The Long Way Home: Day 9
Learning to Climb French: Alpine climbing at Les Ecrins and Dolomites, August 2-10, 2005

I awoke and packed while François still slept; told everyone that I needed to go to Paris, and went to the campground office to clear my account and recover my passport. François accompanied me to the office and then drove me to Canazei where I took the 8:04 bus to Trento. He didn't ask why I needed to go to Paris but he did ask what I had told the others. "Nothing" -- I replied. I guess he knew that I wanted out, and I sensed that he was as relieved to see me go as I was of going.

The three hour ride to Trento was cheap (less than 6€) and painless. At the Trento train station the ticket agent told me that the train to Paris was full. Knowing how the system works, I asked if First Class was booked and sure enough there was room available. I bought a ticket to Paris via Verona-Milano. Next I went to the local newspaper store where I bought a 30€ phone card for the Italian mobile network TIM. Bus as it turns out, Orange makes use of TIM for roaming while in Italy, but you cannot charge a Orange phone with a TIM card -- 30€ down the drain. From there, I visited the station cafeteria where I ate and drank all I could.

The trip from Trento to Verona goes over some very nice agricultural country. I fell in and out of sleep as I contemplated what had gone wrong with my vacation. The Verona train station is not much to talk about but it has one of the most disgusting WC that I have ever seen (and I have been in a number of developing countries). The Milano train station is gorgeous and it has a extremely clean and expensive WC (0.70€). 2.5L of Gatorade later my urine is starting to clear.

First class on the TGV -- what can I say? There are certain things that only the French know how to do. I drifted in and out of sleep as the train crossed the Alps. An American family from Reno shared the car with me and I spoke with Grandma who was very busy keeping track of the 2-year-old. At Lyon I rested, sure that I would be in Paris shortly. But when I woke up an hour later, the train was not on the outskirts of Paris but rather still in the mountains. What the hell was going on? I turned my GPS on and sure enough we where nowhere near Paris. A very French voice came over the loudspeakers and announced that the TGV track was closed for repairs and the train had detour along the normal track to Paris. This led to a 2.5 hour delay in the trip.

When we finally arrived in Paris a little after 1:00, I knew something that most people in the train did not: the metro was closed and there would be a long line for the Taxi. I ran out of the train along another man that had come to the same realization and we arrived #19 and #20 in line. Ten minutes later, the line was over 100 people long. Twenty minutes later I was riding in a cab in front of Les Invalides on my way home.

What had happened? Two guys who met on the Internet committed to a vacation without really knowing each other and the stress of climbing brought them to the brink of hate. Perhaps I am an old-has-been-softy and François is a fould-mouth-bipolar, but in reality it doesn't matter because we climbed some amazing mountains and we learned much from each other.

I thank François for his time and I wish him the best in his future endeavors.

Pictures in this trip report were taken using a Sony DSC-T1 digital camera set @ 5 mega pixels. Photomerges and photo corrections were done using Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 for the Mac. High resolution versions of the these images are available upon request.

Pedro I. Espina^© 2005