While my family might think I have gypsy feet, that certainly doesn't mean I like to travel. I like being in new places, learning new languages, seeing new cultures, and being out of my comfort zone. But I don't like getting to those places, not with how much of a hassle traveling has become. Aside from the visa issues, the plane tickets cost a fortune, and the slightest mishap can trip you up more than anything. Perhaps that's why the past few summers, I've opted for group trips—it's nice to know that, should something go wrong, someone will be there to help you. But, throughout all that traveling, I realized that my favorite parts of those group trips were when I left the group and wandered around on my own. Hence my decision to do Europe alone this time.
Now, this means that my travel plans were entirely on my shoulders. Since Princeton would pay for my flight to/from Paris for the year, I had to have a layover at Charles de Gaulle, one of my least favorite airports of all time. My flight from Toronto was getting in at 7am and the only reasonably priced flight to Berlin around that time was one at 9:20 with Lufthansa. First off, this was a legal connection (over 90 minutes), but I doubted it from the beginning. You see, planes that land at De Gaulle don't pull right up to the gate. Instead you get off the plane and into a bus to take you to the actual airport, which takes more time than at other airports. Next, I knew I would have to go through passport control and customs, which included picking up my bags rather than having them sent automatically to the next flight. That, too, was going to take more time. Then, once I was through all that, I would have to take the CDGVAL (the shuttle between terminals, kind of like Newark Airport's AirTran system, so if you've ever been to Newark, you have some idea of what I was dealing with) to a different terminal. That requires a ten minute walk, then waiting for the shuttle, then however long the shuttle takes. After that, I would finally be able to check in for my flight, check my bags, and go through security (which at any normal airport would take a good hour, but who really knows at CDG?). All of this jetlagged, exhausted, and hungry. As you can see, just because I was paranoid about missing my connection doesn't mean the entire airport system wasn't out to get me!
The issue happened at my baggage check-in with Lufthansa. They had so many flights taking off at the same time that the line for the bags literally was not moving. As hundreds of people waited (complaining, because after all, we were in France!), the Lufthansa crew would walk by calling for the most urgent flights. The last one they called for was taking off at 9:15, and I asked: "But my flight leaves at 9:20! Isn't that just as urgent?" But apparently it wasn't. So I continued to wait, internally freaking out about the fact that what Canada considers an appropriate size for a carry-on bag was apparently much larger than what Lufthansa allowed. I was only allowed one checked bag.
Finally, I reached the bag checkers, exactly 30 minutes before the flight, which they were allowing that day only because they were so disorganized. I explained my problem to the woman, who was very nice and agreed to check both bags and let me pay afterwards, since otherwise, the bags wouldn't make it on the flight. The problem was: the German woman behind her. She said my first bag was 1kg overweight (which it wasn't in Toronto), and that I would have to pay 65 euros for that, as well as 65 for the additional bag. I didn't feel like arguing, since that would waste time, so I ran to the second desk to pay. The woman there, after hearing my explanation, said (in French): "Are you aware that your flight takes off in 20 minutes?" I continued to explain that the bags were already checked and that the reason I was so late was through no fault of my own and rather that their lines were way too long and that they were disorganized. She took her sweet time charging me 130 euros and then told me to run. In the end, I arrived at the gate, sweaty, starving, and exhausted. It was a lovely flight.
Thankfully, I'm not really doing Europe alone. My friend Eileen met me at the airport in Berlin. She's a Berlin native, but also American. At that point, I'm not sure I would have been linguistically capable of reading all the German and finding my way to her apartment. Luckily, she had already gotten me a ticket and knew exactly which buses to take.
Needless to say, I don't think I want to get on an airplane for a while. I'm going to stick to Berlin (with the slight exception of a weekend in Lithuania) and ground transportation. I might even take a train to Paris, given how annoying these airports are. Anyway, I'm back to working. Plenty of books to read, museums to visit, and dissertation ideas to formulate. Speaking of which, I've been reading two very interesting books about mathematics. Look out for a new blogpost about them soon!
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