So I got hired and found out I needed to travel to India in the very near future so unfortunately the airline arrangements I got required me to fly Air France. The people on the airline were nice enough and the service was fine, although for some reason they kept announcing things in French before they announced them in English. I know its Air France but the majority of the people flying were not actually French speaking people. It all became clear to me however when I thought about what would happen in the case of an emergency. They would calmly give emergency instructions in French and everyone that speaks the mother tongue would instantly scramble about doing whatever you do to survive an airline crash while the rest of us looked about in confusion. By the time it was relayed in English all the good parachutes would be taken and the rest of us would be fucked. I actually had this line of thought while sitting on the tarmac waiting to take off which caused me to look around suspiciously trying to identify who was French around me so if they started rushing somewhere I could follow.
I was talking to Patrick about how no one hot ever sits next to us in a plane (just kidding Megan he was talking to me about how much he likes sitting next to burly men) and sure enough I lost again on the airline companion lottery. If I have my pick of companions I'll take hot and friendly or completely quiet and I actually managed to get the second one. I would have been slightly more excited about this if he didn't creep the fuck out of me. I had seen this dude standing in the terminal madly texting away on his blackberry / palm pilot / whatever and thought very little of it. When I actually sat next to him I soon realized he was actually playing some sort of video game. I am all for video games as some of you may have noticed, but this game involved him using one of those little pens you use to touch your palm pilot and guiding a stick figure around the screen occasionally dodging yellow squares. Everyone once in a while he would click with his pen like mad but I couldn't figure out why. Normally I won't watch other people's screens cause its just kind of weird but this guy played this game without a break from the time we took off, until the time we landed. It was close to a nine hour flight. After a few hours I had to look just to see what the fuck was keeping him so entertained.
The only really awful thing about Air France is their food, which I discovered is the one thing capable of making a Heineken taste worse than it already does. I know German people hate Heinekn, and I'm pretty sure French people hate German people so I am still confused as to why that was the only beer selection on the flight. At least it was free.
Paris DeGaulle Airport is the worst designed, worst looking airport on the face of the earth. They make you ride around in circles on their stupid buses to get to your terminal. They cleverly named the terminals as follows: 1,2a,2b,2c,2d,2e,2f,3. My flight was leaving from C76 which is obviously in terminal 2C. My method of determining this was I saw some dudes that looked like they were from India so I followed them. Luckily if I had made a mistake and gone to terminal 1 or 3 (which also have gates with letters and numbers) they are right next to each other, only seperated by 4 other terminals which you can't walk through you must take a bus around in clockwise fashion only. Once I saw the map below it cleared up everything for me.
The scale on this map is probably hard to read because it is in French (just kidding there is no scale) but to go from 2f to 2c it took me almost 20 minutes by bus. I asked if I could walk but the French dude, who apparently had the job of pointing at the bus, looked at me like I was crazy. Part of this long commute was due to the fact that we had to dodge baggage carts constantly but those terminals are large. Once I got into 2c and verified that it was actually where I was supposed to be I had to go through customs again. Luckily for a flight of about 200 cranky travelers they had one security scanner operating. They concealed this fact by having the path to get to the scanner weave back and forth so you could never see how close you were to the front. Once I got about 25 people away from the scanner they opened another scanner and let people behind me in line get in that line. I started to head over there to get in that line since it would be shorter, but a stern looking Frenchman shook his head vigorously and pointed me back to the other line. I was about to care but then I realized it is pointless to try and argue with a security guard that probably is looking for an excuse to taser and American. Once inside I took off all my metalic items and walked through the scanner which loudly went off. In American airports this means you get looked over very carefully by a man with one of those little sticks that detects bombs. In France they don't trust such devices and instead must carefully pat every square inch of your body, so I got felt up by a frisky French dude at 7am in the morning. I was confused why the scanner went off but as I gathered my things I watched the same scanner go off for the next 3 lucky people. Draw your own conclusions.
My second flight was nine and half hours and I arrived in Bangalore at about midnight their time. During the flight they passed out little sheets which you were supposed to fill out about where you were from and how much you were importing and the purpose of your travel. Boring stuff. The slightly more exciting sheet has to do with everyone favorite buzzword: SWINE FLU. You were supposed to indicate which countries you had been in and how sick you had felt after you left in the last 6 months. Unfortunately I didn't see all of this because I only read one side of the sheet so I didn't fill out this sheet until I was about to talk to some passport/visa/customs officer. As I am madly scribbling away he is staring at me very suspiciously. I did have time to notice that while there were many countries (including some I have never heard of) Mexico was not one of the options you could select on the sheet. I found this particularly ironic and I think the customs officer then interperted my amusement as disrespect for the process. I was then asked many questions about why I was in India and what kind of work I was doing. He asked me for the address of my company about 4 times phrasing it slightly differently each time. My cluelessness did little to endear me to him, and since he barely spoke English I was starting to sweat a bit. I was starting to wonder if I was supposed to bribe him or something (and started glancing around looking to see if others were bribing) when he wrote my company name on the visa (misspelling it horribly) and stamped me through.
I proceeded downstairs to get my bags which took almost an hour which honestly baffled me as I could see our plane through the flaps where they put the bags onto the conveyer belt. I left the airport with my bags and went outside where there were close to 50indian taxi drivers holding signs with the names of their parties on it. I finally spotted my name (which was a relief since I forgot to email my coach back and tell him what time I was getting in) and immediately did the thing I was not supposed to do, which was shake some strangers hand. I can't help it I've been conditioned. He looked slightly confused and then ushered me to the parking lot doing his best to carry my enormous bags and refusing to let me help. Along the way I notice he is not wearing shoes. We get to the parking lot and he sets my bags down and points at me and at the bags and then jogs off into the parking lot. Other random people standing around stare at me strangely and I sincerely hoped he was going to get the car. This wish intensified when some begger missing a good chunk of his left leg comes up to me and keeps saying what sounded something like cwippe and point at his left leg. I had been given strict instructions by my coach to ignore everyone in the airport except my cab driver so I had to stand there and act like I couldn't see or hear him and pray the driver hurried so my conscience would shut the fuck up. We drove through Bangalore, which by night is pretty desolate since there are not a lot of street lights or buildings open really late in that part of town. The one exception to this was the occasional house densely decorated with Christmas lights on every available surface, which in my sleep deprived state I found far more amusing than it actually was. My driver said not a word until he turns around and asked me where I was to be dropped off. Of course I didn't have a clue I've never been there. I was starting to freak out just a little bit and I finally managed to get him to figure out the name of my company and he managed to drop me off in the right place. My coach was waiting for me and he led me to an apartment where I promptly passed the hell out.
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