Arrivederci Frenchies

Day 30

So, this was my final day overseas.

I was filled with mixed feelings. I was sick of Paris and wanted to leave, although I didn’t want to go home just yet.

All good things must end, though.

I got up and had breakfast with Caris (one of the two other Aussies from my room whose name escaped me in an earlier post), as well as another Aussie that I had chatted with in the hostel, Arianna.

Arianna was an Aussie living in the UK who worked with children/teenagers from troubled homes. She was a lovely and wise individual who I had a number of good conversations with at the hostel. I have also had the good fortune to catch up with her since returning from overseas when she came to visit Melbourne.

After breakfast I packed my bags and checked out of the hostel. The day was starting to heat up, and I decided to head out to the airport early to avoid any of the unpleasantness that I had in Manchester or upon arriving in Paris.

The train system in Paris is very efficient, with a lot of train lines running through the city. That being said, the trains are a little old, and while they run perfectly they suffer from a lack of airflow. So, by the time that I got out to the airport I was sweating like the proverbial and had to change my shirt, and this was before I even got on the plane for my 30 off hour trip back home.

At the airport I managed to book in without any issues (I was flying Emirates again), and set myself down in the airport McDonalds to grab a bite to eat. Nothing of real note happened at the airport, so I gather that they employ a bunch of nice people for departures from Charles de-Gaul, and a pack of *&#s to work in the arrivals area.

Once I entered the airport lounge I saw that we were going to fly on an A380 from Paris to Dubai. Score! I have always wanted to see what the big deal was with the A380s.

Inside the plane, it was pretty much the same as every other plane. Not enough room, same food, same hosts/hostesses, they just manage to fit more people on the plane. The plane did have that new car smell, though, which was comforting.

On this first flight I had a window seat, and had two guys sitting in the aisle with me. They chatted away, and I was content to listen to some music and watch a movie.

In Dubai, I hit up the smokers lounge for a bit and grabbed a coffee as it was getting on to 1am local time, before wandering back to the plane.

Once I got back on the plane, the fellow that had been sitting in the middle of our row of three asked me if I would mind taking his seat. The rest of his family were seated in another part of the plane, and he had asked the person sitting next to them if he could swap, but that guy wanted a window seat.

I didn’t mind too much, so I agreed.

The plane had a delay with taking off – there were 16 people that chose not to board the plane. We sat on the tarmac for about 45 minutes longer than we were supposed to, before the captain said “Fuck it, we’re leaving”.

I had a bit of a chat with both of the guys in the row on this flight, as there was a screaming kid that prevented us from sleeping.

The flight lasted for about 8 hours, during which I got a couple of hours sleep, chatted for a bit, and watched a movie.

Our next port of call was Kuala Lumpur. I hit up the smoking lounge again while we waited for the plane to be refueled, and as I was heading back to the departure lounge I passed a café with the name “Fukyumama”. I don’t think you could get away with a café like that in Melbourne.

Back on the plane, the fellow that had swapped seats obviously went back to his own seat, so Karl (the other remaining person in my aisle) and I decided that we would use this opportunity to have a few of the included drinks and a few laughs. There were a couple of hostesses on the plane that we flirted with – Karl flirted with an Irish hostie, and I flirted with one from Moldova.

After getting a few drinks in my belly, I decided that giving her my number was a good idea. As she came around to collect the hot flannels they provide to wash your face, I threw a piece of paper onto the tray with my flannel. I wasn’t sure if she noticed, but she came back over once she had finished collecting the flannels and told me that she couldn’t give out her number, but she had my number and may have to call me in Melbourne. Sadly, she didn’t.

The screaming kid was still on this plane, and Karl and I almost wanted to join in to show the kid what they sounded like to everybody else. The Moldovan hostess walked past the kid and gave it a frustrated look. I waved her over and offered my pillow, with the suggestion that it could be used to quiet the child. She had a laugh, understanding that I meant the pillow could be used more at the front of the child’s head rather than the back.

We finally arrived in Melbourne at the bright and early hour of 3am, after our delays in Dubai and KL. It was too late to ask my folks to come out and pick me up, so I grabbed a taxi back to their place, loaded up my car and headed back home for a delightful sleep in my own bed.

Thus endeth the trip. Sigh.

