Ten Little Chances to be Free (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tenlittlebullets) wrote2007-08-16 06:15 pm
tenlittlebullets) wrote2007-08-16 06:15 pm
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Not-quite-Paris Photo Post #5: Montfermeil
I don't think I ever actually related the epic of my trip to Montfermeil. I did go, but there were several points where I almost bloody gave up because it was obvious I was never going to find the Fontaine Jean Valjean. I did, though! Eventually.
The RER was the easy part, actually--it only cost about two euros each way, and the ride was shorter than plenty of trips I've taken on the DC Metro. But Montfermeil does not have an RER station, so I had to get off at Le Raincy/Villemobile and take the bus. Getting on the right bus wasn't the problem. The problem was that I had no map of Montfermeil and no idea where the bus stops were, and the 601ab bus serves all the loveliest neighborhoods of Seine-Saint-Denis so if I got off too soon I'd end up smack in the middle of Clichy-sous-Bois with no idea where I was.
What followed was slightly farcical. I did manage to avoid Clichy, but I eventually had to pick a completely random stop somewhere in Montfermeil to get off at. There was a tiny area map at the bus stop that was oriented weirdly, so when I tried to get back to a park I'd seen from the bus that I thought might be the Parc Jean Valjean, I wound up going in the wrong direction and it took half an hour of wandering through varyingly skeevy parts of Montfermeil to find it. It was not the Parc Jean Valjean. It did, however, have a completely deserted tourist information building that had some touristy leaflets about the Les Mis-related things the city had done that summer. Nicked the pamphlet on their Spectacle Son et Lumière--no directions, no map. Tried a newsletter. Nothing. Finally, looking for a way to amuse myself if nothing else, I grabbed a tiny little pamphlet on how they'd transformed various green spaces in the city into recreations of places from the novel. And lo and behold! a map with those spaces marked out. Finally.
I took the map and figured out that the park I was in was at the opposite end of Montfermeil from the Parc Jean Valjean. Headdesk. So I found a route and set out, and just as I was preparing to head down a little alley very close to the spot marked on the map, I found myself--at the exact location I'd gotten off the bus. Fierce was the facepalming as I realized that if I'd gone down the alley instead of wandering down the street, I would have been right there.
Or would I? I kept going and knew I was getting warmer when I found the Allée du Puits. (Puits = well, btw, for the non-francophones.)
And yes, I was definitely getting close when I found myself outside the church with a floral recreation of Marius and Cosette's wedding.
And oh, look, there was a sign!
So I followed the sign and found a good-sized park. There were no signs indicating what it was called, but the rather incomplete map I'd picked up suggested that this was the right spot. So I wandered around for a while.
And kept wandering, and saw no sign of the Fontaine Jean Valjean. Or of anything LM-related. There were a whole bunch of signs up about botany and the plants in the park--which I later discovered was a brand-new arboretum--but no trace of what I was looking for. So I wandered around a bit more.
I did find several small ponds with streams trickling into them, but nothing that matched the description or photos I'd seen of the fountain. I took pictures anyway, on the off chance that I was incredibly dense and this was somehow the Fontaine Jean Valjean.
And then I wandered some more. ("Cosette! I told you fetch some water from the well in the wood!")
Eventually I emerged clear at the other end of the park, only to find a sign that pointed straight up the road I'd come down. Utterly mystifying! There was no Fontaine Jean Valjean in the park, the park was supposed to be the Parc Jean Valjean but wasn't marked as such, and here were two signs at either end of the street, both pointing towards the middle of the street where there was a newly-built playground and a bunch of construction going on.
I wandered up and down the street, I combed the park again, I took pictures that didn't turn out very well. Finally I asked a lady wandering through the park if she knew where it was, and she pointed me to a scrubby, weed-choked patch of grass between two houses, on the side of the street opposite the park. This was the far-too-grandly-named Place de la Fontaine Jean Valjean; I had passed it while walking up the street, but mistook it for a wall dividing someone's property.
The fountain was pretty much a graffitied sculpture in a niche in the wall, with some scummy water trickling down into a basin and an entirely unnecessary 'Eau Non Potable' sign next to it. There was a nice plaque with a quote from the book on the wall, but the whole thing looked pretty dilapidated.
