To preface, when I made my travel plans from Frankfurt Germany, to Aix en Provence France, it seemed easiest to go through Paris. As I was originally entering Europe (and thus Germany) to Paris it seemed like a good idea to leave the same way I came. To do that I would fly from Germany to Paris the morning of the 9th and then take the high speed TGV (train à grande vitesse) to Aix. In reality, however this idea has proved thus far to complicated, prone to go haywire, and just plain dumb.
My first leg (driving from Judith’s house 2 hours to the airport) went well - despite the whole waking-up-at-4: 30am part. But I dozed in the car (meaning I flitted in and out of consciousness to a soundtrack of German pop radio). We arrived at the airport at 6 – my flight for Paris leaving nearly 5 hours later at 10:50. If you are ever in the Frankfurt airport be warned – there are NO outlets. Anywhere. At all. I know because I spent a good part of my 5 hours scouring the baseboards for them. But there were none. So I only watched one movie (Once – which was good, but is now kind of hazy because I was sooooooooo tired). I also read my book. And I paced the concourse a lot. Finally I got on my plane, fell asleep, and woke up 20 minutes later to discover that the plane had not moved. For some unknown reason our plane’s takeoff (aterrissage) was delayed. We finally took off and I just dozed (not nearly as successfully as my pre-take off nap though).
My plane landed in Paris, and taxied for about 30 minutes (it felt like that at least). I got off and went to claim my luggage. While waiting I had another snack (some Cranberry German granola bar Judith bought for me yesterday – it was pretty good). I got my bag and then sprinted around Charles de Gaulle airport (I had a luggage trolley so it wasn’t too bad). Also this time I didn’t run over any people’s feet – meaning that I didn’t feel like a total troll. At some point whilst changing concourses some lady cornered me and made me sign what I believe was a petition for blind people. I also gave her 5 euros – even though she wanted 20. Feeling vaguely swindled I made it to the train station (inside of CGD) only to find out that my train had been delayed 50 minutes. I finally got on the train – an hour later and passed the roughly 4 hours by napping, listening to my music and watching a movie (Grosse Pointe Blank).
When I arrived in Aix I took a bus from the train station to the center of town. I then lugged my giant (60+ pound) bag up and down the street looking for a taxi. After 20 minutes and several frenzied calls to the Vanderbilt center I got in a taxi and drove to the center. Everyone had already left for dinner but there were some French students (our tuteurs – tutors) waiting for me. So I battled to get my giant bag up 2 flights of stairs (I only fell down once) and then headed off to dinner. After dinner I took my stuff to my auberge with Emily and then unpacked a bit.
So despite all the problems with my train and the glacial pace of my day (see what I did there?) I am finally in Aix and look forward to an exciting semester.
List of injuries sustained during my day of travel:
- blisters (from the blue monster bag)
- giant bruise on my knee
- strained shoulder (from lifting blue monster bag to the top luggage rack on the train)
- various scrapes from various bags
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