JANUARY 20, FRIDAY

TRAVEL ADVENTURES OF AN OCTOGENARIAN

I slept well in the Hotel Tim, only being woken by calls from Becca Nestler who assumed I was in Asheville and then by Lisa Mahy in Everett, Washington to tell me about a man she just met whose kids went to Woodstock and by Susie with advice on how to get to the airport.

Yesterday I read that there was a transportation strike in Paris on January 19 on most trains and metro lines so I was very worried about how I would get to Charles De Gaulle airport this morning. In the topsy turvy last minute changes of my flight I had gotten the days mixed up. I thought today was the 20th and hadn‘t realized the chaos of yesterday was caused by the strike, which was now over. I had a very good breakfast at 6:30 at Timhotel and then was prepared for a leisurely morning ride to the airport.

Getting around Paris was as easy today as it was difficult yesterday when I happened into a 37 dollar 2 mile taxi ride. I took the 54 bus to Gare Du Nord and after a long walk got on the train to the airport, or so I thought. I couldn’t hear the announcer on the train, who was speaking French in any case, but when a number of people got off and I heard the word De Gaulle I asked the man across from me if I should get off here and he assured me no. I could see that on the lighted sign above there was a fork in the rails, one fork to the airport and the other somewhere else. The man even got up and pointed to where I was going.

Alas, he was Polish and didn’t speak English or French, and although he was warm hearted and eager to help, we then took the fork to somewhere else and he told me to stay put until 3 stops later, his stop, when he raced me to the train back to the fork, even carrying my bag as we sailed (sort of) up the steps and putting me on the right train, just making it off himself before the train back to the fork started up. But there was some problem on the line and we were stopped for some delay announced in five languages for ten minutes at each stop. And then the train to the airport didn’t come for 15 minutes. At this point it was after 9 and I could see that if the security lines were long I might miss my 10:30 flight. And because the wait had been so long the train was now packed like sardines swaying against each other unable to even shift our feet, hardly able to breathe, held up by the crush like the one in Korea.

We got to the airport, without now a minute to spare, but it turned out that Terminal 2 of Charles De Gaulle airport is enormous. While others sailed by me I moved at my top speed and walked and walked. Now I knew I very well was not going to make it through security.

The woman checking me in at the Finnair counter scanned my passport and asked me for evidence of a PCR test in the last 72 hours. I had actually had a PCR test earlier in the week when I had a fever and thought I had Covid but had no record of it. Sorry, the woman said, she was quite firm, I would have to get a PCR test, available somewhere in the airport, which would take two hours to read, and then catch a later flight. Actually, the way she said it, was that I would have to wait 72 hours after my test, three more days in Paris. I explained that Susie and Todd, traveling just a week before me hadn’t been required to have a PCR test. The rules had changed the manager at the counter said, every day countries changed the rules for Covid. I needed to get a PCR test and then change my flight. I said that I had just changed my flight for an extra $775 and might have to pay that much again. He shrugged his shoulders, maybe they wouldn’t charge me again if I explained myself. He was sorry and felt my pain.

I was resigned to the delay. But instead of racing to the PCR test I sat down in a seating area across from Finnair to collect myself and to call Susie to tell of my change in plans.

But within two mintues three things happened. As I was telling Susie my story the manager ran up to me and demanded my passport. He had made a phone call and I could go immediately. They had read the rules wrong, it was China that demanded a PCR test, not India. But at the same time the police arrived with a long red plastic tape and demanded that everyone leave the area that they were circling with the tape, announcing that a bomb might be about to blow up. I refused and said that I was going to the Finnair Counter, they refused to let me and then here came the manager with my passport and boarding cards, himself trespassing on the forbidden area. Susie listened into all of this frenzy on the phone and was a little confused.

By now there was no chance to get through a long security line, except there was none. There was no line at all at the Finnair boarding area and even though it took a few minutes to scan my stuff I was, totally frazzled and puffing with exertion, able to get to the tail end of the line of people boarding the Finnair flight to Helsinki. So that was my adventure of the day. I don’t know what the moral of this story is, but I expect it contradicts the statement people make when I say I am traveling at 85. Of course you can do it, they say, because you’ve traveled so much and know what you are doing. Travel has always been for me a wing and a prayer and still is, accepting things as they happen to me and making do. I was even beginning to relish three days more in Paris, but I’m happy to be on the plane.