Living on the streets of Orléans
I never thought that my next blog post would have much to do with my journey to France. Everyone knows how to get on and off a plane, and we’ve all heard about the lost luggage and teary goodbyes. I’d packed my onesie and the bags weighed just under 20kg each, so the young, slightly more naïve version of myself jumped on the next plane to my new vie in France, my biggest worry being whether the guy I was about to sit next to would mind that I was about to subject him to my eating hot food in a confined space.
I’ll start at the end. Picture this: 0045 My grandad and I, stood in the centre of Orléans, France, with 60kg of luggage between us, on an empty street with less than reasonable lighting, in front of a closed hotel with a locked door. Neither of us had ever visited Orléans before, so it was lucky that the two guys who tried to give us directions to the place hadn’t smoked too much marijuana and could still understand l’anglaise.
Why did we arrive at the hotel at such an absurd time, you ask? Very good question, with an answer you’re about to enjoy, even if I didn’t enjoy anything at the time.
We were on the plane by 1350. The French man sitting next to me either didn’t mind me eating Burger King fries, or he hadn’t yet mastered the English language enough to tell me where to shove them. Either way, apart from a very British ‘oh, look at the world while we’re in the air –isn’t it lovely?!’, I didn’t have much reason to speak to him until we were halfway across the English Channel and the pilot ordered our seatbelts back on and insisted that we return to Angleterre immediately.
Peter the Pilot’s exact words were, “if this technical fault isn’t repaired immediately, we won’t make it to Paris”. Now, I’m no rocket scientist, but we were flying in an airplane that wasn’t fit to be in the air, and I actually sat there for a few minutes wishing I hadn’t completely ignored the air host safety routine.
Alors, of all the UK airports we could have landed at, Peter Pilot chose East Midlands Airport. Fair enough, we were definitely further than where we started off, but according to one rather amusing Disneyland Paris frequenter, donning Mickey Mouse ears and no smile to match, “not bloody far enough”.
To spice things up a bit (and, believe me, that place does need spicing up), Peter Pilot had chosen the only airport in the UK that was on lockdown over a security breach. No planes would fly out of the area until given the all clear, and this guy had chosen to fly into the place. As all terminals were closed to visitors, we were to stay on the broken plane until further notice. Further notice took sixty minutes.
It was during this time that I realised my flight/security breach companion was French, and quite clearly had no idea what was going on. So I took it upon myself to practice my francaise, and helped poor, confused Pierre out at the same time. We battled through broken French and bad jokes until he understood where we were (neither of us really knew why, but I may have mentioned a left phalange once or twice).
We were released from Jet 2-induced quarantine about sixty minutes after the landing, and nobody was in any mood to talk. The Mickey Mouse ears were off, and a few of the northerners were getting stroppy. To avoid confrontation, we were herded straight into the holding pen Jet 2 disguised as an airport bus (comment courtesy of a fellow passenger), and made to stand between our broken plane and its replacement. For another hour. Pierre was perplexed, and I didn’t have any answers.
By about 1630, we were allowed to leave the bus and became refugees in our own country. Neither plane was deemed fit for the skies, and we were asked to grin and bear it. For the next few hours, I sat on the floor next to the nearest available plug socket, charging my phone and tweeting about the event. I became the middle man between future flyers waiting in Paris for our plane to pick them up and Jet 2, the ones who had made all of this possible. Apparently, my 140-character tweet provided more insight than an entire team had ever managed.
Because of the security breach at the airport, we were joined by more than enough armed officers strutting about the place. Once we finally left the airport and walked to the third plane involved in this mess (flown in especially, from Bristol with love), I was told to put my mobile phone away because (another quote) “they were watching me”. Note: Would have taken another photo, but feared for life.
We reached Paris at 2120, which gave us just enough time to drag our 60kg of luggage from one terminal to another, buy tickets to a place I’d never been, jump on the metro, run to the SNCF train station, work out how to use a French ticket machine, buy a ticket for the last inter-city train of the night Paris-Orléans, find the train, and jump on to it before it left the station. Not an easy feat, I have to say.
Which brings me back to the beginning; we hauled our luggage off the final train at 0020, and guessed which way the hotel was (we had planned on getting a taxi there but, apparently, French taxi drivers don’t do nights). The final straw snapped when we reached the hotel and they’d given up on our arrival and gone to bed. Both phones were dead, and a guy who just happened to be taking a midnight stroll through the centre of Orléans was walking straight towards us.
Instead of mugging us and running off with my hand luggage (which I fully expected), Gary the gangster dialled a number and somehow convinced the hotel owner to get out of bed and let us in. Unbelievable. We could not have timed everything better if we’d tried (excluding the Jet 2 fiasco).
I’d like to thank:
-Jet 2 (that’s a lie)
-Pierre the passenger – waited to make sure we got on the right train to Paris.
-Terry the ticket guy – insisted that my French was bon, even though it clearly wasn’t.
-Fiona the French lady – insisted I run up the stairs with the luggage.
-Uma the unsuspecting French woman – helped us make any sense of the French train ticket machine, and made sure we found the last train in time. Brilliant work.
-Gary the gangster – keeping this generation (and someone from two generations ago) off the streets and away from drugs.
Without these French people, I would have spent my first night in France on the streets in the middle of Paris.
French people who think I’m one of them: 0
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