Paris Day 1 - Lost Luggage and Zip Ties

I am a fan of a late take off.  The days of me saving €20 and flying at 6.50am are just plain gone.  I'm far too old and cranky for such nonsense.  So I booked my flight to Paris with Air France.  A real, proper, honest airline and flew at 12.50pm.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  First I had to go to that den of misery that is the airport. Although on this occasion, it was fortunately Tegel.  Which, for you non Berliners, means that I have to travel less, a whole hour less in fact.  So, when I arrived, I was all bright, breezy and happy.  Smiling away, wandering around the terminal to find myself an empty gate and sit as far away from all other humans as I could.

As you can see, I didn't get so far.  What you cannot see, or rather smell, is that the entire terminal had an aroma like a bad combination of sweaty arse and bad feet (having now typed that, I don't know of a good combination, so I'm not sure why I specified it was bad).  But, I was only sat there for a painful 45 minutes, during which time my brain adjusted to filter out my perception of the smell, but my nose still complained and stung with each intake of breath.  I'll make it up to my nose.

Boarding was bland as boardings always are.  I was put next to the worlds most fidgety row partner (he was literally in constant movement for the whole flight, even if it was just a finger jiggling away).  It wasn't long before I noticed that the seat was a little odd though.  For one, it had this thing.

I'm sure smoking on planes has been banned for a very long time now (even in France).  How old is this plane I'm flying in?  Is it in it's 30's?  That surely is too old for a plane.  Plus, look at this marvel.

My first thought was, Oh my!  Is that a cup holder!  The amount of times I've had to get up with a full cup of coffee and needed to simultaneously juggle the cup whilst trying to close the tray and then squeeze myself out of the way.  This is amazing!  Why doesn't every flight have this?

Then I noticed it was square.  I've never seen a square cup on a flight.  I mean, you could put a round cup in there, but it's not going to be super stable.  This is a flight after all, unstable is what they do.  

Although, maybe it's to hold an additional ash tray for when you've filled up the arm one.

But, after all this nonsensical thought, I arrived in Paris (please say all mentions of Paris in this blog with a full on French Pareeeee).

This giant ball of fire in sky surprised the tits out of me.  It was supposed to be all rainy and crap here.

After some baggage shenanigans (they routed the entire planes Paris baggage to the 'connecting flights' section, whether people were connecting or not, resulting in one and a half hours of lost baggage crap) I was on my way to the city.

I arrived, found my AirBnB apartment and discovered it has this rather nice windy staircase.

After some relaxation, I ventured out for a wander and every French person who got within 2 meters of me shouted at me for not speaking French.  Well, maybe not literally, that is at least that's how it felt though.  The stereotype that French people are twats if you ask them if they speak English is a true one (or if you ask them if they speak German too).  Even if you make as much of an effort in French as you can.

But, fuck it, I went and bought a burger.

To be honest, it was overpriced and shit.  But they can't be all winners.

I stumbled out of the burger place with disgust and carried on looking around my neighbourhood.  Lots of pretty European buildings, nice bars and cafes and such.  Nothing worth mentioning in detail.  I ended up going shopping for a few supplies for the apartment though.  I walked into the local grocery store and I was immediately accosted by a burly doorman upon trying to enter.  It seems I had committed the ultimate crime of having a bag.  How terrible of me.  He was stood there, menacingly, with lots of tiny little white zip ties, attaching them to the zips of everyone who came in, lest they slip a gruyere into their bag and try to steal it.

A silly solution if you ask me.