SMALL PLEASURES AT THE TRAIN STATION

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It’s 11AM. I’m sitting here at the gare (train station) because they have seating that doesn’t require me to buy anything, and I realized that I forgot to tell you my absolute favorite thing about train stations. Not all gares have them, but some do, including the Paris Gare du Nord (North Station), which happens to be the Paris gare that goes to Lille.

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The signs!!!

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Every train station has a huge billboard-sized sign high up in the middle of the gare that posts the scheduled departure times, destinations, numbers, and voies (gates/ways). The ones I love are not the brand new, digital screens with bright orange LED numbers and letters, nor are they the old, funky digital screens with blocky, green, dot matrix-looking text.

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The signs I love are based on the old-fashioned ones that flip at rapid fire-speed, one space at a time, through every letter, number, and character until they arrive at the right one, and then move on to the next character and do the same thing. They’re like those old-fashioned alarm clock radios that flip to a new minute… only there is so much flipping so fast that it sounds like a cactus rain stick, only clickier.

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I love that!

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PS - Hostel girls are from Spain. But they are university students here. And they are friends.

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