The love/hate struggle

Day 29

So, I woke up with mixed feelings about Paris so far. I had had a horrible experience with the airports and travelling around, but decided to give the city a second chance.

I made a post on Facebook asking people if they had any suggestions of things to do.

I headed downstairs to grab some breakfast with Derek before he headed back to Canada, and found him a little the worse for wear in the morning. He didn’t mind, as it was still early (and not too hot) and he just had to make it out to the airport where he could pass out once he got on the plane.

After eating some breaky and seeing Derek off, I grabbed a shower and checked my Facebook. Lapzang’s cousin, Lukeyyy B, asked me if I could head to Jim Morrison’s grave and take a few photos for him. I discovered that it wasn’t too far from the hostel I was staying in, and decided to start  my day there before  walking on to see some of the sights of Paris.

It was about a 15 minute walk to the cemetery where old Jimbo was buried, and it turns out his grave is the fourth most visited attraction in Paris (after the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and Notre Dam). Buried in this cemetery there are a lot of other prominent historical figures, but Jim’s grave is the only one with a barricade around it.

I checked my map after visiting the grave and sussed out where I had to walk to get to some of the main sights in Paris. It took me about an hour to walk to Notre Dam from the cemetery, but it was a beautiful morning and I was happy to walk.

On my way, I got stopped by a man who asked for directions in French. I obviously looked enough like a local (surly?) that he thought I could help him. When I told him that I didn’t speak French, he switched to English and told me that I quite obviously wasn’t a local as I had actually stopped to help. We consulted my map, and he established where he needed to head to.

On the way to Notre Dam I stopped for a bite to eat, before making my way across the Seine river to the cathedral.

There was a massive queue to get in, so I just took some exterior photos, and managed to get a good photo of the statue of Charlemagne outside with the sun behind his head.

I wandered past the Louvre next, again taking exterior photos because I was starting to get a bit tight on cash. I wandered on to the Champs d’Elysees and all the way along it to the Arc de Triumphe. 

It was mid-afternoon by this stage, and I decided to just catch the train back to the hostel.

I had a couple of ciders at the hostel, before wandering up to the supermarket to pick up a few things for a picnic that evening. Two of my friends, Tommy K and Kate D were arriving in Paris and we had spoken of having a picnic at the base of the Eiffel tower that night.

They were due to land at 6.30, and we had spoken of meeting up at 8.30 to head into the city. I suspected that this wouldn’t be enough time for them to get out of the airport, get to their hotel and have a shower and such, but still arrived at their hotel on time.

At about 8.50 I heard somebody call out my name, and I saw a taxi pull up outside their hotel with Kate half hanging out the window. Tom and Kate apologized for being later than we had organized, but I told them I had expected it after my ordeal at Charles de-Gaul.

They were pooped, so we decided to just chill on the balcony of their room with the picnic bibs and bobs I had procured. Kate’s family were staying at the hotel too, so I met her father, her sister and her sister’s partner.

We had a great night catching up and talking about my trip and their trip. Kate's dad lives in Turkey, so he and I had a great chat about his local area.

As it got late in the evening everybody except for Tom and myself headed off to bed, so we decided to go for a bit of a wander. TK and KD were staying in the north-east of Paris, right on a lovely canal that a lot of people were congregating around at that point of the night.

We headed into one of the drinking venues along the canal, sat down and ordered a couple of beers. We chatted for about 20 minutes and then decided to walk off as it was taking far too long for the drinks to arrive.

We kept on wandering around the canal until we got back to a bar next to Tom’s hotel. We stopped in for a couple of drinks, and were both amazed and disturbed by the urinals, which were in the shape of a set of large red pursed lips. They do call this the city of love, after all.

Tom and I parted ways shortly after midnight, so I wandered back to my hostel (about a 30 minute walk) and climbed into bed.

The city of loath

Day 28

So, despite the late night and a greater than daily recommended intake of energy drinks, I woke up feeling quite perky about 15 minutes before my alarm went off.

I was on the top floor of the hostel, and had my feet facing east with a window across the room from me. I had the good fortune to get to watch the sun rise on my final day in the UK. It was a very good start to the day.

I got up and showered when my alarm went off. Now, for those of you that haven’t had the joy of spending time in a hostel, one of the things that you find is that there isn’t a lot of privacy to be had, and very few areas where two people can sneak off to and have relations. When I entered the bathroom, I found (I assume) a girl’s g-string hanging off the tap.

