- Tracking down La Petite Ceinture!!
So for my seminar class I have to conduct a study on Paris. My decision was to study the voids that lie within the city...more specifically la petite ceinture (the small belt). The petite ceinture are railroad tracks from the late 1800s and they are not being used today, yet they still exsist. My goal is to find these tracks, try to understand why paris accepts and keeps this void within the city. Thus far I have found places where people live (tents) and where hippies hang out. My professor and I figured out that the petite ceinture run through this crazy asian looking park that is in paris. The park is called Buttes Chaumont and It was created in 1870 by Napolean III. Today I went to the park, I randomly ran into my friend Julie who was having a picnic with her friends at the park...I dragged Julie along with me to go discover the tracks and the tunnel that they lead to. The tunnel was about 400 meters long, it was cold, and it was very dark. It was kinda freaky but we kept walking on, the trick was not to look back and realize that we were still closer to the way we came in than the exit up ahead. We did not have any light except for julie's lighter and my camera. Ocasionally I shot some pics so the flash would light up the tracks up ahead...which pretty much only told us that the tracks were still uphead. Julie took out her swiss army knife and said it loud and clear that she had it in her hand...just in case there were any scary guys down there. but in the end there was not...just a large shredded bird but we saw that at the entrance. About half way through I looked back and I saw two figures at the end where we came in. I wasnt sure what they were doing. but we kept on in our direction. Eventually we made it out, had to hop a fence and asked to use the toliet at a nearby cafe. the toliet was one of those flat in the ground kind, so it was squatting action time. We had no clue where we were, because when we came up we were in a park, I first assumed it was the same one we left from. However, it was not. We came to a realization that we were far from our starting point...and had quite a long walk back to Julies friends who did not decide to come in (i wonder why?) They told us that we were down in the tunnel for about 45 minutes. I think this is the craziest thing I have ever done...well its up there with the UIC tunnels, but thats another story...
shandar | 2:45 PM
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