I have mentioned at the end of my account about the Meehanite
conference in Birmingham that we had taken the route via Paris
with my colleague. The London-Paris flight took us to De Gaulle air-
port, we took a train to Gare de Lyon. From there our small hotel was
only half a mile by foot. Hotel reservation had also been done by
myself. Our hotel was a very narrow house between two other
apartment buildings. Its small lobby has been extended virtually by
a mirror-wall. During breakfast it has even become smaller, as
breakfast tables have been set there.
The afternoon we spent by walking along the river Seine. From
our hotel we crossed the river and the canal and at the Bastille we
turned left. On route we visited the Notre Dame on the island and
continued to the Louvre. To go in we had not enough time. May be,
one day. We crossed the park to Concorde Square and followed the
Champs Elysées to the Arch. There we turned again left and cross-
ed the river to Chaillot Palace and the Eiffel Tower. There we stopp-
ed to rest. It was a long march, at least 10 miles. Dusk fell already
and we took a bus to the station. From there we walked to our hotel.
Paris I found very attractive. Only I liked such well organised
cities as London more. Paris looked me the opposite. At breakfast
the next morning there was a funny event. A German tourist group
have been taking their meal and one of them asked the waitress to
bring water. She said: “Wasser”. The waitress seemed not to under-
stand. She did as Frenchmen often do, she spoke only French. I
tried to help the German by saying: “d'eau”. The waitress under-
stood that at once. Anyway I could not see how it could happen that
she didn't understand water in the language of a neighbour.
We slept well after our long walk, but we had another big walk
130
France
before us to go shopping. After breakfast we did it. Neither of us
wanted to go home without presents for the family. We went straight
to Galleries Lafayette, we passed it the previous day, but then shop-
ping was out-of-program. Although it further backed my impress-
ions about lack of orderliness, we found everything we wanted.
At the Gare de Lyon we caught our train to Orly and flew off. In
the evening I have seen in TV news that almost simultaneously with
our departure a wave of terrorist bombings began. At the seminar
some weeks later in Budapest our old friend joked about our being
responsible for it.
131
Canned roaddust