La Rentrée– Part 1

We can’t believe that these past 3 1/2 months flew by so quickly.  It seems like only yesterday that we arrived back in Miami from Paris and were driving up to Delray Beach on New Year’s Eve.  But here it is, April 20th and it’s time for our “rentrée” to Paris.

With some trepidation, we went to the airport to board our flight to Paris.  This was sort of a crap shoot.  After 5 days, Eyjafjallajokull was still erupting and Eurocontrol was still restricting all flights.  By the time we got to Miami International, over 20,000 flights had been canceled.  The air carriers were going ballistic.  Hundreds of thousands of passengers were stranded all over the world.  But Lufthansa had said our scheduled flight was leaving so we were packed and ready to go.

And we did…..but not before a 2 hour delay.  The news was reporting that the volcano, after seemingly slowing down for a few hours, had started spewing out even more ash.  Maybe Eurocontrol was reconsidering allowing our flight to leave?  But no, that wasn’t it.  It seems that the canny Germans were checking our jet engines for ash damage!  They were taking videos and still pictures of the engines and sending them back to Frankfurt for analysis.  The German engineers gave us the all-clear.  We knew nothing of all this until we were actually in the air…nor was it explained that the reason for checking the engines was that on take-off from Frankfurt, the jet passed through the ash plume.  What was explained was that every precaution was being taken and that depending upon the ash plume location, “certain landing procedures” might need to be invoked.

“Certain procedures”….now there’s a calming expression.  What they meant was we would be cruising at our normal altitude until we approached Frankfurt airport.  Then, depending upon the location of the plume, we would nose-dive, rapidly, and land.  If any of you are familiar with the landing procedures at San Diego airport or John Wayne airport, then you have some sort of idea of “certain procedures”.

But we made it.  Two hours late but we’re in Europe…..and joining the other hundreds of thousands of passengers who are stranded!  With the exception of the German airports, the rest of western Europe is closed.  No flights to Paris.  Time to figure out how to get to Paris.

Fortunately, our bags were checked through to Paris even if we weren’t.  And once through customs, we could talk to the Lufthansa agents about getting to Paris….which is exactly what we did…we talked to agents but didn’t get any help getting to Paris.  We were on our own.  But we had several things working in our favor.

One, K’s German is pretty fluent.  Two, we didn’t have to worry about schlepping our suitcases all over Europe trying to get to Paris.  And three, we had Lufthansa on the hook for getting us to Paris, or at least covering all or some of the expense.  Well, more on that in a later blog.

So after checking out all our options, we handed over about €400 and boarded an ICE train [the German equivalent of the TGV] to Brussels and then connected to the Thalys train for Paris.  All direct trains and buses to Paris were completely booked.  In fact, our train was so overbooked that it was SRO.  I managed to sit from Frankfurt to Köln but then had to stand for 2 hours to Brussels.  In fact, most of the people on our train were stranded folks trying to get to London.  All trains from Frankfurt to Brussels – booked.  The Eurostar from Paris to London – booked.   We were so overbooked that in Köln they announced that anybody standing had to get off the train and take a bus to Brussels because they felt it wasn’t safe to operate the train.

Well, excuse me mate, but no one was about to give up their SRO to get on a bus that might or might not reach Brussels in time to catch the Eurostar, the Thalys or whatever connecting train we had all paid a fortune for!  So after 20 minutes and no one volunteering and the German conductor threatening us all with grievous bodily harm if someone didn’t get off the train, the train started moving slowly out of Köln (accompanied by much cheering and applause by us passengers).  Herr conductor advised us all that for safety reasons, he would have to operate the train at less than high speed…which meant we would arrive in Brussels 30 minutes late and possibly cause everyone to miss the Eurostar to London.  At the last moment, after keeping everyone on tenterhooks, he finally announced that they had arranged to hold the Eurostar an extra 10 minutes but then told everybody to RUN after de-training!  And, we barely made our Thalys train which then sat for another 30 minutes to allow other passengers from connecting trains to board.  Ah, on to Paris at last! 

But the train trips were enjoyable; everybody exchanging travel horror stories; 2 day business trips lasting 7; total strangers stuck in Budapest agreeing to share a room in order to split the outrageous room charges; or multi-nights sleeping in an air terminal.  We even met several  Glaswegian girls who happened to live only two streets from Katherine’s sister in Netherlee.  Even on our Thalys train to Paris, a fellow passenger who got stuck in New Delhi and managed to get back to Frankfurt, could only make it as far as Paris that night - he lives in Nice so he’s bunking on a cousin’s couch in Paris tonight and will see what travel delights tomorrow brings…

But we’re here.  We’re back at our apartment on rue de la Harpe in the Latin Quarter. This is the same apartment we had last year.  Amazingly, we arrived at the apartment only 7 hours later than originally scheduled.  And after a good night’s sleep we were awakened by a taxi driver who said he was on his way with our luggage.  Who knows, maybe this Paris thing will work out well again???