The Gare du Nord at an unbusy moment of the day.
The Gare du Nord Is Neat and Tidy
No Rain, No Fog and No Inspector Maigret
Paris Kiosque - July 1997 - Volume 4, Number 7
Copyright (c) 1997 Richard Erickson - used with permission
The inside of the Gare du Nord
may be the first thing you see in Paris. It is not mysterious. It used to
be.
There is a whiz-bang TV series - on occasional Friday nights - about a
lady cop, stationed in the Gare du Nord. The station is used as a backdrop
for the usual sort of cops and robbers stuff; chasing the bad coke dealers
and other low-lifes. The only reason anybody watches it, is if the maritime
show, Thalassa, has an uninteresting subject.
If the lady cop isn't on TV, then Bruno Cremer is - playing Georges
Simenon's 'Inspector Maigret' - in the 99th series featuring the same
characters and the same stories. I saw one too many of these - 30 years ago
- and I've never been able to read one of the books, so I'll have to make
some of this up.
In the mysterious past, the fog of the north starts at the Gare du Nord.
It is the night train or nothing, and the sleeping cars are the best. If
there is no fog, then it is raining. Sleet is good too.
The sides of the train, the windows, are shiny with rain, reflecting the
dim lights of the dark station; its ceiling lost in gloom, having swallowed
what little light there is. The brims of men's hats hide
their eyes, except for stray Hollywood glints.
Facing the rails, 'Eurostar' is on the left, and the other northern
lines are on the right.
The conductors wear the dark blue of the train service, and their faces
are ghostly blurs. On the quai, passengers seek them out; where is wagon
number 233? Is there a dining car? Other dim shapes hurry past, carrying
their belongings, sometimes in matching leather, sometimes in shabby
cardboard.
Up close, the color of the wagons barely separates them from the
shadows; be they dirty blue or green or grey. The entry platform at the
wagon's end is dirty and its illumination is weak and yellow. Everything is
indistinct, and confusing.
There is more confusion in the wagon corridor, with passengers and their
baggage half in and half out of compartments; somebody is always coming
back along to corridor. Experienced passengers with accompaniment, send one
on first to find the compartment and open the window so the baggage can be
passed in that way. Every train departure is a bit like a miniature ship
departure; but when all is ready, no band plays, just a train-whistle.
A pole, or the windows of the train opposite, start to slide backwards;
there is a bump crossing points, and dark scenery begins to slip back
faster. The train snakes through the yards and picks up speed quickly. In
the near suburbs the train seems to be going dangerously fast; but it is
reassuring too - this train is on the way, to the north.
Suburban stations in their pools of blurred yellow light flash swiftly
by. In the compartment, the baggage is on the overhead racks, and the
passengers are congratulating themselves on a successful departure and are
starting to wonder if they can get more comfortable.
If the compartment is nearly empty, one knows that there will
disturbances sooner or later, as new passengers get on at stations further
up the line. If the compartment is almost full, it may get no fuller, and
once the conductor punches the ticket the formalities will be over.
Depending on what the other passengers look like, you
might wish for one or the other.
Since the windows were washed, you don't need radar to find this panal.
So far all is normal. The train is racing north in the rain-swept,
foggy, light-spotted night of Europe. You may be going to the channel, you
may be going to the Low Countries, you may be going to Berlin on the
express to Moscow.
The Gare du Nord started with big ambitions on 25. June 1846, as the
terminus of the line to Belgium. The line in fact, went as far as Creil,
via Pontoise. Creil is about two-thirds of the way to Compiègne.
From another source I see that rails ran all the way to the Belgian border
as early as the end of 1846.
In 1863 the original Gare du Nord was taken apart and moved to Lille,
while a new 'monumental' one was built in Paris. This was expanded in 1898
with a building to the east, which is now a RER entry. Statues representing
the grand northern towns of Lille, Amiens, Boulogne, Arras and others, are
on top of the facade of the centre part of the station, facing the
boulevard de Denain.
Paris' first train line ran out to Saint-Germain-en-Laye and it was
opened in 1836, and one called it 'the big dipper' - a toy to amuse the
public. A line to Versailles followed in 1839 and ran along the right bank,
from about where Saint-Lazare is today. Versailles was a popular
destination, and the 'left-bank' line from Montparnasse opened in 1840; as
did a line to Corbeil, which ran from the Jardin des Plantes. By 1859,
Paris had eight principal stations.
