Se déplacer dans Paris: l'autobus

Further to my post a while ago about the métro, I thought I would write about the best way to displace oneself in Paris, apart from on foot: on the hundreds of smart green single-decker buses which ply the streets.  The bus is certainly slower than the métro, but (as might be expected) allows more to be seen of the city.  The buses are also run by the R.A.T.P., but the network is denser still. The routes wend their winding way from arrondissement to arrondissement;  often they pass through unexpected places, and spark the surprise of recognition when they emerge at a familiar corner or before a mighty land-mark.

It has become clear to me that the R.A.T.P. sees the bus routes as the continuation of the métro, since the sequence of underground lines, 1-14, is taken up again by bus number 20 (providing for the possible creation of six new underground lines).  The digits of the bus route numbers also corresponded generally to their starting points and destinations. Routes 91, 92, 94, 95 and 96 all start at Montparnasse, for instance; routes 30, 31, 35, 38 and 39 from the Gare du Nord.  Ingeniously, every route has its own colour.  Dark yellow means that I need to run!

The R.A.T.P. does its bit to help with the traffic problem

Pleasant though the passengers' journey might be, the bus driver's job is not easy - harder, I imagine, than the métro driver's.  On every journey I take along route 91, the driver's deftness, even in a bendy-bus, is called into action.  Indeed, in a competition called the Bus d'Or (the 'Golden Bus'), which sifts out the crème de la crème of France's conducteurs de bus, driving route 94 counts as a phase in itself; as does passing through a mock-up of the 'guichet du Louvre' (the Louvre gatehouse, with fifteen centimetres of space on each side of the wing-mirrors!).  You can see a video about the competition here.

The 'Montmartrobus' - small enough to navigate the hill.

That said, the drivers provide another element, generally absent from the métro, and that is the good treatment of their passengers.  Always they give a courteous 'Bonjour'.  They offer good-humoured advice when stuck in hopeless traffic.  At Christmastide, at least one driver on route 47 decks his cab with yards of tinsel.  The entire journey is more life-affirming, since Parisian civilisation can be observed at leisure: pipe-smoking behatted elderly gents, calm ambling nuns, the young queing for the cinema, care-free cyclists in the bus-lane, Peugeots and Renaults inextricably entangled in embouteillages, immaculate restaurants and brasseries...  The rue assourdissant is a better view, surely, than  a tunnel wall!

Some bus routes of note:

Bus 91.

  91   Ligne 91 carries me daily to the university.  There is no direct métro line between Gare Montparnasse and Gare de Lyon, so the bendy-buses carry out this intense job instead, every five minutes, mostly along bus lanes ('couloirs de bus').  This journey is no faster by métro.

  83    Number 83 wriggles along south-east to north-west and is a good route to see inconspicuous corners fairly rapidly.

   58     Ditto, except that this bus goes north-east, from Montparnasse to Châtelet.

  67    Ligne 67 will be well-known to anybody who has encountered Agnès Varda's Cléo de 5 à 7, that puzzling film.  The journey in this film from Parc Montsouris to the Hôpital Salpetrière can still be undertaken today, on the same route, although not on the same vehicle!

Route 72 (only on special occasions!)

  72    Ligne 72 runs neatly along the Right Bank of the Seine from the Hôtel de Ville, downstream to the Eiffel Tower and thence to the Porte de Saint-Cloud.

  39   Number 39 is good for the tourist: starting at the Gare du Nord, it strikes straight out for the Louvre, and thence over the river to Saint-Germain-des Prés.

  29   Ligne 29 has recently been the subject of a collection of poems by Jacques Roubaud (like Raymond Queneau, a member of Oulipo) - 'Ode à la ligne 29 des autobus parisiens'.  This proves it all about Paris!  You can hear an extract, along with some of the sounds of the buses (including the ticket stampers!), here.  It is not terribly easy to read, still less to listen to, because Roubaud is playing with the language and throwing in many literary references, but is worth hearing just for the beauty of the intricate French and internal rhyme.

On route 89 - near Jussieu.

  89   Ligne 89 is my favourite, starting off as it does from the Bibliothèque François Mittérand, and plunging into the fifth arrondissement which I now know best, passing the Jardin des Plantes, Saint-Etienne-du-Mont, the most beautiful church in Paris, the Jardin du Luxembourg, Saint-Sulpice, the second most beautiful church in Paris, Montparnasse and the Gare de Vanves-Malakoff.  From library to railway station via a succession of churches... I might have drawn it up myself!

