10/23/19: an idiot abroad: paris

About a hundred years, or at least 6–8 weeks ago, I found a stupidly stupidly good deal on flights to Europe and, with my usual amount of forethought (none), I booked a trip to Madrid. I mean, $275 round trip, on my beloved Delta — I have spent more than that on an evening’s drinks (sorry, mother) and since I’ve never been to Spain, jumping on this opportunity seemed like a great idea.

I won’t say I forgot about the trip, because I didn’t, but having spent easily three whole minutes booking the flight I was pretty much done with travel planning for a while. It wasn’t until my departure date drew very very nigh that I figured I should find a place to stay and so I dragged myself to the internet.

A slight digression: I mentioned my destination to a couple of people — friends, family — and almost every time I got a horrified lecture about the evils of the Spanish people. Spain is full of criminals, I was told; they are “nasty” people, unfriendly and prone to picking pockets. There were warnings about scams and guarding my valuables and a guy I know who happens to be from Latvia just sniffed and said the words “southern Europeans” with such disdain I physically recoiled.

At first I laughed at these sweeping generalizations, but after 48 hours of unreturned emails and inexplicably available then unavailable Airbandbs, I was ready to get on the Never Spain bandwagon.

Seriously. Go on: read the reviews of 87 different Airbnbs in Madrid. I-sweeping-generalization-guarantee you that the majority of them will feature wildly contradictory feedback, from “excellent place!” to scathing vitriol so good I have to share it in full:

Bed upside down, bump in the center, boogers on the walls butts on the balcony, chewing gum sticking on the bed chair and dirty couch, exposed wire, dirty hood, broken shower, urine on the toilet bowl, window open that can not be closed because no handle and two others closed and not open because no handle, front door slams but does not close

I mean, that is a LOT of specifics. And this same place got several “excellent stay!” reviews in the same month.

So, when no one in Spain could be bothered to let me give them money in exchange for an overpriced apartment that might or might not have boogers on the walls, I got super pissed and decided Spain could go f*ck itself. I found a $55 flight to Paris, leaving three hours after I landed in Madrid, and planned the double-bird salute I would give as we took off headed north.

Alas. Mice, men, plans, god laughing, etc. There were gale-force winds in NYC the day I left and between those, the backup they caused at JFK, a #2 engine that wouldn’t start (do not tell us this, pilot!), the need to refuel, and (*@(&(^(!! who knows what else. my 7:38 pm flight left JFK at 1:18 am, just minutes before the crew timed out.

I fly out of JFK a lot so I can’t say this experience was crazy-unusual, but let’s be clear: it definitely sucked. What I couldn’t get over, though, was how quiet the plane was.

We spent nearly six hours on the runway with very little information or explanation and yet there were no raised voices and even the children hardly cried. I’ve been on planes that left early and yet some imagined delay between the door closing and the plane moving meant everybody on the flight with a broad Brooklyn or Queens accent would start in: “Unbelievable! This is unbelievable! Can you believe this? We’ve been on the fucking plane for 25 fucking minutes now, and nothing! What the fuck are they doing up there? This is un-fucking-believeable.”

Add in a lot of heavy sighs and the jangling of a thousand bracelets as arms are thrown up in disbelief, and you can get a sense of what it’s like to fly down to Orlando with a bunch of grandmothers.

Apparently there were no grandmothers on this flight to Madrid, or the Latvian has them pegged and even Spanish grandmothers are indolent, because somehow six hours and maybe six updates — maybe — passed in near total silence and then we were in the air, the guy in front of me finally able to rack his seat back so I could spend the next six hours with his head in my lap, just grateful that it was actual flight time.

When we finally landed in Madrid, our giant plane did not merit an actual gate but rather stairs to the tarmac to a bus and let me just tell you the grandmothers would NOT have been happy about that.

The bus was stifling and the passport control line horrendous, barely fitting into the cavernous area allotted to it. We were almost six hours delayed so I expected everyone’s connections and whatnot to be a mess, but I was still surprised by the number of people being told that something was impossible.

No, no, no, that is impossible.
It’s impossible, you see.
You cannot. It’s impossible.

