Translation: "Delayed", "Canceled", and "Strike": Three words that cause one to worry in France.
There I was, sitting in Charles de Gaulle airport, going on hour 4 of waiting to board my plane to London. I made the flight reservation prior to the official announcement of the second general strike that stalled Paris last Thursday. I for one, am not a fan of «le grève». My first survival of a French strike was only two weeks ago. It left me in an excited daze, as I was mesmerized by the massive, peaceful demonstration that took over Place de Bastille. These kind of political movements simply aren't possible in the states - they're much larger, so large that it's impossible to comprehend until you're forced to walk along with the current of people seeping through the streets into the place, like a river running between the large the rocks that protrude its surface. Only once you've gained some considerable distance, and additionally altitude, can you estimate the true enormity of this sea of people. It reminded me of a school of fish, the masses of individuals, moving together in an almost choreographed manner. And it was peaceful - of course, there was shouting, music blasting, chanting, etc., but there was no violence. I figured if this had taken place in San Francisco, or L.A. it would have only taken moments to have turned into a riot, but it never did. It was beautiful in a sense. Not even when my train pulled up to take me home was my dream-state fully disrupted - people's faces were pressed up against the glass of the windows and doors, random arms stretched out of the blob of meshed individuals in all directions to attempt to provide balance, and a wave of heat reeking of sweat rushed over me with the opening of the doors, daring me to squeeze myself inside. I did, and it was not pleasant, I struggled to keep one foot on the ground as the bodies pressing in around me so tight that it pushed me up just enough to make the toes of my left foot to hover the floor. The train gradually emptied, leaving me more space and air at every stop. I'm sure I stunk of a cocktail of body odors including my own when I made it up the five flights of stairs to my apartment, but generally I was still feeling the drugged sensations of the demonstration I had witnessed earlier.
My opinion however, has now been changed. Changed drastically. Thursday was only my second strike - not so magical. I returned home Wednesday evening after quite the adventure of getting home on three separate metro lines instead of the usual one that I take, an effect of the strike beginning early. I sat down at my computer exhausted from the whole ordeal, and opened my e-mail. I received an e-mail from Air France in French regarding my flight to London the following afternoon. It was only a sentence, roughly translated "Dear Sir, Dear Madam, This e-mail is to inform you that your flight from Paris to London on September 23rd has been _____." The word that filled that blank was «annulé», a word that wasn't part of my french vocabulary yet. It wasn't so strange to get an e-mail from your airline the day before your flight, it must have meant "confirmed", "on schedule", something like that. I typed in «annulé» into my handy-dandy translator and called my dad to wish him a birthday while my sluggish internet connection struggled to make sense of the unknown word. I was in the middle of a sentence explaining something or other to my dad when it the page finally loaded simply saying "cancelled". CANCELLED?! CANCELLED?! Merdre. (Shit.) And the frantic search for cancellation information through all of my french e-mails and all over airfrance.com commenced. After an hour or so I finally found a 1-800 number to call about applying for reimbursement, which I called from my iPhone - sorry Dad, that next bill might not be so pretty.
Yvonna answered with her east coast accent, asking how could she help me. Air France had cancelled half of all their scheduled flights due to le freaking grève, and I could either cancel my return flight and apply for reimbursement, or be put on a later flight Thursday evening. After 25 minutes of being on hold with horrible zen music, Yvonna returned to tell me that I was all set. We were about to hang up when she caught a mistake. Stammering in her flustered state, she profusely apologized, explaining that she had put me on a flight at 8:45 pm on Friday - not Thursday. She needed to fix it, she needed to call someone back, could I please hold again. I asked if she could call me back when she was finished since I was on an international call and her response was "oh, well is it alright to have the flight on Friday?". No. No Lady. I'll hold. Back to listening to the same horrid 12 measures of music with an annoying girl's breath-y voice telling me to "say what's on my mind", to "give her a try", playing over and over and over again. I knew they must have chosen this exact type of music to prevent the customer from doing exactly what I wanted to do to Yvonna, rip her freaking head off. I was too stressed to do homework, and distracted by the breathy zen singer being emitted by my speaker phone, so I used the next 30 minutes of holding to stretch and do some crunches. Finally, she fixed it - more apologies, was there anything else she could help me with. No, what was her name again? Yvonna. Thank you Yvonna - I made sure to write it down, just in case I could maybe get Air France to pay for some of the 58 minutes I spent fixing problems that had all been caused by them; and Yvonna.
I took special care to get to the air port the next day. I planned my metro route, using only lines that were running normally, gave myself extra time for transfers, so I would be sure to make one of the buses from Montparnasse train station Charles de Gaulle at their 30 minute intervals. I was flawless. I made it to the airport exactly 2 hours before my flight. Flew through passport check, and security and found myself and my back-pack good seats near a window at my gate. I took out my book and began to read, I would be boarding in an hour or so. After a bit I looked up at the screen, to find all the information changed. 21:20? But... my flight is at 20:10... And then I saw it. The next dreadful word: «retardé». What?! And just to confirm my fears, the screen switched to English, "delayed". UGH! Well, it was only an hour, not so bad. I had all my things ready to go, my back pack seated next to me at our window seats, waiting for our plane to pull in to our gate, but 5 minutes after the delayed boarding time it still hadn't arrived. I looked over at the screen after I heard a collective sigh of disappointment from the rest of my gate buddies, it blinked a new time for take off 22:30... another hour. I got tired of reading. I resorted to complaining via text message to my friends since my back pack couldn't respond to comfort me, and people probably would have thought I was crazy for talking to a back pack, or for whatever I put inside it and got through security that I was now talking to. But could you really have blamed me after I sat in the airport alone for 4 hours?
I eventually did make it to London. My friends picked me up and drove us an hour into Tunbridge Wells in the dark on the wrong side of the road (to me at least), and the remainder of the weekend and traveling experiences were wonderful. However, I don't think I'll ever book a flight on Air France into or out of Paris ever again, just in case there is a potential strike that will delay, or cancel my plans and force me to feel crazy enough to talk to my back pack.
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