese Karte ist eine Fälschung.", unfortunately I trumped her with my business class ticket and gained access to the free beer pump and as many Haribo Gummibaren as I could scoff.

The free market always disrupted by the word "airport". Such dens of inquity always manage to carry nice large premiums one way or another. When arriving somewhere, always beware of the "Airport Express", be it bus, train or rickshaw. There is nearly always a cheaper way to be gleaned from a careful study of a local transport map. Even when there is "zonal pricing", such as in Munich, there appears to be a strange peninsula of higher prices zones extending to the airport. In addition such routes tend to attract a high degree of revenue management (especially on funny foreigners), I remember getting caught by an Übergrippenführer on the Munich S-Bahn (you can distinguish them from the Untergrippenführer by the extra thick red braid) because I had not endorsed my ticket at the correct angle.

Oh, if you want to see self-abnegation and levels of tutting beyond belief, just watch what happens if there are delays on the Deutsche Bahn (does not apply to Berlin or the former DDR). You expect the entire management to commit ritual suicide on Gleis Eins and the passengers probably wouldn't be satisfied with that. I was once at Mainz Hbf trying to get to Bankfurt when everything went tits-up and produced 10 minute delays throughout the S-Bahn and the entire train didn't finish tutting for the whole journey. How every different from my usual commute on the No 1, where most of the passengers are happy if it turns up at all and has been fumigated recently.

I must admit, I'd always through of Monaco and its surrounds as a up-market Malaga for "the considerably richer than yow" brigade, now I'm also feeling quite sold on it as well.

The Bowen of that Ilkhan

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

I too have been caught out at Tegel, by the British Airways "queueing" system (I shall spare you the details). Indeed, it was a day when I swore that I would never fly BA again. Unfortunately, the parameters of quality now in force mean that, if I applied my previous criteria, I would never fly again.

Yes, the "pricing" systems to and from airports always seem aimed to screw the traveller (the UK is no exception), but surely the 16.60 to 1 ratio achieved at Nice is some kind of record.

PJ

[(Anonymous)]

Up to a point, yes. You'd still have to get from Nice to NCE, which I understand is €1 on the local bus or €4 on a fast bus, so that's two euros. So, that's 8.30 to 1. I believe that the Narita Express will run you 5,000 yen for the fare card they flog to unsuspecting tourists (the one at 3,500 is much better value), but a bus into Narita City and a local train will cost you 450 yen! Luckily, I've only ever changed planes there.

Bowen

[real-aardvark.livejournal.com]

I'm not entirely sure how that would help you negotiate a reasonable rate on a municipal bus between Nice and the airport. "Mario-san, it pains me to note that your yen-fu would disgrace your master. It is written in the ancient texts that 8.30 to 1 is reserved for half-price early morning geishas. I demand the Tojo rate of a single euro, be so kind, my good sir."

But let that pass.

Never change planes. It's always for the worse. I have one in the back garden right now that I'm hoarding for emergencies; but, in general, if you need to change planes, you are fucked.

"Untergrippenführer?"

[real-aardvark.livejournal.com]

Selah. It shall be appended to the appropriate annals.

Re: "Untergrippenführer?"

[(Anonymous)]

I understand that in trainspotter parlance, the ticket collector (or as they like to call them on BeardyRail - Revenue Protection Officer) is called a gripper, as they used to grip the tickets with a little metal thing (now they just use a biro). As a train driver in German is a Lokführer, it was suggested that German equivalent of the honest yeoman British gripper was a Grippenführer. As the München VVB obviously has two grades of the beast, with opera buffe style braid to distinguish them, they would logically be the über- and unter- grippenführers.

The Bowen Creature