Charles De Gaulle Airport: Where Common Sense Goes to Die

Im finally back home in Michigan after what I could only describe as the worst flying experience I have ever had. Just.....sickening how bad it was.

We had a Thursday morning flight to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris scheduled to take off at 9:55, which we would then have a two hour layover before flying directly to Detroit from Paris at 1:55. To start off this disaster of abad trip, we find out at midnight the night before that the flight from Berlin to Paris was cancelled. Barely any notice other than an email simply stating "your itinerary's changed; call us". After some finanguling, we managed to get ourselves onto a 6:55 flight to Paris. Of course, for international flights like that, if your flight is leaving in at 6:55, that means its probably a good idea to get there 2 hours before hand. Great. We have to be there at 5am, which means I'm waking up at 4am.

12am-4am: No sleep for Josh.

We took a Taxi over to Flughafen Tegel at 5 and managed to get on the first flight with no problems.

When we arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport, our flight was still scheduled to leave on time. We relaxed a bit, grabbed a coffee and waited. For such a new and modern airport like Charles de Gaulle, it was incredibly cold inside. You could even feel the wind breezing through the terminals. I literally froze my ass off waiting for our flight to come.

We managed to board the flight at 2. Little did I know that I would be sitting on that plane for 4 hours before we took off.

Why 4 hours? Because the officials at the Air France decided it was important to wait the first two hours for the passengers who were supposed to make our flight but hadn't gotten into the airport yet. You know, all TWENTY FIVE of them. Naturally, none of these people actually showed up. I always thought that it was your job to get to your flight on time, and if it wasn't, then you were SOL. So because we had to wait for all of these people, not only would we be late, but people who had made the flight on time would now miss their connecting flights in Detroit. Great job boys.

So finally, they close the doors and pull out of the gate. Great, where taking off right? Not so fast. The plane has to de-ice. So we ANOTHER two hours just to de-ice the plane. We finally took off at 6pm, a mere 4 hours after we were supposed to.

The delays, of course, were blamed on the "snowstorm" that had rolled into Paris.

I have lived in Michigan most of my life, and my definition of a snowstorm is something dropping nearly 15-21 inches of snow. This French "Snowstorm" dropped what amounted to a quarter of an inch of snow. So a quarter of an inch of snow cancelled flights, delayed others, and made my life a living hell for one day.

I'm glad I'm finally home. I've got no sleep between 10am Wednesday (Berlin time) got to bed on Thursday night at 11pm Michigan time (5am Berlin time), which is probably why I feel like this blog post isn't flowing at all. Maybe when I've slept enough I can write something witty and coherent. But for now, I'll just be glad to be home.

Hello, US of A. Good to see you again.