Paris-Amsterdam

This morning after finishing several local bussiness phone-calls, time to go to the Gare du Nord, one of the Paris train stations, to catch the high-speed train from Paris to Amsterdam. A taxi appears in front of the appartment building where Michel Szulc Krzyzanowski has been staying, and the doors of the taxi open automatically with the help of electrical engines. The driver comes out too: a huge guy who could easily make a career in the World Wrestling Federation. But then something shocking. He speaks with a voice of a 6 year old boy. Are we supposed to ignore this, accept this or start laughing ? Michel Szulc Krzyzanowski has no problem to pretend that a 6 year old voice in a hulk of a man is his daily cup of tea but avoids to have an extensive conversation with the driver during the long ride out of fear to eventually die of laughter. He wonders about taxi-driver's wife and how she handles this 8th world wonder. At Gare du Nord are automatic train-ticket supplying machines. Passengers reserve and buy their tickets on Internet and collect them from the machines in the train hall. It is suprising to become aware that this is a fantastic system but that it doesn't work with non-French credit cards. International travellers with non-French credit cards like Michel Szulc Krzyzanowski have to go and stand in line for over half an hour to obtain a train ticket. After a last Paris sashimi lunch he settles comfortably in the luxurious seat of the Thalys high speed train which brings him in 4 hours and 10 minutes to Amsterdam. After finishing the Herald Tribune he is reading the biography of Osho but looses his interest in this book by every mile. He doesn't like to start to read a book and later to abandon it unfinished. This always gives him an unsatisfied feeling but sometimes there is no other way. Fortunately he has in his lugguage the latest book of Willam Boyd who is one of his most favourite writers.

Train arriving in the Netherlands suffers right away of another train who magically managed to screw itself into a bunch of containers blocking as a result the important track to the East of Holland creating delays and huge crowds pressing themselves into trains like it was the Tokyo subway. And it is raining and cold and dark. Too many depressed people and raindrops and Michel Szulc Krzyzanowski protects his mood by thinking intensively of his coming evacuation to Mexico.