Flying to Europe (Part 1: CDG)
Aug 6, 2009
For the average Indian (yours truly) who has grown up watching Indian films; BigB and Rekha creating magic walking across the Dutch Tulips in Silsila, Rahul traveling to Switzerland in Darr, Guddu and Raj bonding in London in K3G, Raj romancing Simran in DDLJ all across Europe; For him, America may be the land of opportunities but Europe is where any Indian would love to live, for it is the land of dreams to him!
The chaos and excitement (for the most part Chaos really, I had less than 45days to prepare for this!) that I had built up for this trip made me believe I would have that "Ooooooooh" moment the minute I land in Europe.
So I took the 10hour flight from Benguluru International Airport and landed in Paris. Charles De Gaulle airport is a synonym for Chaos! My first experience off Europe is people running around like madmen. Curses in French, some babbling in Afrikaan, weird looking sheiks from the Middle East, some Israelis, a Polish family that looked like they were escaping a Nazi camp, hundreds of backpackers sitting under every pillar of the terminal! Oh my God! Amidst all this I walk past all queues (I was a privileged business class traveler :-) ) straight to the business lounge. A quick nap later I walked across the terminal hoping to try the premiere degree in French that I got 6 years ago! "Bon Jour Mademeoiselle, comment allez-vous?" was replied with a curt bon jour and I am guessing a scorned look on her face! Oh yeah, the French are xenophobic. I found a computer with internet and struggled with the french keyboard for 1hour before finally giving up.
I walked up to the terminal from where my connecting flight was to take off to Amsterdam. I was totally surprised by the number of Indonesians, South Americans and Africans who were traveling to Amsterdam. Apparently their Dutch connections from the Imperial era still continues.
I walk in and sit in my flight to Amsterdam and realise that I had spent 5hours in Europe and felt nothing different from being in Rajiv gandhi airport of India. Maybe it was that overhyping the Europe experience, maybe all airports are the same, probably France is not a good place to start from, or even worse, maybe it is not that awesome after all! Brooding over these thoughts I sit in my flight preparing for takeoff.
And then....
"OOooooooh Eiffel tower!!!!!"
Posted bySandeep Sekharamantri at 12:02 AM 0 comments
