Journey

20th December, 2008

Up at 5am to the dulcet tones of a fog horn on my iPhone. This is the alarm of choice when I absolutely have to get up. Unfortunately it comes on with such a force that there have been the occasional bed wetting incidents (not just by me either!) so I try not to use it too often.

A quick shower and into the clothes prepared the night before as well as a last scour around the house and I'm laden like a pack mule with my 5 bags and trying to negotiate my way out of the house. Given how considerate and thoughtful my neighbours generally are about making excessive noise during the normal hours of rest, I don't need to be too quiet as I leave the apartment which is just as well with all the luggage I have.

I stumble out the main door and onto the footpath. Fortunately, it's neither too cold nor raining, and a cab is crawling by looking for passengers just like me. After loading the bags into the car, we speed off to CDG completing the journey in around 20 mins. A good run.

Like many things French, CDG is hardly designed for ease of use, customer friendliness or practicality. Quite the contrary. A sprawling concrete mass with few signs, fewer facilities and an imposing sense of "get the fuck out of our country you foreign scum". Naturally the only trollies available were being used by the cleaning staff to hold all their cleaning equipment as they stood around in a big group discussing the rising price of baguettes, having to work an unjust 35 hour week or anything else other than doing their actual job of cleaning. As if in it's own act of contempt a discarded can lies on the ground looking up at the cleaners knowing that it is safe from any interference by the preoccupied cleaning staff.

Rather than try to explain to them that the customer luggage trolleys are actually for customers with luggage I struggle past them and try to find my gate. It takes three goes to find the Swiss Air flight to Zurich and by then I'm sweating under the weight of all the bags when I finally work out that I have to clear immigration before checking my bags not after. They have both systems operating simultaneously at CDG and it is up to the hapless customer to work out which one to use on which occasion. As I pass immigration and see the long line of people queueing for the Swiss Air flight, I praise the foresight of choosing to go Business Class; only one person in the queue before me.

Short, grumpy, a permanent scowl and disdain for the world - the face of customer service in France. I greet her with a friendly "Good Morning" in an effort to set the ground rules on which language we should speak and that I'm embracing the day with a sunny disposition. She deftly ignores this and asks for my passport in abrupt French. While I believe that I should try and make an effort to get by in the local language when in a foreign company, I do take offence at people in customer service positions in a sector that attracts the majority of foreign customers who refuse to speak the lingua franca of the world. I continue on in English unabated in this linguistic Mexican Standoff. Given that I would be flying to a country I'd never been to before during daylight hours, I had pre-allocated my seats with Amex getting window seats. After much typing on her part, I explained that I had pre-allocated seats. She replied that she had moved my seats to aisle seats. I asked her to move them back and she grunted that the seats were no longer available. Despite the permanent scowl I'm sure I saw the flickering of a smile. Having thrust boarding passes at me her job was done in her eyes. I asked where the boarding gate was, She looked at me in contemptuous disbelief and gesticulated with the vagueness of directions normally reserved for airline hostesses pointing out the exit points on the plane. I said, "what, there?" pointing to the security booth some 20 metres away with an index finger (the way evolution intended us to point out objects). "Oui", she huffed.

Fortunately, this was right next to the duty free, so I bought a fine bottle of whiskey for my host in Kenya, and proceeded to join the very long line of people queueing for security adjacent to the Swiss air economy class check-in. The French believe strongly in social equality and so while they tolerate foreign airlines to have separate check-ins for business class passengers, in the state run security clearance everyone has to line up for ages no matter what class of travel. After nearly 40 minutes of queueing I finally got to the conveyer where the woman not only made me remove my laptop from my bag (a practice long since abandoned in modern airports), my shoes, my belt, my jumper, and the two coins I had in my pocket, she then asked me to remove all electronic equipment from my camera bag. As the sole purpose of the camera bag is to hold electronic equipment, I was asked to remove my camera, flash and lenses all of which were deposited in a plastic tray to go through the radiographic carwash. Standing only four articles of clothing away from total nakedness she asked for my boarding pass. At that point she looked at her list of approved flights and said I wasn't on it and would have to go to the other end of the terminal, some 750m away beyond yet another immigration point. Time check; 06:52. Departure time: 07:05. Shit!

