February 19, 2007. Afternoon
On the fast train from Aeroport Charles de Gaulle to Poitiers.
My head hurts ; lack of caffeine will do that to you. I dare not drink any coffee now, because it’s nearly three o’clock and I don’t want anything to prevent me from sleeping tonight.
I’m on leg four of five if this trip. I change trains in Poitiers, then a short train ride and I’ll be in Niort. Thank God it’s almost over. All I want is a hot shower, a hot meal, and a warm bed.
When I got to the train station in the airport, I had to pick up the ticket I’d reserved online. I had a printed page with my name and the train number, but it wasn’t enough. I was missing the six-letter code that the SNCF employee needed to print out my ticket. She searched her records for my name, but found nothing. And she was really snotty about it. “There were three pages of the e-mail, Madame. You only have one.” I replied “I printed all three, but this was the only page with any information on it.” (Seriously. The other two pages printed, but all that appeared was the Gmail information on the periphery of the page. So I left them on my dresser.)
The woman invited me to go to the Sheraton hotel on the upper level for internet access. I could find my code via the confirmation e-mail. So I took the escalators two levels up.
If you have ever been in the TGV station at Charles de Gaulle airport, you will know what I am talking about: the elevators are tortoise slow and crammed with people and their stupid luggage carts. So I took the escalators, but it’s not a simple matter of going up one flight, then going up another, no. You have to walk across the hall to catch the next up escalator. It’s the most fucked up thing I’ve ever seen (well, maybe not ever, but it’s fucked up).
I inquired at the Sheraton desk for internet access. They didn’t have any access cards, but I was welcome to go one flight down to the Sheraton business center, where I could purchase a card.
Back down the escalator, and across the hall again (because of course the down escalator was opposite to where I needed to go). Inside the business center, I approached two young women, then stopped short because I saw the price of internet access. Get this: they wanted twenty euros for thirty minutes! That’s like, a dollar a minute, and all I needed to do was access Gmail. I needed perhaps a MINUTE of internet time.
I explained my situation to the young women, who clucked their tongues at the snotty SNCF woman. And they let me go behind their desk and get on the internet from there. For free. And they let me print out the entire e-mail, so that I would have ALL the information, not just the six-letter access code.
I thanked them and made my way back downstairs. They restored my faith in humanity (or at least French humanity), which had waned since the moment I listened to two different people on the shuttle get on their cell phones and complain about this or that to their interlocutor. The SNCF woman was the clincher. “Welcome to France,” I thought to myself (add to the mix the fact that SOMEBODY was holding a demonstration in Terminal 1, and LOUDLY, and it was like “Welcome to fucking France.” But I digress.)
When I got back to the ticket counter, three of the seven counters that had been open were closed. Of course! It was 12:45. Lunchtime. But my woman was still there, and although I had to wait in line for about 10 minutes, I was fortunate enough to deal with her again.
I slammed the pages down on the counter. She said “You were able to get the information?” My tight-lipped “Oui” betrayed my outrage at her.
She took the papers and said, “I told you there were three pages, Madame.”
I could have clocked her.
“And I told you, I printed three pages, but there was NOTHING on the second two.”
Within a minute I had my train tickets. I got the hell out of there, and then stopped at the Welcome Center in the middle of the hall.
“I’m looking for an ATM.”
“Two flights up, upper level, Madame.”
Right next to the everloving Sheraton.
Welcome back to France, Alison
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