Well played, shaggers. Well played.

The previous day I had shed a whole heap of weight from my bag, various bibs and bobs that I would no longer require. So, a whole heap of dirty socks and jocks as well as my speakers were bid farewell as I made my way downstairs and over to the train station.

I asked the man in the booth what train I needed to catch to get out to the airport.

“The one that says ‘airport’” he helpfully answered.

Right.

I bought my ticket and headed to the appropriate platform.

It was quite a pleasant train trip to the airport, watching more of the Manchurian sunrise.

When I got to the airport, though, the fates started sucking the jam out of my doughnut. No, that is not a euphemism.

I got to the airport and found that I had to walk to Terminal 3. This was a 20 minute walk literally from one side of the airport to the other.

What are you complaining about? I hear you say. You have a trundle bag with wheels!

Well, one of the great things about airports is that you quite often have to go up and down levels in the airport (and then back up again quite often), and the airport designers love putting poles at the top and bottom of escalators that make it very difficult to get through unless you are toting hand luggage sized bag.

I understand that they don’t want some idiot to push a baggage-laden trolley down the escalators, but c’mon! Surely a few more inches isn’t too much to ask for. (Yeah yeah, I hear you commenting “That’s what she said.”)

So, I finally got to Terminal 3 and the counter that I was supposed to book into. There was a very long queue, which I jumped to the end of, waiting patiently for my turn. The queue moved very slowly.

I noticed a large number of people milling around a few computer terminals conveniently located right in the middle of the queue (these were people pushing through the queue to access the computers). A lady wearing the uniform of Air France walked along the line, asking people if they had their boarding passes already.

Huh? I thought. Don’t we get our boarding passes when we check in?

No – apparently not. You are supposed to get your boarding pass from those computers before jumping in the line.

Great. So I had been waiting in the line for 20 minutes and didn’t realize this.

When the lady got to me and asked me about the boarding pass, I informed her of how brilliant a system they had here, and that I couldn’t think of a single thing to streamline their process. Well, in my head at least.

She was willing to mind my bag while I went and got my boarding pass, which was quite nice of her.

I returned to my spot in the queue, waited another 20 minutes, and discovered that Air France, being the budget airline that they are, were booking 5 flights in at the same time through 4 counters. And the conveyor belt that normally takes you bags away was broken. Sigh.

So I waited in a queue for 40 minutes to have someone put a sticker on my bag, and then be told to take it “over there” to have it put on the plane.

After that frustrating turn of events, I thought it couldn’t get any worse, had a couple of cigarettes and boarded the plane.

The plane trip was blissfully uneventful, and we arrived in Paris about 20 minutes before our scheduled time. Great. J

Or so I thought.

Right, I’m going to put this out there. I HATE CHARLES DE GAUL AIRPORT!

I swear it was designed by a sadist with the sole intention of annoying as many visitors as possible and making them as surly as the locals.

12pm. After getting off the plane, there were no clear directions on where to go to collect our bags. People started milling around in confusion, and slowly (using herd osmosis) managed to find our way up an escalator, along a corridor, down an escalator, along another corridor (back the way from which we had originally come), and to a bottleneck where too few staff were checking to make sure that people had their passports.

Then we went up 2 escalators, walked a bit more, and caught an internal train to another terminal. I must say though that everybody was looking at each other as we waited at the train platform, none of us having any idea on whether we were supposed to catch the train or not.

1pm. At the new terminal we were again forced to walk, going up and down escalators for about 20 minutes, before we got to the customs area.

1.20pm. People started queuing up in an area divided by those changeable fabric barriers strung between poles. There were half a dozen staff members standing around talking amongst themselves, until they saw that there were a whole heap of people lining up.

I think they then decided to brighten up their afternoon by playing with the barriers, letting about 12 people through to different areas before blocking it off again, then doing the same thing in another spot.

I reckon it took about 30 minutes of these shenanigans before I had a surly individual take a cursory glance at my passport before using their rubber stamp and telling me to enjoy Paris.

2pm. We finally made it to the luggage collection point. I thought that 2 hours after landing our luggage should be waiting for us on the conveyor belts. But no. We had to wait for another 45 minutes for the luggage from our flight to come out.