I kept hearing that, over and over, and man — maybe ease up a little, Spain. We just spent 12 hours crammed in together on a plane in total silence: that is certainly not something I thought possible so who knows what other miracles might exist?

My passport photo no longer resembles me at all but no one ever seems to care. I made it to the shuttle bus to Terminal 4, which is, naturally, a 10-minute bus ride from Terminal 2. It seems disingenuous to suggest these places are part of the same airport when they are not visible from one another or connected by anything other than a highway, but no one is asking my opinion on the matter.

A man on the shuttle bus had pages and pages of color printouts of the various terminals of the airport and he was paging through them over and over, what was he looking for? He was wearing pants that zip off into shorts and one of those passport necklaces, so was clearly a seasoned traveler. I counted five pages of printouts, lots of yellow highlighting.

Once I finally rebooked my flight from Madrid to Paris, it was my turn to discover something that was not possible. My new flight was scheduled to get to Orly at 9:45 pm and when I updated my Airbnb host, I received this message in return: “I would love to let you arrive at your property after 10 pm however it will not be possible. Maybe, do you happen know someone in (Paris) who could help you and do the key exchange on your behalf?”





Astonishingly, I actually DID have a friend in (Paris) who could do the key exchange on my behalf, so then the plan was that Brandon would get my keys and then I would fly to Orly and get a cab into the city (because of course there was a transit strike going on) and find him somewhere in Paris at 11 pm on a Friday night and pick up the keys and then go find my apartment. (This was not nearly as terrible a plan as it might sound.)

Brandon’s 11 pm Friday night location turned out to be a bar, naturally. He was celebrating a friend’s birthday, a lovely French woman called Charlotte who had a perfectly perfect French accent, like the kind you hear in movies. Charlotte had recently acquired a puppy, which she named Poppy, and she had brought Poppy the puppy to her birthday party at this bar where Poppy had recently had explosive diarrhea all over a rug and then vomited several times. Charlotte explained to me that she had given the dog apples earlier in the day, but because of her delightful, charming accent, I thought she was saying she had given Poppy “uppers,” and the look of horror on my face likely mirrored that of whichever staff member discovered that the furtive clean-up of Poppy’s mess had not only been just moderately successful but also resulted in a clogged toilet. Anyway, don’t feed your puppy apples right before a party: she will love the apples, but her stomach will not, and even your charming French accent will not make those lemons into lemonade.

***

Brandon and I used to work together; outside of work, before he moved to Paris, we mostly hung out in bars, museums, or at Dave and Buster’s. There is no Dave and Buster’s in Paris, which is a deeply regrettable shame, but there are all manner of bars and museums so we got to do our thing for a few days while we were both in town. One day we went to the Rodin museum, which was excellent, and afterward we stopped at a little bar/restaurant thing along the Seine because you know, Paris. I tried to order a glass of wine but the man informed me they didn’t have any more glasses of wine, he could only sell us a bottle, which definitely didn’t make any sense but the whole situation was a little rushed so I said okay to the bottle and then ordered some kind of cheese thing that turned out to be super footy cheese in a plastic container like you might get at a (French) gas station. But the bread was delicious and because they’d given us plastic glasses (again, they had wine and they had glasses, I’m still not sure how that meant they were out of glasses of wine) we could take those with us as we strolled along the river and I made Brandon pose for perhaps the cheesiest selfie it is possible to take in Paris, though alas neither of us is wearing a beret or a fake mustache. But sometimes leaving a thing undone is a reason to return so next time I’ll pack a Breton-striped shirt and a jaunty scarf and see if I can’t get Brandon to selfie us in front of the Arc de Triomphe.





Paris is the kind of place I can miss even before I leave. London is next, and the only reason I’m looking forward it is I need toothpaste and I am terrified to buy it in France. I got almost to the checkout counter yesterday and then decided to type a few words into google translate and thank goodness I did or I’d be brushing my teeth with butt cream why are those products even NEAR each other, French grocery store?

And finally, I can’t — I would NEVER — fault the breads, but btw, France? Your coffee needs work.






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