Once upon a time on the TGV - you won't believe this!

Note: Unlike some of the barely believable fairy tales that I usually over exaggerate for dramatic effect, the following events actually happened. All of it is real and factual; the witnesses are all alive to validate my account of this particular escapade.

Before I start telling this particularly humorous story, there are two things you should know about. The first is the TGV, referred to in French as “train a grande vittesse” which loosely translated to English means high velocity train. It is quite a marvel of French engineering; it’s basically a high speed passenger train that has quite comfortable first class seats. It is the world’s third fastest passenger train with a top speed of 570 km/h and an average cruising speed of 270 km/h. So to put that in perspective, you will need to somehow put together a Volkswagen Golf 6 GTI and a Volkswagen Golf R32 just to catch up with it at full tilt, so as you can imagine the TGV is one freakishly fast piece of Metal. You can Google it just in case you have any doubts.

The Areva clan, is/was a group of Namibian students studying in France, don’t ask me about the name because I didn’t come up with it, had that responsibility been bestowed on me I would formulated a name much more awesome than that. Anyways the Areva clan was a close knit family, when new students arrived the others who were already there would take it upon themselves to welcome them and make life in the land of wine and cheese that much easier, because everything in France is in French even the word English is in French. We adopted a South African student, her name was Ntlapu and she introduced me to the fine culinary delights called Sushi (yes, its RAW fish, but you can eat it! As long as you have soya sauce) and taught me how to say a few words in suthu.

Ntlapu is one of the nicest people you will ever meet; even when she chases you out of her room she will do it in the most gentle and nicest way imaginable, in her suthu accent of course. I used to bother her every time that my mind got clouded, she always had sound advice, so no wonder I started losing it once she left. The night before Ntlapu’s departure to SA via the big apple, the young one’s (myself included) had a night out on the town (which is partly responsible for what transpired). Anyways it was a Saturday morning; Ntlapu had decided to pack the kitchen sink and her golf clubs so she needed some muscle to help her carry her luggage (women and their luggage, shakes head!). My friends Gideon, Rudolf, Nerago, Paulina and Aneka (she’s from Mauritius, that’s why her name sounds exotic) all tagged along to bid her farewell as she boarded the train from Nancy to Paris (so basically they all witnessed what happened next). Aneka took pictures, thus her role in this particular escapade was crucial because a picture tells a thousand words (it also has a date and time stamp, just in case you’re wondering).

We got to the train station later than scheduled, so we set about loading Ntlapu’s suitcases on board while Nerago was admiring some drab looking French dude while looking for where she and Ntlapu were seated (Women! Words can’t explain these creatures). Rudolf and I got the unwanted task of loading the suitcase with the golf clubs. Somehow in between struggling with the actual weight of the suitcase and finding a place to put it we had taken up so much time that by the time we finished we heard a loud beep. The TGV is automated so when you hear a beep it usually does not end well, the beep I’m talking about is for the closure of the doors. A mad dash followed, we could have beaten Usain Bolt the way we ran to the doors, but to no avail the damned things shut just as we reached them. Gideon ran for help while Paulina and Aneka just waved (clearly they didn’t understand the gravity of the situation) that’s when it hit me! We were stuck on a flying automated train that is the equivalent of a machine on steroids without any tickets. What was the conductor going to do to us? Was he going to handcuff us and send us to the guillotine? Or was he going to tell Nicolas Sarkozy? (He was still president at the time). So many thoughts were flying around in my head, one being how I would explain to people how two very intelligent Masters Students got trapped on a passenger train?

Nerago, Ntlapu and Rudolf started with a long explanation to the train conductor; all I saw were lips moving and strange words floating in the air. Nerago was silently laughing but on the inside, I was the only one who heard her, Ntlapu was waving her hands probably in the hope that it would show a high enough state of distress to the conductor. Rudolf was even throwing in a French accent just to convince him that we were indeed students and not a bunch of crazy people. From the very little French I knew at the time I gathered that we were off the hook but unfortunately had to pay for our return tickets from Paris to Nancy. Since Ntlapu is such a nice person she paid for our return tickets and metro tickets to we could at least ride the underground train and visit some of the amazing places in Paris. It just so happens that that particular Saturday was a “jour Ferrière (hope my spelling is right)”, which means the museums opened for free. So Rudolf and I decided to visit the Famous Louvre Museum, famous for housing the Mona Lisa (if I’m not mistaken) and a glass pyramid that Indian people love taking pictures in front off (no offence to Indian people).

That was the last day I saw the bubbly and down to earth Ntlapu Tsholo, it also happened to be the day I was going to my first Ligue 1 (French soccer’s premier league) match. So why was I worried about a soccer match when I had just gone through the traumatic experience of being stuck on a high speed mechanical contraption? Well all I can say is that that’s how my crazy mind works. After fooling around at the Louvre and getting some weird looks on the Metro (the dreadlocks always got me some weird looks), we made it back to Gare de L’est to catch our train back to Nancy from Paris. The first friend I told was Lenaic from Gabon on our way to the Marcel Picot stadium where AS Nancy would lose like wimpy mommies boys to Brest FC, he thought it was funny. If I was in his shoes and he was telling me the story I probably would have laughed as well. The funny thing is that Lenaic was the last of my friends to see me before I boarded my train to Paris to catch my flight back to Namibia (Sigh! Big boys don’t cry).

My good friend Absai (He overslept) missed all the action. But amazingly the Versions that Nerago, Paulina, Gideon and Rudolf told him were all different to mine, Paulina’s version goes “Those guys were swallowed by the train” (So you can already tell that it’s so over exaggerated.  My version is the most factually correct because I pay attention to detail and focus less on the dramatic effect (Basically I don’t spice my stories, like the others do). Many more adventures would follow including this one time I lost my keys and had to climb through a friends window to wake him up to he could give me his access card, this one time in Paris when my door locked itself with the keys inside while I was taking out my rubbish dressed in nothing but a towel and this one time I almost died after eating a Kebab but those are stories for another time.

The one in the glasses trying to trick the camera with a smile is Aneka

Areva clan (L-R)[Standing] Ntlapu, Yolanda, Paulina, Absai, Nerago, Filemon, Helena. [kneeling] Gideon.