As planned, I didn't go to sleep on Sunday night. I stayed up packing to try and make sure that I could sleep just the right amount at just the right time on the plane to avoid any jetlag. Unfortunately, the RER B(a metro line in Paris) had otehr ideas, and was delayed over 40 minutes getting me to the airport on Monday morning. I, and about 15 others on my flight, were turned away from the check-in counter, told it was too late. They wouldn't even let us try to get through security and to the gate.
I was put on standby for a flight an hour later that would have gotten me to OR roughly the same time. At 1pm Paris time, I waved to the plane as it left the gate, full, leaving myself and 5 or 6 other standby passengers stranded as Continental shut down for the day, telling us to come back 7 am the next morning to try to fly out on standby again. Rather than go back to my apartment, a 1.5 hour journey by public transportation, with no guarantee I'd make it back to the airport on time the next morning, I decided to tough out Aeroport Charles de Gaulle and make it my home for the next day and night.
Two of the other passengers, Adrienne and Ed, who were grad students on the way back to Houston(my connecting flight to PDX) from vacation and some neuroscience conferences in Brussels, chatted me up a while, but they ended up taking off to a hotel nearby. However, Cesar, a Mexican citizen trying to get back to Chihuahua via the same flight I missed, was planning the same thing as me, so we decided to team up to improve our odds of taming the fierce environment that we soon realized is probably the worst airport in all of Europe.
CDG is enormous. It takes an hour to walk from one end of the terminal to the other, and there are 3 terminals, each connected by a monorail sorta thing. Yet, every space is cramped. You can barely get two luggage carts abreast at most places, and the gates have seating for about 10% of the capacity of today's transatlantic jets. The airport was built for a time when it was a hub for many small flights, and is not suited for today's model of far fewer, far larger flights.
Every chair in the airport is made of metal, with no padding. They practically all have armrests, making laying down impossible. Cesar and I managed to find a metal bench that looked more comfortable than the rest, but it was far from any electrical outlets, so we waited until no one was looking, and carried it about 20 meters to some outlets so we could charge our laptops(switching off on a power adapter I bought from an airport store--neither of us though to bring one, because we both expeted to be in North America before we'd have to charge). We bivouaced there, confident we had found the most optimal setup in the entire airport. This was a sentiment I confirmed throughout the night, as my wanderings int he terminal showed me dark visions of stranded business travellers in rumpled suits, heads tilted at unnatural angles trying to get comfortable on chairs designed to be implements of torture rather than welcoming waiting areas.
I played guitar for a while, opening up my case and making a sign that said:
Stranded!
Airport food too expensive!!
Please Help!!!!
A few people tossed me a few Euros, but airport crowds really aren't too sympathetic. At any rate, it was a good time, and Cesar sang along with some of the songs he knew(notably, Louie
Louie, which also got the most grins from passersby).
Once I had collected a few Euros, I went off in search of food. Dining spots are few and far between at CDG. There aren't a lot of restaurants, their food is poor quality and expensive, and they close very early. I ate McDonalds there, something I haven't done in 15 years, because there just wasn't anything else available. It was awful and I think I'll avoid it for another 15 years. However, when I got hungry again around 11pm(as the McD's was my only meal that day), I was disappoitned to realize that even McDonald's had closed. I went everywhere in the terminal, a 2 hour trek for sustenance, but found nothing open. The airport was officially dead. I returned to the metal bench, where Cesar was watching one of my DVDs on his laptop. I broke out a clif bar I had in my backpack for just such an emergency. Cesar also shared a big bag of roasted peanuts he had acquired earlier. Mmm, dinner.
Bored out of my mind at midnight(did I mention that Wi-Fi cost 20 Euros, or about $30 USD for a 24 hour connection? I decided it wasn't worth it, which limited the ability of my computer to entertain me), I wandered over to a large group of French youths, looking to be mostly around 18-25. One of them had a classical guitar he was strumming on, so I asked him first if he spoke English, and when the reply came back negative, I asked in French if he'd like to jam. He nodded, so I brought over my guitar, and we played together for at least a couple of hours. I found out the group, mostly high school students from Bordeaux, was on some sort of humanitarian mission to Madagascar, and the other guy paying the guitar is about to finish up French law school himself. I told him a law student in the US, and we talked about what were interested in a little bit, though the depth of the conversation was limited by my french skillz(or lack thereof). At any rate, they were entertaining, and helped me kill time until around 5 am, when the nearly two days without sleep caught up with me and I had to catch just a quick nap. I was fully aware that if I slept even a little more than 2 hours that I'd probably miss my flight, but my eyes just wouldn't stay open.
Fortunately, I woke up on time, made my flight, got to Newark, and sprinted through customs and to my gate, barely making my 45 minute connection. 5 minutes later, none other than Ed and Adrienne, the couple who also mised the original Houston flight due to the Paris Metro, arrived ont he plane, red in the face and out of breath. They had the seats next to me, and seemed as relieved as I was to be on th plane. We laughed at the coincidence, and I congratulated them for making the connection. They were very nice and quite interesting, so we talked most of the flight, except for the 1.5 hours when
Blades of Glory was playing as the inflight film(which was hilarious despite the tiny screen and the messed-up airplane audio). When I finally got O houston, I was excited for some good tex-mex, but disheartened to discover the worst airport burrito ever. I mad my connextion to PDX without problems. And after my mad dash in Newark, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that my baggage actually made it, intact and with no delays, to my final destination. Apparently a baggage handler was running as fast as me. A festivus miracle.
Anyways, the rest of my trip has been great--I rented a car to drive into PDX, then spent a night at the bars with a bunch of old AEPi's, then went back to Seth's pad where I'm staying and we hung out until late, getting into one of those crazy conversations about life and the universe that only seem to happen when you meet an old friend after too long. I drove down to Eugene and stopped by LogicTools and Hillel before spending the evening with Brittany, then back up to Portland. On Wednesday, I had breakfast with Lach in P-town before driving down to Redmond.
We also went to the Musem of Natural History in Oxford, which while not nearly as large as the one in NYC, was quite amazing in its own right, with some very good animal and dinosaur displays, as well as a some very detailed and intriguing anthropological exhibits and antiquities. Above all, though, it was just nice to reconnect to an old friend.
