Onwards and Outwards

France 2004 : Part Two.

The flight was long. The first hour went fairly quickly, as it was a completely new experience, but I soon realised that I still had 11 hours to go. I’d never travelled non-stop for so long in my life before. I’d never travelled non-stop for more than 5 hours in my life before. 11 hours seemed almost incomprehensible.

The in-flight entertainment was crap. I didn’t watch any of it in this leg of the trip. Instead, I settled back into my seat, with my nifty neck cushion, and listened to my CDs, while reading letters from friends back home and the brilliant Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. I also came to the conclusion that the pacific ocean is big, blue, and empty. Sleep wouldn’t come, so it was a painfully long trip.

About three hours out from Los Angeles, Green Forms were distributed for entering the United States. These are very anal little forms which you must fill out perfectly, giving details such as your name, address, business in the states, passport number, contact details in the States, and so forth. And like I said, they must be filled out perfectly. No mistakes. No crossing things out. Not easy after ten hours cramped up, with turbulence shaking your pen around. I fail to understand why, in order to get off one plane and onto another out of the United States I was required to get a 90 day visitors Visa. Surely, they could have designed an international airport as important as LAX, so that passengers in transit don’t need to go outside, and thus can skip the entire requirement.

Especially since, upon landing, it required a good thirty minutes of queueing, a brief lookover from the officials, then a stamp on the card. Which was, in the end, nothing compared to the trip home again.

After collecting our bags and making our way to the International Terminal, we checked out bags onto the plane. Before they could go on, however, we had to subject them to a rigorous X-Ray search and random searches. My bag was, of course, searched. Unfortunately, I didn’t find out till I arrived in France, my guitar music never made it’s way back into my bag afterwards.

Straight up: LAX sucks. Singapore has swimming pools, showers, bedrooms, shopping plazas, everything and anything you could want. LAX has McDonalds. An Ice-Cream shop. And a crap giftshop. I learnt that McDonalds in the US tastes exactly the same as McDonalds in New Zealand. Except in America they advertise one price, then charge another. You have to add tax on yourself. Makes things quite confusing. Especially when I went to pay for my fries with the exact amount of money only to find I was thirty cents short.

Despite having already taken the leap and done a big flight, I was almost as nervous getting onto the plane to Europe as I was getting to the US. I downed a few drops of Rescue Remedy to try and keep my nerves calm.. and it sort of worked. Until I took so much that I think my body created a tolerance for it and it ceased to have any effect.

Boarding time came, and onto the plane we went. Stupidly, I’d forgotten to ask for a window seat. Which mean I was on the aisle. In the center, so no where near a window. Still, could have been worse.

My first impression upon entering the plane was “What a piece of crap!”. From the smart, snappy designs of Air New Zealand we went to the horrible Grey/Yellow vaguely reminiscent of the 80s design of Lufthansa! For in-flight entertainment we had two 14 inch TVs up the front of every cabin, the one closest to me with a distinct yellow tinge. Lufthansa’s only saving point was the abundance of large chocolate covered pretzels they carried on board.

I was getting to be fairly exhausted by this stage, it had been 18 hours since I left New Zealand. I thought that really, I should try and get some sleep. But it was not to bed. I managed to get about three hours of sleep during the course of that 12 hour flight. I was just wide awake for some reason. I would regret it later on, however.

We arrived in Frankfurt a at about 5pm on the 14th of January, that is, about two hours after we left New Zealand. Don’t you just love the way Time Zones work? Needless to say, my body clock was screwed.

Still, no time to worry about that, I had a flight leaving within an hour to take me and Kitty, a girl from Nelson, to Paris.

We hurried through customs, got our passports and tickets checked, and bundled onto the plane. There were a total of three other people in the plane with us. In comparison to the 747s we’d been in for the last 24 hours, it seemed pathetic.

This was our first experience of Europe. Our guides had gone. The Air hostess was doing the usual safety routine… but yabbering away in German, and French. Sure, I’m supposed to have learnt french. But I didn’t understand a thing! Suddenly, the realities of a country that doesn’t speak English dawned on me… it was scary, and damned exciting!

The trip was short, less than an hour. The air was clear outside, and looking down on Europe, this kind of euphoria seized me. We flew over German towns, with their red roofs. At some stage we crossed borders, but I had no idea when or where. All I could see was flatness. No hills, no mountains. Just flatness in every direction, and what seemed like unending towns. There was no countryside, it seemed. Towns were everywhere

We started banking around, and the pilot announced our descent towards Paris.

Paris!

Looking out the window, I saw a town surrounded in a brownish haze. Ah, the pollution we don’t have in New Zealand! As we got closer and lower, I could slowly make out separate buildings. My eyes scanned the city, looking for one thing in particular.

I found it. I honestly almost gasped, so surreal did it feel to think that there, out the window, I could see the Eiffel Tower.

July 29, 2005 | Filed Under Classic, La France 

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