Route 84, place du Panthéon, in the rain, awaiting departure.

Pélérinage balzacien: rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève

Another of the touristic perambulations which I undertook in October might better be described as a literary pilgrimage.  The rue Tournefort is deep in the 5e arrondissement, running southwards from the Panthéon, and Honoré de Balzac, the great nineteenth-century novelist whom I might have mentioned once or twice, knew it well enough to set Le Père Goriot there. 

 
Madame Vauquer, née de Conflans, est une vieille femme qui, depuis quarante ans, tient à Paris une pension bourgeoise établie rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève, entre le quartier latin et le faubourg Saint-Marcel.

My effort at a translation: Madame Vauquer, née  de Conflans, is an old woman who for forty years has kept a boarding house in the rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève, between the Latin Quarter and the inner suburb of  Saint-Marcel.
  

Much has changed, mercifully:

           ...les maisons y sont mornes, les murailles y sentent la prison....  Nul quartier de             Paris n’est plus horrible, ni, disons-le, plus inconnu.'

    ...the houses there are grim; the walls suggest a prison... No part of Paris is more horrible nor, it      might be said, more unknown.

Much has not, though:

A brusque and rude slope

Elle est située dans le bas de la rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève, à l’endroit où le terrain s’abaisse vers la rue de l’Arbalète par une pente si brusque et si rude que les chevaux la montent ou la descendent rarement.

 [The boarding-house] is to be found at the bottom of the rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève, where the land drops down towards the rue de l’Arbalète so abruptly and roughly that horses rarely go up or down it.

What is also striking about his description of the area are the 'tons jaunes' and sombre colours: he described the street as a 'cadre de bronze', a picture-frame of bronze well-suited to the picture he was about to paint.  Much of what inspired this description must have disappeared with the smartening-up of the street, but there is still a papery yellowness about it.  Certainly the relative quietude remains.

It is generally accepted that the house to the left is the Maison Vauquer, also described in meticulous detail by Balzac.  Here he played out the first episode of his great drama: here Rastignac planned his conquest of Parisian society, here Goriot, because of his compulsive generosity, had to move progressively further upstairs as he gradually tightened his belt; here Vautrin met his come-uppance!  It is fascinating to  find the settings of books or places frequented by authors and by people I admire.

  
'La façade de la pension donne sur un jardinet, en sorte que la maison tombe à angle droit sur la rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève, où vous la voyez coupée dans sa profondeur.

   The front of the house overlooks a little garden, and it is at a right angle to the rue Neuve-Sainte-  Geneviève,  which cuts it in section from top to bottom.

In an imminent post I will follow the rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève to its namesake, the tomb of St. Geneviève at the church of St-Etienne-du-Mont.

C'est parti!

First floor, centre Censier (Sorbonne Nouvelle)

Lectures and seminars have just set off at full steam, in full-speed French, and full of knowledge, at the Sorbonne Nouvelle.  In my folly, I had believed that my capabilities in French were already being healthily stretched, but, as it turns out, this was only a prelude.  Seminars last for at least ninety minutes and sometimes for as long as three hours, and the lecturers make no linguistic concession to foreign students.  I feel like a 2CV at Le Mans as I try to block out the booming lecturer next door (in English, of all languages!), to figure out what that was that came after 'Il faut absolument...' or 'Vous êtes obligés de...',  and to conceal the steam hissing from my ears!   In comparison to one-hour lectures generally delivered in English - and here come two words which are, with good reason, not usually juxtaposed - Cambridge seems almost easy.  (The word 'almost' is important).  The apparent confusion of some of the French students is some consolation, although turning to ask me if I understood does not improve matters!

It must be added, even in the midst of the madness, that this is how it ought to be.  Among the very important things which this year abroad is designed to teach me (by fire, it seems), and which I must learn now if I am ever to do so, is the true and authentic use of French.  If this be at ninety miles an hour (perhaps I mean 144,8 kilomètres par heure), I must say 'So be it' through gritted teeth!

At any rate, if henceforward there is a slight decline in my posting frequency (wherefore on the Internet there shall be much gladness and rejoicing) it will be either because I am in a lecture, or because I am recovering from it.