I crammed all of my belongings back into their respective bags as best I could, re-dressed myself and tried to negotiate my way through the crowd. Even in a crowd of complete strangers it is quite easy to spot the French. Seeing the panicked look on my face, the British, Swiss and Germans swiftly moved out of my way allowing me to pass. The French stood their ground to stop this Australian passing through their ranks as if they were personally seeking recriminations for the drubbing the Wallabies had given them two weeks ago at Stade de France. Despite my "Pardons" and "Excuse Moi's" I still ended up knocking several of them quite heavily. Stirling Mortlock would have been proud of me.

About a month ago, prior to a visit of one of my dear friends from Tokyo, Lisa (who was not only my friend but for a while, my personal trainer), I started running to try and get back in shape and lose some of the 20+ kilos I had gained since last I saw her. Little had I known then, that this training was intended for this fully laden 750m sprint of CDG Terminal 2B. While not a major event on the international athletics circuit, it is certainly far more popular than the numerous other athletics meetings. I'm convinced that that the Athletics France selectors are colluding with the CDG terminal staff who routinely pit passengers against the clock by deliberately giving them misinformation that causes them to sprint from one side to the other. I swear I saw officials with stop watches in strategic points around the terminal. My guess is that if you make it over the designated distance in under a certain amount of time, an Athletics France selector is there to sign you up to the national team. The only error in their plan, and the probable reason the French do so poorly at world athletic events is that the other competitors are generally not carrying hand luggage and duty free when competing. Nevertheless, I was making good time as I sprinted past seasoned travellers who were doing warm ups and stretching prior to checking in. There must have been a shortage of athletes for the steeplechase because as if on cue, various airport officials started moving obstacles in my path which I skilfully negotiated. The next immigration checkpoint was in sight when a cleaner shunted a customer luggage trolley full of cleaning supplies into my path. I nearly cleared this latest obstacle.... nearly. Catching my foot in the handle of a bucket, I went down with surprising force, much to the delight of French travellers who's sole purpose for travel is to see the misfortunes of others. My backpack that was hurriedly closed now hurriedly opened spilling the contents across the floor. My duty free landed on the white dull tiles with a resounding clunk. No apology was expected from the cleaner and none given. After all, none of this would have happened if I wasn't in her country. I grabbed the articles I could see, stuffed them back in my bag and hobbled the 10 meters to immigration, my dignity lay strewn on the ground with various bottles of bleach and other industrial cleaners that would never see actual use. The smiling immigration officer, in what I originally mistook to be an act of kindness but later realised that it was going to make his job easier, informed me that my passport was still lying on the floor near the luggage trolley. I retrieved it, flashed it quickly to him and rushed off to yet another security clearance counter.

Fortunately at this point, I could see passengers lined up at the gate so boarding had not yet commenced. Knowing the drill, I remove my laptop, the majority of my clothing, and all my camera equipment from my two bags and placed them in the plastic trays. I went through without incident. Whilst I laced up my hiking boots, the first articles through the scanner, various other items slowly proceeded through the scanner. The last was my near empty backpack. However, apparently it wasn't quite empty enough. The security guard called me over and said, I didn't remove all the electronic items from the bag. The offending articles, a USB key and a power charger, are well documented terrorist devices that have been used to hijack numerous aircraft around the world. Recently, a jihadist managed to conceal an AK-47 in a USB key and take over an Air France plan. Or so I was led to believe by their reactions. These devices when skilfully hidden in the "impervious to x-rays" canvas backpack I was carrying clearly needed to be removed and scanned separately. I was asked to go back through and remove them from the backpack so that they could be scanned. I went back through the human scanner and took out the two articles placed in their own plastic tray and sent them on their merry way. As I tried to go back through again, my hiking boots set off the scanner. The security officers, clearly some of the brightest the French could muster, said that my shoes would have to be scanned again and I had to remove them. I tried to explain to them that they had been scanned no more than 30 seconds ago by this same equipment but they were having none of it.