And that may be why I can not think of any one of them as truly
'monumental.' Arriving at the Gare du Nord by métro in the early
'80's, was like ascending from a colorful coal mine to a dark hanger, full
of smoke.
There wasn't any smoke of course; it was just dim. One time I had
exactly two minutes to find my train to Berlin; no time to have a
café or to buy food, drink or cigarettes. Luckily, it was the first
train I came to.
As I hustled down the quai the signs hanging on the outside of the
wagons announced 'Moscow.' With no time left I crossed my fingers and
jumped on, figuring that it would be going in the right direction at least
- and also answering my worries about why I'd gotten a ticket to East
Berlin. If worst came to worst, I could always take the U-bahn back from
Freidrichstraße, to the funky west.
Although this was an express train, leaving Gare du Nord every afternoon
at 18:00, nobody had thought to add a dining car to it. There was no other
food or drink sales on board either.
The train stopped north of Paris, where Poles settled between the wars,
and a lot of them got on for the ride to Warsaw. I wanted to get off and
get a sandwich, but didn't know how long the train would wait there. At
Berlin, around seven in the morning, the express stopped at Berlin-Zoo for
ninety seconds and I got off to look for breakfast on the Kudamm.
Everybody has a story like this. If you have one, guard it carefully;
because train riding is getting too civilized.
Today, the Gare du Nord is no longer dim. Even in its dim corners, it is
not very dim. Where I caught my Moscow express, Eurostar now arrives from
Victoria station. All is light, all is airy - like a high-rent version of
an airport.
Upon arrival, the quai itself is visibly spotless. You stroll down it to
the open glass barrier and decide to go
right for
taxis or left for the métro. The taxi stand is 20 metres away, and
the métro is not much further. No fuss, downtown Paris is outside
the doors of the station.
'Eurostar' privileges on the balcony; not too 'second-class' below.
I think, there must be more: there must be some dim old days left here.
Out front there is the usual train-station confusion, made by confused
people who are confused that there is no confusion; thereby causing
confusion about nothing.
The grand bistros are across from the station and I wonder if they do as
well as in the days when just getting to the station was a trip - which
required a meal - before crossing to the station and the trains.
The eastern addition to the station is without interest and I go through
it and out the back and north on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis, with
construction buildings on the rail side and sad apartments on the
right.
I cross over the rails by way of the iron bridge, the boulevard de la
Chapelle, with its elevated métro line above, and try to get a photo
of the shiny rails. They are covered with parked trains, snaked into the
station.
On the west side, I follow the rue de Maubeuge back towards the station.
The Lariboisiére hospital is on the right, but I only know this from
looking at the map. There's the gate where Maubeuge swings right and rue de
Compiègne starts, where the taxis are. A hole in the wall lets me
into the station again and I walk past administrative offices, from some
other century, to the main platform.
The pre-depart crowd has thinned out. The Eurostar passengers are up on
their segregated balcony, waiting for their swank trains. Dozens of TGV's,
some of them deep red in color, are sitting on the rails waiting to go
quickly to someplace up north.
The information booth is manned, but has no history available. A lady
arrives in a rush to ask the way to the Eurostar, saying she's got to get
the 16:18. My watch says it is 16:18 as she leaves without hearing that she
has to go up to the balcony.
A guard at the Eurostar exit says he prefers the station after having
been a night guard at the Louvre for a long time. He lets passengers out
and service people in, but
still gets
to talk to more civilians than at the other place. The girls at the
information booth like their jobs in the Gare du Nord too.
With all the parked trains, no rails glisten.
The newspaper stands are the standard variety you see in all stations
and the snack bars all look new and clean. The public toilets all charge
the standard amount, and if they don't have the personal touches of the
ones at the Etoile and Madeleine, at least they are open; but without the
range of services of the one at the Gare de Lyon - but I'm sure I didn't
check them all and may have overlooked the one with showers and
shoeshines.
Although I came up to the station from the métro, you don't
necessarily go back down the same way - but the way back to the
métro is just as short as the way up was. If you cross town to the
Gare Montparnasse, be ready to walk a long way through tunnels.
The Gare du Nord is neat, clean and tidy. With its lack of mystery, fog,
dimness, I don't think it would be a favorite hang-out of Inspector
Maigret. If you pass through it, you might not even notice it.
Richard Erickson, living in Paris for the last twenty years, has been putting
Paris online as long as anyone. More of his writings can be found in
Metropole Paris
where this article first appeared.
He can be contacted via
erickso@world-net.sct.fr.
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