Monday, May 24, 2010

Compiling letters home: May 24 CDG

May 24: Charles de Gaulle Airport

Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000149 EndHTML:0000009666 StartFragment:0000000199 EndFragment:0000009632 StartSelection:0000000199 EndSelection:0000009632 I’m currently in Charles DeGaulle airport. My flight leaves just after rush hour, so I decided to stay the night at the airport and avoid any kind of hassle in the morning. I’m staying up all night so I can sleep all the way across the ocean so I won’t be too bombed when I get back to Olympia.

Where have I left off.... Lets see, I suppose I last wrote in Genoa.

So I left Genoa, and after a series of trains I made it along the French Riviera to Marseille. My hostel was about 6 km south of the downtown, but this wasn’t much of an issue since I wasn’t there to see that part of town specifically. I ended up meeting those two elderly gentlemen and had two beers. I suppose my definition of “a little more alcohol than anticipated” is two beers, because that is all I had. I turned in fairly early that day as the traveling was slowly catching up with me. I ended up talking to Manfred, a former Sales Representative for the top German cigarette company turned anti smoking advocate and cycling enthusiast. He had biked all the way from Berlin to Marseille in 12 days. Not bad for a man pushing 65.

The next day I got up bright and early and took the bus and subway to the old port to catch the ferry to the Frioul Islands. Chateau d’If was closed because the seagull’s had just hatched their eggs and were a little bit (well quite a bit) on the psychotic end of the spectrum. The main islands were still opened with no mention of seagulls so I decided to still head out there. The Friouls are very much what you would expect, they are windswept rocks in the middle of Marseille’s huge harbor. On top of all of the hills and ridges are gun emplacements. The two main islands are connected by a breakwater and a small town lies just inside this inlet. I don’t have any of my maps with me so I can’t be very specific with names, but I started my scrambling on the smaller of the two islands. First stop were the remains of the Carolina Hospital. Not speaking French I couldn’t read many of the sign boards, but I saw leprosy quite a bit so it might have been a treatment center for that disease. Much of the ruins of the hospital were closed for renovation, so I pressed on to the first of the gun emplacements on a hill overlooking the hospital. These were probably small-caliber (maybe 40 mm) anti-aircraft guns as there were few signs of any large-scale concrete emplacements. The emplacements were surrounded by earthworks and there were the remains of pillboxes on the perimeter.

At this point it is worth mentioning the seagulls. As I mentioned before, the seagull eggs had hatched and so the parents were incredibly, incredibly defensive in regards to their nests and surrounding areas. Because the Friouls are so remote and sparsely inhabited the seagulls had taken over almost all of the island, so anywhere you went you were prone to an airborne assault that hadn’t been seen since Pearl Harbor.

The seagulls were getting a little feisty at the Anti-Aircraft battery so I continued on my way up the large fort on the hill overlooking both the anti-aircraft battery and hospital. There was little signage here, and I took a goat path up the seaward side of the hill to the first of a series of shelters dug into the cliff face. These shelters were peculiar because their floors were comprised of small square protrusions in a checkerboard pattern. Either there was originally a wood floor over the cold stone or some kind of machinery was mounted on these.

Upon reaching the top of the hill I found myself in the midst of an amalgam of fortifications. The old portion of the fort probably dates back to the mid 1860’s as it is comprised mostly of brick buildings and open air emplacements. The newer structures probably date to the massive fort-building frenzy the French went through after 1918. There were two of these new emplacements. They were fairly deep pits with several doors leading to an extensive underground (blocked off). In the middle of these pits was a large concrete cylinder about 20 feet across on top of which a large caliber gun would have been mounted. There were several out buildings that I couldn’t give a reasonable date to. There was a fairly deep powder magazine dug about 50 feet down into the rock behind one of the newer emplacements.

I made my way down from this hill and headed down to the seaward side of the island, accessible only by a small goat path. This portion of the island was a long ridge that pointed out into the Mediterranean. The landward portion was dotted by several pillboxes, indicated it was a fairly important site. Beyond the pillboxes were a series of large open gun emplacements, each with a large magazine attached. I didn’t stray too far off of the path for fear of the seagulls, but there were probably five of these emplacements. At the far end of the site there was a star-shaped masonry fort that dated from the early 19th century. I would have loved to have gone in, but it was closed. Between the fort and the more modern gun battery was a large two story fire control bunker. All apertures and entrances were sealed, unfortunately.

I ended up eating a nice lunch down at the town before walking across the causeway to the large island. On top of the largest hill is a large 19th century fort. I set out up the road to the peak, and I made it as far as the walls of the fort before the seagulls became too much and I fled down to the bottom of the hill. Admitting defeat, I set off towards the far end of the island. The road to the far battery wraps around the top of a long rocky ridge. Aside from a lone lighthouse and lookout tower on the middle of the island it was devoid of any human structures. Upon reaching the lighthouse it becomes very clear why. The wind is nearly unbearable. There were points where the gusts were funneled up from the rocky inlets below and hit the crest of the ridge at speeds upwards of 50 miles an hour. I nearly was blown off of the island!

I finally made it to the far end of the island and the site of the largest battery. The older portion of the battery was erected at some point around the turn of the 20th century. The front of this battery was comprised of a large man made bluff. Behind this were the concrete emplacements built on top of all of the support infrastructure, much like the Endicott-period fortifications in America. Hitler’s Organization Todt erected several large caliber gun batteries just forward of the old French fortifications. These were covered batteries spread out over the tip of the island and looked to contain guns as small as 5” or as large as 10”. My exploration of this site was curbed by the seagull insanity factor. I caught the ferry back to Marseille and enjoyed a nice Kebab on the beach by my hostel before passing out in my bed.

The next day I caught the TGV to Nice, passing by the mega yachts parked off of Cannes for the film festival. I met up with Robert and a few of his classmates and spent the rest of the day lying sublimely on the beach. My first day of complete relaxation in 2 months! We met up with Adam and had a delicious dinner before taking a bottle of wine down to the beach and watching the sunset. (side note: have you ever opened a bottle of wine with your shoe?)

The next day was my birthday and Adam and I walked up into the ritzy part of Nice to view the old Roman ruins. There was a small arena and a large bath complex. They were quite interesting, but nothing is going to compare to the desolate tourist-free sites we saw in the Peloponnese and on Crete. We made our way back down to the beach and spent another sublime afternoon among the semi-nude and nude French sunbathers. That night we went to a terrible bar, left said terrible bar, had a bottle of wine, and turned in. A tame 21st birthday to say the least.

The next morning I caught the TGV to Paris, arriving just after dinner time. I met up with my friend Eliza and we wandered around a bit before I bid her adieu and returned to my hostel. Upon finding my bed I was aghast at the linen selection. I suppose they must have a problem with guests pilfering their sheets and have resorted to using flimsy almost paper-like fare. At this point I was so exhausted from the 2 month odyssey behind me that it didn’t matter. I was out like a light.

Today I woke up and took the subway into the Latin Quarter and wandered around before going to the small island in the middle of the Seine where the mini-Statue of Liberty rests. I found a nice grassy spot and lay down and enjoyed the company of Professor Arronax, Conseil, Ned Land, and Captain Nemo for the afternoon. Towards the end of the afternoon I resumed a bit of wandering before returning to my hostel to collect my belongings and catch the last RER train to the airport, which is where I am now. My plan to combat jet lag is to stay up all night here so that I will sleep the entire way across. I hope it works. I would have fallen asleep at my hostel so I checked out early in favor of the uncomfortable airport seats that will surely haunt my back and keep me awake for the duration.

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