The Chunnel: No Claustrophobia Here!

If you have never ridden the EuroStar train between London’s Waterloo Station and Paris’ Gare d’ Nord, you may, like many people, imagine it to be 2-3/4 hours in an ominously dark tunnel far beneath the cold rough seas of the English Channel; "claustrophobic" and downright unnerving.

But you’d be wrong. In fact, this sleek, comfortable high-speed train whizzes you through pastoral landscapes, ever so typically British on the one side, with red-brick row-house villages, and so tres French on the other, with white-plastered farm-houses dotting rolling fields. For a brief 20 minutes you are in the actual Channel Tunnel (Chunnel), and may not even realize it as the train car is brightly lit, the windows darkly-coated and the atmosphere often festive.

Before boarding, we buy gourmet snacks from the impressive, pricey and popular Mark’s & Spencer food store at Waterloo Station — ready-made salads, chicken wraps, sesame-coated nuts, chocolates and wine — and are ready for our lunchtime feast to enjoy while traveling through one of the greatest engineering feats of all time. Imagine, this $15 billion dollar tunnel, completed with unlikely cooperation between the British and French governments (who, you recall from history class, have been battling each other since…well, since before there were Celts and Gauls) is the first post-Ice Age link between Britain and the Continent.

First, we show tickets (purchased online before leaving the states for 98USD each), are given a boarding pass with seat number, snake through a 10-minute line to security with typical airport-style X-ray machines and finally pass the French immigration booth where our Passports are stamped. Welcome to France. And we hadn’t left London yet! The main waiting room is boring – an insufficient number of attached orange and blue molded plastic seats, a sterile coffee bar and a couple of kiosks offering you your last chance to buy a Paddington Bear or cardboard face mask of Prince Charles, or otherwise throw away your last precious Pounds Sterling before arriving in the land of the Euro.

However, if you possess a first class ticket (for about four times the price), there are sumptuous lounges with broad leather chairs, big screen TVs, drapery-laden walls and hostesses to serve you drinks from the bar. We try to ingratiate ourselves but no way — hoi polloi must await the cattle call in the main area. An hour later the train is ready for boarding, the coach class hoards troop through glass doors, up flights of stairs and on to their assigned cars. The tight-rowed seats, two to a side, are comfortable and high-backed with pull-down trays, but the few facing one another are taken so we are unable to converse with our companions and, once underway, pass provisions back and forth over our heads.

In the front of our car is a party of kilt-wearing Scotsmen en route to the Rugby Championships being held in Paris. Their boisterous brogue is indecipherable but they are clearing having a good time and are not yet drunk enough to be totally obnoxious(as we later see some of their countrymen at the Eiffel Tower). Time passes quickly with charming countryside to observe, good food and drink, a bit of reading and map study, some shut-eye, and soon we’re in the industrial outskirts of Paris.

As the train pulls into Gare d’ Nord, one of the Scotsmen sweetly plays the entire Marseilles on a high-pitched but pleasantly melodic recorder. People stand in their tight rows and smile. When he is done, we all clap and many shout, “Viva la France!” just like in the movie Casablanca. It’s great to be back in Paris, and a marvelously convenient way to arrive!