10:52 a.m. With a piercing whistle, the police officer SNCF announces the imminent departure of TGV Paris – Stuttgart. Already on board, a mother with children scattered in the car counts out loud. One, two, three, four… « Oh ! I lost one ! » she exclaims, her tone playful. « Booouuuh ! » She pretends to be frightened by the bawling of the little man whose head has suddenly appeared between two seats. I grab my notebook and scribble a few words. The first of a major report, aimed at Azerbaijan and the COP29.
Between farewells, reunions, and the eternal quest for a stable resting place for sleeping heads, the train never tires here either of offering our eyes a thousand moving or entertaining moments. Like these two lovers, looking for adjoining places. They land next to me, take two foil-wrapped sandwiches from their backpacks and toast them. Then, with their temples pressed together, sharing a pair of headphones, the duo dive into an episode of the zombie-filled series The Walking dead.
10:52 a.m., Gare de l’Est in Paris: the start of an epic journey of 4,000 kilometers… go !
© Emmanuel Clévenot / Reporterre
Two cars away, a waiter in a well-tailored suit sways with the shaking, the remains of a chili con carne in his hands. His feet cross, his body pretends to stagger, miraculously balances itself and disappears into the tiny kitchen.
There are also these four supporters of FC Schalke 04, already on the way to the football match the next day, and this little girl, asking her father about the funny man she saw sleeping in the metro a few hours earlier: « He even brought his duvet, Dad. »
Staying balanced without standing in a moving train is already a great exercise; achieving it with your hands full requires undeniable expertise.
© Emmanuel Clévenot / Reporterre
Stop #1: Stuttgart. We get off at the platform 20 minutes late. A drop of water next to the 84 hours of rail separating me from COP29. At the foot of the austere Hauptbahnhof, a monumental station built in 1914, an old man waits patiently in the darkness of a small green shed.
« I am French. » Him jabbering through the fragments of German lessons that I have left from high school, and using Google Translate to good effect, I understand that Elmar is campaigning against the large underground station project: « Stuttgart 21 ».
Elmar is campaigning against Stuttgart 21, a monumental project with a gigantic cost of 11 billion euros.
© Emmanuel Clévenot / Reporterre
While tapping on my phone, I come across an archive of Reporterre. Already in 2013, our journalist described this great battle. The activists chained to the 300 ash and chestnut trees now felled. The 164 victims of violent police charges, during the clashes of September 30, baptized « Black Thursday ». More than 100,000 people took to the streets to protest such repression.
And, she asked: what lessons can this struggle give to the zadists of Notre-Dame-des-Landes? ? Eleven years later, the Nantes airport has never been built, but half a dozen cranes surround Elmar.
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