Some French guy is supposed to have written in a play I never saw, “Hell is other people.” Personally I don’t take it half that far, but then I’ve never even visited Paris*. Maybe with more experience I’d have come to agree.
Woke up this morning with a feeling of delighted liberation. “It’s Sunday, right? So there’s almost no chance anybody will show up to work on that damned new well.” I’ve been on pins and needles for days, ever since the Unfortunate Incident, every time the boys are outside but I can’t see where Ghost is. I just know he’s going to march with determined strides back there and take up the struggle of the proletariat with that guy’s cattledog. But today that’s unlikely. I hope.
Shoulda seen the other guy.
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*Though I’ve spent significant time wandering dazedly through de Gaulle Airport, so maybe that counts**.
**Funny story here: Once, long ago, I was sitting in the kitchen having breakfast with my wife. Somehow the subject of the Concord jet came up, and I remember saying, “Y’know, they’re surprisingly smaller than they look on TV.” She wanted to know where I’d ever seen a Concord, and I said, “de Gaulle Airport.” And she became indignant with me: “You’ve been to Paris?” And I was all “No, hell no. I’ve never even seen Paris. But I’ve changed planes in de Gaulle on my way to some dusty third-world hellhole.” Unmollified, she didn’t forgive me for the rest of the morning.
I used to joke that I’d seen all the great airports of Europe, on journeys to not-so-great places nobody I knew had ever heard of. Arguably I’m a proto-hipster.
Yeah, well, I’ve seen lots of airports, and military airfields, too, without ever seeing the cities they’re supposedly attached to, not to mention the multitudes of different aircraft that process involves. “Just passing through” is a more common way of life than many realize.
I lived a year in Paris (well, in a suburb, Rungis, not quite as romantic) which was next to the other airport, Orly. I once went through there on the way to Israel, to do a computer installation. El Al airlines was in the basement so if anyone tried to blow them up, the people using the other airlines would not be hurt much. I had to go into a private booth there with an Israeli army person, got a pat-down, a sort of early version of TSA. She was such a doll I wanted to tell her to make very sure I was carrying nothing naughty, but I kept my mouth shut and just smiled. For some reason our home-grown TSA is much more annoying so I don’t fly any more.
Never went to Paris, and wouldn’t want to, actually. Did see Chicago twice, once from the Grand Central train station in 1956, and again from a window at O’Hare Airport in 1986. Never set foot outside either, and wouldn’t want to. I hate crowds, and want only to stay out of cities of any size. 🙁
But I did have an interesting experience at O’Hare. I was waiting for a connection flight to Buffalo, New York, and happened to meet the only person I’ve ever encountered from my home town… Baldwin Park, Calif. I left there in 1950 and never looked back. She was on her way from the east to visit her folks in CA. They lived just blocks from my old home there. Sometimes it’s a very small world.
Back in the day, it seemed that every time I had to make a connection at O’Hare it was from an extreme gate in Terminal 1 to an extreme gate in terminal 3 . . . and a 30-minute connection.
Either that or it was a two-hour layover. At least that allowed for food/drink(s).
Don’t miss those days.
Been through de gaulle myself, nice airport.
The only airports I’ve been through that I despise more than Paris Adolph Hitler, are Heathrow and Edinburgh.
Even the old arrivals hall in Luanda, with dripping pipework and malarial mosquitoes buzzing around was less painful than those three.
I was once through Detroit, but had to run from one end to the other to catch my connection to hamsterjam – so much so that I’ve still got the bit of paper in an old passport that I was supposed to hand in to say I’d left the united state. My name is probably still on a list somewhere as an “illegal alien”. Needless to say, I didn’t have time to soak up the ambience.
I used to live in Paris, but that was Paris, TN; not the same at all. The women’s armpits were shaved.
When the Forrestal stopped at Marseilles, there was a bullet-train package to Paris, but I passed. Romantic it may be, but I think otherwise. I hate cities, especially big ones.
Paris, TN has its own mini-Eiffel Tower now, AND the world’s biggest fish fry. Much more my speed.
De Gaulle was designed by the architect version of Kafka.