"No trains, the French" he looks disgusted at the very thought of them, "They strike".
I jog back up the platform. "Yeah, we're fucked" I shout brightly to the petulantly waiting American "The French are on strike, as usual". We turn and begin our trudge toward the taxi rank and the cabbies rubbing their hands with glee. On the way out we're assailed by a large swarm of indeterminated oriental origin:
"What he say?"
"No trains to France tonight... or tomorrow, maybe you can find a bus, where are you going?"
"A bus" she gives me a look usually reserved for something unpleasant you've stepped in "Where are we going to find a bus at midnight?"
"I dunno, bus station?" I reply, helpfully.
"We're going to Barcelona, we have a SCHEDULE, we can't be late"
"Well, if it's any consolation" I smile, one foot in the waiting taxi "The strike is only in the Cote D'Azur, if you can get through to Marsailles, you're laughing"
"And how far is Marsailles?", incredulous, unsmiling.
"Oh, about 120 miles, good luck" I wave cheerily and slam the door. Fuck 'em, don't shoot the messenger.
The drive from Ventimilia on the Italian border to Nice is one of those twisty, turny James Bond style affairs, whipping along elevated highways and barrelling through mountain tunnels. It's also unrelentingly awful, 50 miles of eye-fucking development clinging to the hillsides like whitewashed concrete turds. Scraggy beaches, seedy casinos, Yanky truckstops and an overdose of Botox; whatever charm the Riviera used to have has long since died and been buried under yet another 4 lane. Imagine Long Beach, California, but Francophone; frankly Dante had nothing on this.
On the way I discover two of my travelling companions are from Maryland, studying in Spain and over in Nice for a holiday. The other, a silent French girl, huddles in the back row (a 7 seat Taxi and you can only take 4 of us to Nice, eh, you greedy motherfucker?) and says nothing.
We arrive at Nice Ville station ("Le railway station" gestures the cabbie, "Oui, le gare de SNCF" I reply, no way are you out languaging me you patronising Italian bastard), bathed in the red neon glow of an enourmous sign promising 'SEX' in huge letters across the street. I get out and stand in the midnight crowd of shady immigrants, dealers and pimps. Remarkably, I instantly fail to fit in and am offered 'girl' and 'something nice' the instant I put my bag down. A wizened Moroccan approaches and askes for a cigarette. As I obliged his stubby fingers reach out and start clawing for more from my pack. "Non, non" I say, waving him away "Fuck you" he replies, and slopes off to a dark corner.
I'm silently cursing this humid, garlic scented, wine quaffing country when Abs appears on my left. "Ahhhh, bonsoir mon ami, ceva?" I say, pretentiously. Despite both having As at GCSE french, this is our total mastery of the langauge. We walk back to Sam's flat (his ginger, Scottish friend, who failed utterly to tan in the 6 months he spent here), a reassuringly cliche affair just up from the beach, complete with window shutters, billowing white curtains and a rickety bike propped up in the hallway.
The next day is breakfast at the station (though Abs refuses any food, on the basis that it cuts down on schmoozing time), followed by a rammed train down the coast to Cannes (during which Abs ingratiates himself to two French ladies, and I loudly teach him the word 'Putain' which causes a bit of Gallic consternation).
Cannes at Festival time is much like Edinburgh. The streets are crowded with people from all over the world, most of whom have some form of dubious accreditation slung round their necks in a doomed attempt to seem important (ourselves included). A one armed chap asks Abs for a fag, and graces us with the now standard "fuck you" when we politely decline. But I'm more mellow than I was the previous night, and send him on his way with a cheery "vous etes un putain!", doing my part to foster a greater European understanding.
The weekend becomes a blur of surreal vignettes after that, as Abs roamed the strip relentless promoting his film, and I pursued my ambition of getting as drunk as possible on complimentary booze. The Turks offered strong coffee and cold beer (thanks, Turkish Culture Ministry), the Thai hut presented us with a peculair buffet comprising mainly jellied coconut, beer and the Thai ambassador (he'd been in Paris for two months, and found everything tremendously exciting). There was a lovely moment when, checking our emails in The Majestic, a rush of "Oh my God, it's Jackie Chan" brought Mylene Klass 'n' sproglet racing to the window next to us, along with her CNN film crew, all clearly star struck to see a real celebrity for a change (as an aside, she's much shorter than you'd expect, and wouldn't look out of place
All too soon, the weekend was over, and I was racing out of Cannes station on the way back to Italy. I'd taken the same journey just two weeks before (after it turned out that flying Glasgow, Stansted, Nice then sitting on a train for 4 hours cost half as much as flying to Turin), and the leg from Nice through the Alps to Cuneo is one of those journeys that anyone with even a passing interest in train travel should take at least once in their lives. The modern SNCF takes you on a gently winding single track up into the foothills, through sunny alpine meadows and past great Medieval villages perched high on rocky promantaries, their ancient walls one small earthquake away from total destruction. At Col de Braus a breath-takingly gorgeous French woman got on, wearing grass-stained jodphurs and smelling of horse, and sat across the eisle from me. "How wonderful it must be to ride through these sunny meadows" I thought, then instantly questioned my sexuality. Two weeks before, at Breil-sur-Roya (a tiny village high in the alps, surrounded on all sides by brooding mountains), I'd got talking to an elderly American in the cafe while waiting for the rattly rail-car on to Italy. His daughter was working in Nice, and he was taking the oppertunity to ride the trains all over the alps. "American? You're in the wrong country mate". He smiled, and I ran for my train.
The transition from French train to Italian is a stark reminder of the difference between the countries. The French one is sedate, clean and modern, the Italian ancient, dirty, crowded and charges recklessly along the exposed clifftops like a beast possessed. At Cuneo the ticket machine was broken, so I bought a hasitly scribbled piece of paper from the guard, as the driver looked at me with amusement from his cab (I should point out we were hurtling along toward Turin at this point, and every fiber of my being wanted to scream "WATCH THE RAILS YOU LACONIC BASTARD" as I peered over his shoulder).
Bra was, as always, unchanged when I got back. Dark, slumbering, lightly industrial and utterly uninteresting. I looked back up the line as I crossed the tracks, and thought of the festival still in full swing just 100km away down on that awful coast. One way or another, I was sure I'd be back one day.
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