While we were waiting, there were 5 flights that arrived after us that collected their luggage before us.

Since I had plenty of time on my hands, I decided to exchange some of my pounds for euros.

The exchange rate was about 1 pound to 1.2 euros, but I found that after changing my money that I had started with 100 pounds and ended up with 90 Euros.

Not sure how that was supposed to work, but I could see that the girl behind the counter really didn’t give a rat’s arse so I wasn’t going to come out ahead if I decided to argue with her.

2.45pm. I finally collected my bag and headed out for a much needed cigarette. After de-stressing, I sought directions on where to find the train station at the airport.

“Just follow everybody else that way” was the helpful response I received at the information booth.

So, I followed everybody else for about another 20 minutes to the train station. There was nobody there to give you directions or help you find your way, but fortunately I had read up a bit on the train system and knew that you could buy a ’10 trip’ bunch of tickets and just jump on a train as long as you knew where you were going.

3.15pm. The train arrived at the airport, which I boarded, grabbed a seat, and prepared myself for the ride into Paris.

Oh, I forgot to mention that this particular day in Paris was 35 degrees. So not only was I out of sorts because of the 3 hours it took me to leave the airport, I was also dangerously close to breaking a sweat. And necks.

The hostel that I was staying at was kind enough to give directions in their e-mail on how to get there via the train system, with a secondary route also. Which was just as well, since when I arrived at the train station where I needed to change lines, it turned out that they were doing works on the platform that one of the connecting trains left from. I had to take the alternate route which involved changing trains twice more.

I got off at my station and sure enough started walking the wrong way. After 10 minutes I realized this and turned around.

The neighborhood I was walking through looked pretty crummy. Half of the stores had their roller shutters down, and there were several groups of people sitting around in their own urine, drinking on the side of the road. A great welcoming committee.

4.20pm. I finally arrived at the hostel. Fortunately it was nice. I checked in, dumped my bags, and headed down to the seating area and grabbed a large bottle of Bulmers to keep me company.

I was thoroughly fed up with Paris already, and I had barely scratched the surface.

About 5pm, the girl behind the counter at the hostel told me (in no uncertain terms) to go out and see a bit of the surrounding area as it was such a beautiful day out there.

Grudgingly I accepted the challenge.

And I am glad that I did. I went for a walk through a nearby park which was very pretty, lots of people sitting around enjoying the sun. I also took a walk through the surrounding blocks and made my way back to the hostel.

Upon returning, I met a couple of the people that I was sharing the room with. In a room of 6, there were three other Aussies, a Canadian and an American. In fact, I met more Aussies at this hostel than I had anywhere else on my trip.

Two of the Aussies and the Canadian, Derek (sorry, I can’t remember the names of the Aussies) decided to go out to grab a bite to eat for dinner. We were all hanging for some Asian food, so we located a restaurant further down the street.

On the way to the restaurant I stopped at an ATM to get out some money. Given that I was in France, the main language was French on the ATM. I pressed the button to make it speak English. Nothing happened.

I pressed the English button a second time, still nothing.

A third time, and still nothing. Even the ATMs refuse to speak English here!

Fortunately, the fourth time worked.

I’m sure if I had pressed “German” it would have worked the first time. Out of fear.

So, Derek, the two others and myself all headed into the restaurant, and found that the staff only spoke two languages: French and Thai. No English.

We all had a laugh and decided to play lucky dip with the menu. Some of the items had pictures, which the other two Aussies used to choose their meals, while Derek and I chose to roll the dice. Derek ordered something that was “Imperial Beef”, and I ordered something that I knew was a Szechuan dish, but didn’t know what type of meat was in the dish.

Derek’s beef dish looked pretty shmick, while my dish turned out to be Szechuan prawns. Very yummy.

After dinner the 4 of us trundled back up to the hostel and grabbed a couple of drinks to have in the hostel’s courtyard. After 2 drinks the two other Aussies headed off, and Derek and I continued to drink until the wee early hours of the morning.

This was Derek’s last night before heading back home, and his first international trip. I was glad that he had been bitten by the travel bug, and we spoke of maybe doing a big Southern America trip in the future.

