Paris…

So here I am sitting at Paris Airport for the second day waiting for my flight to Madrid…

I had to fly from Delhi to Madrid and there were no direct flights. So I booked the one via Paris. It was my first experience with a connecting flight as I always try to take direct flights and haven’t had even the experience of a domestic connecting flight (where the things obviously are less crazy than an international one). All was well till I landed in Paris to find that the connecting flight has been cancelled . There was another colleague of mine who has to come from China and board the same flight to Madrid. She reached well before me and had already done the research and asked the Air France guys to put us on some other flight. It was snowing like heck in Paris and so many flights were cancelled. Almost everything was messed up. Long queues at all the desks, people running around to get their flights changed etc. Finally that guy put us on another flight that was 2 hours later but it was departing from the other airport (Orly). And as we were boarding a different flight so we needed to collect the luggage manually and check in again. When the time is bad everything you touch goes wrong. We followed the process to claim the luggage manually and got the luggage ticket. We went to the corresponding Air France desk (after asking 3 or 4 guys) and the reply we got was ! “We have got too much of luggage collected over here, we aren’t handing over any luggage. So you need to tell us the address where the luggage has to be sent.” . In the mean time a lot of time was wasted and there were not much chances of catching the flight in which they put us. So both the luggage and the flight got missed !

While running around, one guy had told us that there was an evening flight to Madrid and he could put us in that. So after missing this morning flight we went back to ask him to put us in the evening flight. oh boy ! all the flights leaving in the evening were full. damn !!!

So now back to another Air France desk. That kind lady took around 30 mins or so and said that I can put you in an Iberian flight that leaves in the evening from Orly. What could be better than that. We said yes. There was a plenty of time so we thought of grabbing something to eat and then leave for Orly (by bus). At this moment I swallowed some amount of chocolate also (People who know me can understand what that means).

So we started looking for the bus stop and found that due to snow all the buses have been cancelled ! Other options were to catch the train to half the way and then get a taxi or get a taxi from here itself. But people here said that taxi is really expensive. They charge some 90 Euros. Moreover due to weather it was really difficult to find a taxi and also it may take long time to reach.

So we chose the train option, went to the train station and with the help of someone got the tickets. Boarded the train with a map in the hand to match what all stations were on the way. One, two, three, four stations passed but we cant find the names of the map. Something is crappy again man ! Then a dude told that the stations on the map were yet to come on the way forward on this route. well finally the next station was there on the map. We DIDN’T board the wrong train !

We got off at the station where we were told to and started looking for taxi. It again was a struggle but anyway after some 30 mins we got a taxi and reached the Orly airport…to find that the Iberian flight in which they put us has also been cancelled ! We queued in the line at the Iberian desk for 1 hour or more to get the answer “we cant do anything”.

Some more research and we were back to Air France desk (some other desk dealing with all such crap that we faced). They told us that no more flights for Madrid were there so the only option was to fly the next day. She arranged accommodation and taxi for us and put us in one of the morning flights. I said when time is bad…there were two hotels with the same name and the taxi guy dropped us at the wrong hotel !!! Again walked in snow for 25-30 mins and finally found the actual hotel.

It was a nice hotel and stay there was good too.

In the morning we left for the airport to catch the flight to Madrid. Here we reached and that one was also CANCELLED !!!

Back to the Air France crap dealing department and after a lot of struggle they put us on another flight that leaves an hour or so later.

So here we are waiting for that flight. Lets hope for the best !

Oh yes and the baggage status says “received at the airport”. God knows it is Paris or Madrid airport ?

Lets  hope for the best .