And that was that. I hung out there for a while, went back through the arboretum feeling slightly less neurotic now that I'd found the fountain, waited for the bus for about an hour, and took it back to the RER station. And just to cap things off, there was an advertisement on the bus:
For the Spectacle Son et Lumière, which had taken place at the end of June. Oops.
The RER was the easy part, actually--it only cost about two euros each way, and the ride was shorter than plenty of trips I've taken on the DC Metro. But Montfermeil does not have an RER station, so I had to get off at Le Raincy/Villemobile and take the bus. Getting on the right bus wasn't the problem. The problem was that I had no map of Montfermeil and no idea where the bus stops were, and the 601ab bus serves all the loveliest neighborhoods of Seine-Saint-Denis so if I got off too soon I'd end up smack in the middle of Clichy-sous-Bois with no idea where I was.
What followed was slightly farcical. I did manage to avoid Clichy, but I eventually had to pick a completely random stop somewhere in Montfermeil to get off at. There was a tiny area map at the bus stop that was oriented weirdly, so when I tried to get back to a park I'd seen from the bus that I thought might be the Parc Jean Valjean, I wound up going in the wrong direction and it took half an hour of wandering through varyingly skeevy parts of Montfermeil to find it. It was not the Parc Jean Valjean. It did, however, have a completely deserted tourist information building that had some touristy leaflets about the Les Mis-related things the city had done that summer. Nicked the pamphlet on their Spectacle Son et Lumière--no directions, no map. Tried a newsletter. Nothing. Finally, looking for a way to amuse myself if nothing else, I grabbed a tiny little pamphlet on how they'd transformed various green spaces in the city into recreations of places from the novel. And lo and behold! a map with those spaces marked out. Finally.
I took the map and figured out that the park I was in was at the opposite end of Montfermeil from the Parc Jean Valjean. Headdesk. So I found a route and set out, and just as I was preparing to head down a little alley very close to the spot marked on the map, I found myself--at the exact location I'd gotten off the bus. Fierce was the facepalming as I realized that if I'd gone down the alley instead of wandering down the street, I would have been right there.
Or would I? I kept going and knew I was getting warmer when I found the Allée du Puits. (Puits = well, btw, for the non-francophones.)
And yes, I was definitely getting close when I found myself outside the church with a floral recreation of Marius and Cosette's wedding.
And oh, look, there was a sign!
So I followed the sign and found a good-sized park. There were no signs indicating what it was called, but the rather incomplete map I'd picked up suggested that this was the right spot. So I wandered around for a while.
And kept wandering, and saw no sign of the Fontaine Jean Valjean. Or of anything LM-related. There were a whole bunch of signs up about botany and the plants in the park--which I later discovered was a brand-new arboretum--but no trace of what I was looking for. So I wandered around a bit more.
I did find several small ponds with streams trickling into them, but nothing that matched the description or photos I'd seen of the fountain. I took pictures anyway, on the off chance that I was incredibly dense and this was somehow the Fontaine Jean Valjean.
And then I wandered some more. ("Cosette! I told you fetch some water from the well in the wood!")
Eventually I emerged clear at the other end of the park, only to find a sign that pointed straight up the road I'd come down. Utterly mystifying! There was no Fontaine Jean Valjean in the park, the park was supposed to be the Parc Jean Valjean but wasn't marked as such, and here were two signs at either end of the street, both pointing towards the middle of the street where there was a newly-built playground and a bunch of construction going on.
I wandered up and down the street, I combed the park again, I took pictures that didn't turn out very well. Finally I asked a lady wandering through the park if she knew where it was, and she pointed me to a scrubby, weed-choked patch of grass between two houses, on the side of the street opposite the park. This was the far-too-grandly-named Place de la Fontaine Jean Valjean; I had passed it while walking up the street, but mistook it for a wall dividing someone's property.
The fountain was pretty much a graffitied sculpture in a niche in the wall, with some scummy water trickling down into a basin and an entirely unnecessary 'Eau Non Potable' sign next to it. There was a nice plaque with a quote from the book on the wall, but the whole thing looked pretty dilapidated.
And that was that. I hung out there for a while, went back through the arboretum feeling slightly less neurotic now that I'd found the fountain, waited for the bus for about an hour, and took it back to the RER station. And just to cap things off, there was an advertisement on the bus:
For the Spectacle Son et Lumière, which had taken place at the end of June. Oops.
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Oh man, you didn't even see how ugly the Marius mannequin was up close. XD
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