I finally made it on to the Swiss Air flight and sat down in my seat (an aisle at the very back of Business Class). Take off could not come quick enough and I feel a weight come off my shoulders, storm clouds part from around my head, and an uncanny lightness of being whenever I leave France's shores.

The flight is only an hour to Zurich and I slept most of it. As we landed in a perfectly executed manoeuvre (after all this is the Swiss we are talking about), I looked over my fellow traveller to see the airport blanketed in snow. I was free of the blanket of smog that is Paris, and felt pristine and clean all over again. Even though the plane was still pressurised I could swear that I even smelt a clean odour. Not harsh like a hospital but warm, pleasant and soothing. Much like a fine whiskey.

Upon opening the overhead luggage bin I was again rewarded with an even stronger warm, pleasant and soothing smell, accompanied by a cold wet feeling as I grabbed my bags to realise that the bottle of whiskey I had purchased, had of course broken on the impact of my previous athletic stunt but taken time to seep from the container through the security sealed plastic bag (how, I don't know...) and throughout the whole luggage bin. For good measure, as I picked up the sopping duty free bag, it regurgitated a cold burst of whiskey all over me. Furious with not only breaking an expensive bottle of whiskey but not even been given a look in by the French Athletics selectors for my athletic talents, I left the duty free in the bin and stormed off the plane to find another duty free store.

Fortunately, I was now in Switzerland where everything ran, well, like clockwork. The shuttle between terminals arrived as I walked up to it, there were ample signs not only pointing to my gate but also the duty free shopping of which there was plenty of choice, each filled with helpful attentive staff. Even as I walked up to the security screening there was a greeter who waved me into the considerably shorter business class screening. As I walked to the scanner and began to undress whilst starting to remove all of my electronics (by the French definition) from their bags a friendly security officer interrupted to say, "There will be no need for that sir, just pop it all on the scanner". There were even padded chairs and shoe horns for people to put their shoes back on.

I bordered the plane with the most pleasant of greetings from not one, but two hostesses (even before they knew I was travelling in business class) and was escorted to my seat. I was given a nice warm towel which I used to try and soak up most of the whiskey that was still seeping from my shirt, and lay back to relax in my seat. Now Swiss Air is nowhere near as good as Qantas but as far as European carriers go, it's not too bad. (Air France of course, coming a distant last).

The flight was fairly uneventful, the landing flawless and I finally some seven and half hours later I took my first steps on Kenyan soil.

Walking across the tarmac of the Kenyan international airport I was constantly being greeted by smiles. As I cleared immigration (completely without incident) and walked towards baggage claim, a cleaner came out of a spotless bathroom, with the largest grin and gave me two thumbs up saying "<*Swahili for welcome*>". I felt that I was reaching the finish line of a long race with the whole Kenyan airport population cheering me on. My step picked up, a smile cracked my battle torn face and I walked into a clean baggage claim area with free luggage trolleys for Africa. My first bag was one of the first off, but my other two bags were amongst the last. For this I don't blame the Kenyan unloaders but the French loaders who clearly upon seeing the priority labels on the bags decided to spread them between different baggage containers making sure that none of them would appear within 15 minutes of each other. I can almost hear them commenting " How dare this person think he can have his bags early by paying twice as much money as the others. Gerard, chuck this one right at the back of that last container."

After exiting customs there was a man waiting with a sign with my name on it. He introduced himself as Thomas, took my bags and directed me out to the awaiting car. Traffic was relatively heavy for a Saturday night and the normal 20 minute journey took around 40 minutes. Being after 8pm it was quite dark so there wasn't much to see. The traffic was moving quite slow and in some cases stopping. As it did small children probably around the age of 8 - 10 walked between the cars selling paper tubes full of peanuts. Eventually we pulled up to the Serena Hotel. Despite having a hotel driver we were still subject to heavy security scrutiny before being let in including mirrors under the car and a boot check. Thomas said this was a hangover from the troubles that had occurred earlier in the year.

Making the most of probably my last internet connection for a while, I spent an hour or so on the web, catching up with news. During the course of that hour we lost power in the hotel around four times. I was told later that this is normal for Kenya. I found much the same thing in Bangalore when I visited there.

This was a good day.