Eurostar Blast-off

Agnes Poirier

Guardian, November 15, 2007

On the romance of the train – or the slight lack of it when there is no bagel shop at StPancras station

It’s like the first day at school: you do not know the place, people look at each other, uncertain, you don’t know where things are or what you are supposed to do, except that you’re here for a purpose. D-day at Eurostar StPancras feels just like that. First of all, black cabs don’t know where to drop you. “I haven’t got a clue where it is” shouted the driver when I said that, perhaps, the entrance to King’s Cross tube wasn’t necessarily the right spot to abandon me.

When I eventually arrive at the terminal, everybody looks gauche, Eurostar employees and confused travelers alike, though we all smile, slightly embarrassed to be acting so nervously. People behind glass counters have today replaced the check-in barriers. At first, I think they are customs, but that doesn’t make any sense, does it?

A smiling brunette checks me in and I go through security. So far, so good. Then through customs, which resemble an airport’s, with a British desk in front, followed by the French one. After that mayhem – or rather terra incognita. Most people have chosen to sit down in this big open plan hall, while the others venture to queue in front of, apparently, the only shop at hand, a (closed) Caffe Nero. The improvised queue works magic: the café suddenly opens its doors.

But it stands in a desert: no newsagent, no souvenir stand, no bagel eaterie, and no postbox! Disaster, I have to go back to Paris with a week’s work mail, stamped and ready to go. No time to moan, must proceed to the platform. Ah! The station and its fabulous glass roof, that’s more like it.

Yet, a few minutes later, disappointment strikes again: the high-speed line is almost buried underground up to the Channel. You occasionally get a few glimpses of the countryside but, basically, the journey is noir from StPancras to Picardie, and that’s 60 minutes long. So much for daydreaming while admiring the green pastures of Kent. Otherwise, these 20 minutes saved on the journey make a real difference. In the 12 years I have (extensively) used the Eurostar, we’ve gained 40 minutes.

The irony of course is that Britain, that invented the railways in the first place, has to make do with its first 68-mile high-speed line, 26 years after the first TGV, linking Paris to Lion, began operating. Why wait all that time?

Of course, for some trains will always be monotonous but for others, trains feel magic. They may look different from the old models, and the bar coaches will never have the glitz and refinement of yesteryear, when the most striking conversations could be had, but as long as this kind of excitement can be experienced on a train, then I’ll always travel on them.