An impromptu European adventure...

So here I am, sitting in an airport hotel in Paris, waiting to fly out to Istanbul tomorrow morning. Obviously, Istanbul is not the ideal place for me to be searching for a job as a lawyer in NYC. I would assume that NYC is probably a better place to be in that regard. However, about a week ago, my parents called and suggested that I meet up with them in France for a week at the end of May; they are renting a house there for the week. Not being one to pass up an overseas adventure, I quickly agreed. I remembered that a friend of mine was going to be playing a poker tournament in Bulgaria in mid-May, and had suggested that I play it too. It seemed as though I had the perfect plan, poker in Bulgaria followed by a week in Southern France.

I found myself sitting at my Brother's house in Maine with 2 or 3 days to book all my airfares and be on the Bulgarian coast, wearing my finest poker playing pants. So, I booked a flight from Maine through to NYC, and then a return flight to Paris, and a return flight from Paris to Varna in Bulgaria; things were going well. I was set to arrive in Varna at about 2am of the day of the tournament.

About an hour after I had booked and paid for these flights, my friend kindly let me know that the tournament had just been cancelled. No worries, I'd just change my flight. So, with the greatest of ease I cancelled my Bulgaria flight. All I had to do now is push the dates back a couple of weeks for my Paris flight, and I'd be all set. At this point, I discovered that Expedia Bargain Fares may be cheap, but they are not necessarily a bargain. I was told that the flight was non-changeable and non-refundable. "Use it or lose it" were the exact words of the Expedia rep. I was going to Paris, and now I had about 2 weeks to spare before meeting up with my parents.

I had already planned to meet up with my friend Chloe in Turkey for a couple of days after the tournament finished in Bulgaria. She is currently working as a tour leader in Turkey, so I emailed her for some ideas as to what to do with my new found free time in Europe. She suggested that I join her tour through Turkey for a week or so, and since I had always heard good things about Turkey, I decided to make it happen and booked a flight.

Now, when I say I had heard good things about Turkey, I couldn't actually remember what they were exactly. What I do know is that the banquet at the Turkish Pide House is delicious, and that Turkish Delight is indeed delightful. What more do I really need to know?

It was Friday night and I had to leave Saturday morning. I washed my clothes, through them back in my backpack, charged up my camera and music player and I was ready to go.

The first leg of my journey (if you don't count driving Bluey the Buick to Portland Airport) was my uneventful flight from Portland to JFK in NYC. Of course, my flight to Paris was leaving out of Newark airport in New Jersey. Usually when I get to NYC I'm tired and jetlagged and just want to get to bed, so I just catch a cab from the airport to wherever I'm headed. However, this time I was fresh, I had 3 hours to spare and was filled with the spirit of adventure, so I decided to try the train. I proceeded to catch the Airtrain from JFK to the subway station, the subway though to Penn Station, and then I caught the NJ transit train through to Newark and the Airtrain to my departure terminal. This was OK, because I had plenty of time. Or at least I would have had plenty of time if NJ transit wasn't running an hour late. After about 30 mins I asked at information if they knew when my train would leave. He told me with a smile that my 2pm train would be leaving just after the 3pm train left, and that their change policy was very similar, or actually identical, to that of the Expedia Bargain Fare. I eventually got my train, and arrived only slightly late for my flight to Paris via Frankfurt.

For some reason, when I got to Frankfurt, I had to clear German immigration before transferring to my connecting flight. Having had numerous bad experiences with immigration last year, I wasn't excited by this prospect. It seemed OK though, they were stamping passports as quickly as they could herd people through the queue. Until I got there. Now, I've traveled a fair bit in the last year, and so my passport has a few stamps in it. One of these stamps was clearly causing a problem. A very loud and furious German problem. I wondered what the problem could be, whether it was Vietnam, or Peru, Bolivia or Korea. The customs officer frowned some more, spoke some more angry German, and called his supervisor over. I'm not an expert German speaker, but here is the translation of what his supervisor said:

"Canada? Why would we care if he has been to Canada? Haven't you noticed? We let everyone into this country. We don't even look at their passports. Your job is to stamp passports. Just stamp it!" (angry German tone)

So I made my way through the neverending moving walkways of Frankfurt airport and caught my plane to Paris. We were served small bread rolls with ham in them. The Indian lady seated next to me politely asked if there was a vegetarian option. There wasn't. The blonde-haired German stewardess was very keen to solve this problem "sorry, we don't have a vegetarian option, only the ham. But you should try it. The ham is delicious." In all fairness, the ham was delicious.

Once I got to Paris, I mentally prepared myself for a prolonged interrogation about my trips to Canada. I was pleasantly surprised. It appears you can enter France without a passport or customs declaration. I think there might have been an opt-in queue for drug-dealers, terrorists or Canadians to surrender themselves, but everyone else can just pick up their baggage and leave.

I stepped outside hoping to find a Radisson shuttle bus to take me to the airport hotel. I didn't have to worry too much about that. As I stepped outside the door I was very nearly run over by a Radisson shuttle bus.

I arrived at the hotel to find that French people, in this case the check-in staff, were as pretentious, rude and unhelpful as all my years of American television has made them out to be. I smiled. I was in Paris. Shortly afterwards I fell asleep.