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Published: October 19th 2012
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I arrived in Paris Charles de Gaulle. I was promised that one of the current employees of the ecurie I was going to work at would be there to pick me up. She was there allright, but was not given my cell number, only a description that I had a black hair. Brilliant. Especially as at the same time there had landed a flight from Tokyo, Dubai and Delhi! So a girl with a black hair was easy to find!
Now, I have a confession to make. I am a finn (that was not it..). And I absolutely hate winter, snow, frost and all that shit. (no, I don't like sauna either, or vodka..). And as I arrived, so did the coldest winter for over 50 years!
It was frost as I started to work, luckily, as I have lived on Ireland, I knew it wouldn't be all sunny and hot and I had packed my winter clothes. Some of it. See, the problem is that the airlines don't really like you if you try to bring all your life with you on the plane. But that wouldn't be an issue as there would come
a horse transport from Sweden and bring the rest of my baggage. In a two weeks I was told. So no worries!
And what comes to the nice, fresh newly renovated big bright apartment, well... I was shown to a smallish apartment, built to the other end of the stable block, or actually in a stable. The last three boxes were made to a small studio, with two windows. It wasn't excactly brilliant, but whatever, I was promised I could move to a bigger one as the previous employees left. That left me with a few more questions: they are leaving okey, but who's coming here to work with me (no answers to that one!) and where are the tv and the internet? They were "on their way". Hmm. Right... Or, correction, I had a tv, a big old ugly thing, size of a small house, but it hadn't worked in years. And no bloody internet!
And the horses, currently 24 of them, where placed at the three different yards. From where I lived to the "middle" yard was only 500m, but from there to the last yard over a km. Handy if you had a
car (which we did yes, one) but if someone took a car, it was not so good. Except for your health!
Chamant is a really small village, quite nice. It's next to a small town called Senlis, where I did all the shopping and there was a few nice restaurants as well. To the city of Paris was about 40km south from Chamant. We regularly had horses racing in Vincennes, the bigger of the two tracks in Paris. The journey might have been only 40km, but it took at least an hour, and then you were lucky! At worst, it could take two hours... There's always traffic in Paris, they have these signs above the road that inform you quite well, fluide, then the traffic is going smoothly, but if the sign said "bouchon" then it would be jammed. And the speed limit for the most of the time is 130km/h, and you surely shouldn't drive any slower, not even with a horse box or you would be a cause for the next "bouchon"! Paris traffic became very familiar to me!
First time I went off to the races with a girl who had
worked there for several years and would move back to sweden in a month. A couple of days after that, I went to Vincennes by myself. 4-5lanes of motorway, everybody driving like madmen, and even if it was "fluide" there was a LOT of traffic. And motorbikes driving even more recklessly than the regular pillocks behind the wheels! I came to a conclusion that the french motorcyclists have a secret death wish, or not so secret, they just absolutely want to die! BUT, I had a GPS! So no worries! I will survive and so on. But the bloody GPS died as soon as I came out to the motorway... I found my way allright, but it wasn't exactly a smooth start! Even with the GPS, it's hard to find the racetracks. The adress usually is meant for the public, not to the stables. And as I found out several times later on, the distance between the gate to the public and "entree des vans" for the horse transports could be quite big! As going to Vincennes, you drive south, and then take an exit where it says Joinville. Then round a roundabout (the french love roundabouts, they are everywhere!)
and back towards where you came from a few hundred meters, and there in the middle of the crossroads is an entry to the stables. There's a guard at the gates, who stops you and asks for a trainers name, horses name and the number of the race your horse is entered. And he never speaks english! (and you need to say the scandinavian names as the french would pronounce them! otherwise they just stand their staring and looking blanc)
The next you park the horsebox, as instructed, load off a horse (or two..) and all your gear and sulky and start walking! Before you come up to the stableyard, there's a vet who checks the passport of the horse and reads the microchip in their necks to confirm you have a right fella with you. Then off you go!
And as you walk by, there are always a bunch of punters hanging about on a sidewalk, on the other side of the fence, yelling questions about how your horse will do today. To play safe, just to say "placé", meaning they might place in top 3.
Vincennes is a very
nice place, warmly recommend for everybody! Even for those who are not extremely race enthousiasts. The biggest event is Prix d'amerique, then the place is absolutely packed. A week before the big race, they race Prix d'cornulier. Monté, meaning harness racing under a saddle. That's a funny thing about french racing, same serious men in their 50s who sit at the sulky, jump up the saddle in the next race. And, yes they really jump up there, no need for help there! Monté is something truly french, it's highly respected and the pricemoney follows. The first price in Prix d'Cornulier was 800000€! We where there, on the Cornulier day, did well with our horse as well at another race, 48000€ for being a second, not too bad!
Oh yeah, did I mention that the horse transport from Sweden with my clothes and other stuff, didn't come after all. All kinds of explanations, and finally the real reason: my boss hadn't paid for the bloke who drives international transports ( every week to Paris), and our own Swedish driver had been hospitalized, and because of that, laid off. Brilliant. Off to Senlis make some emergency-clothes-shopping and waiting for
a solution for a transport problem.
And yet another thing. As I told before, we had 24 horses. But only one 2horse box and one sulky. Well you do the math! And what caused the problems, was the boss, who happily entered horses to race all over the country, several races in different places on the same day! And we, and later just me, were left to face the situation. And to deal with it!
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