Just as we were finishing up our drinks for the night, I received a text message from a friend’s wife. If you followed my previous trip, you might remember that I traveled with a couple of friends, Doolittle and Lapzang. Lapzang is my oldest friend from school.

I saw that Doolittle had sent me a message, and in my drunken state I was happy to check it out. Unfortunately, the message informed me that Lapzang had a brain tumor and was about to go into hospital to have it removed. (Note, Lapzang is now doing well, they have removed the tumor and will find out over the next couple of months exactly how it is all panning out.)

I headed off to bed, glad that I had gone out for dinner with my room-mates which saved my first day of Paris.

The Manchurian Candidate

Day 27

Well, today was to be my final full day in the UK. I got up, did the morning things and packed my bag. I still had a couple of hours until I had to make my way down to the train station, so I wandered to the nearby shopping centre, grabbed a coffee and a couple of sandwiches for breakfast, and picked up a few snacks for my train trip to Manchester.

When it was time to make tracks, I grabbed my bags, said my farewells to the hostel staff, and wandered through Nottingham to the train station.

When I arrived there I was approached by one of those guys that try to sign you up for donations to help a poor starving child in a country in Africa. I straight up told him that I was a travelling foreigner, and he thanked me for my honesty.

He then asked me why the hell I had travelled to Nottingham instead of any number of other places in the UK. We both had a chuckle, and then he let me keep on keeping on to my train platform.

I didn't have much of a wait at the train platform, only enough time to grab a blueberry muffin and eat it with a few minutes to spare.

The train trip was uneventful, and it allowed me to catch up on some other blog entries.

A couple of hours later I arrived in Manchester, which reminded me of a dirtier version of Melbourne. My hostel wasn't too far away from the train station, so I got there with a minimum of fuss.

The hostel was a tall building with 6 floors. There was a lift, although only staff could use it to take luggage upstairs, as they didn't have insurance for guests to use it.

I was a bit crestfallen when I was told that was on the top floor, but figured that I could probably use the exercise after all of the kebabs that I had eaten in Turkey.

I headed upstairs, got my bag sorted, and headed back down. I went for a wander to grab some dinner, and then stopped off at Tescos again to grab some drinks, before retiring to the common room to try to catch up on my blog entries. (The irony of that last sentence is not lost on me.)

One of the staff who worked there convinced me to join in on some drinking games that were being played, a rather interesting game where a person started counting, and then they could pick the direction of who would have to count the next number. You could change directions at any point, include actions that needed to be taken on a particular number, make rules, etc. It was a fun game, until two guys decided to pick on the guy in the middle, and they just kept swapping back and forth across him. He was already pissed by this stage, but kept on getting it wrong and had to take a drink, making him more and more pissed.

I think the guy running the game could see that this individual was going the right way to get proper messed up, and decided to call game off.

A couple of us that were still able to stand upright decided to head out for a few more drinks.

I got changed into one of the shirts that I had bought in the Istanbul Grand Bazaar. When I got downstairs, a Turkish lad that I had met threw his hands up in the air and told me that he hated those shirts and that they were a big tourist trap.

One of the locals that somebody knew told us about one particular club, so we went for a decent wander to get there. Fortunately it was open and we were able to get in pretty much straight away.

I felt quite a bit older than most of the people there, but still managed to get my groove on when one of the members of the group came across with a round of Jaegerbombs for everybody. I thought this was quite a generous offer, as there were about 12 people in our group. I shortly got dragged across to the bar by an Aussie girl, Alexandra, who was dead-set determined to lead me astray on my final night in England. She ordered a round of Jaegers for 5 of us, and I was quite surprised when she handed across a 5 pound note and got change!

Turns out the Jaegerbombs were only 80 pence each! That worked out to be $1.20 Australian. Now, since it is hard in Australia to a) find a place that will actually sell you Jaegerbombs, and b) if you do, find somewhere that won’t slug you $8 or more each, I decided to get stuck into them. I think I ended up having about 8 that night, and only spent about 10 pounds all up. Brilliant!

The hour was starting to get late by this time, so I said my goodbyes to all and told them I was heading back to get some sleep before an early night. Alexandra (the smart-arse) wished me good luck in getting to sleep after 8 shots with an energy drink in it as I headed out the door. I managed to stagger back successfully, found my bed about 2am, and tried to get some shut eye before my onwards journey to Paris.