Had to pay 6780 rupees for my extra luggage. Well, I would have had to pay about 2/3 of that for shipping the tabletop, so it's not so bad.
My flight was delayed, but I was with Joyce and Niels, who were on the same flights all the way to Minneapolis, so I wasn't worried. Amanda had joined us in the waiting area; her flight to Mumbai was supposed to be 50 minutes before ours, but she ended up leaving after us. Several feet away, Mahdad and Christina were playing chess; they’re on Lufthansa.
I grabbed a few power naps (as Niels called them) at the airport. As soon as I got buckled in on the plane, I was out. I didn't even notice that we had taken off. I woke up just long enough to take a snack which they served before turning off the cabin lights. And, besides a bathroom break (the sweet airline agent gave me a window seat at a two-seater row), that was it. I was asleep until about 6:30am Paris time. Then, I just watched an Indian drama with English subtitles.
The Paris terminal was actually a beautiful building. It had very high ceilings with a lattice of supporting arches, kinda like the roof of a sports arena dome. But this isn’t a real dome because it’s an elongated somewhat pointed ceiling that narrowed farther down. The shape kinda reminded me of a football – the American kind.
I had enough time to use the bathroom and buy a pastry at a café near our gate. The woman selling the pastries hardly said a word to me. When I said “Merci!” and smiled, I sensed something like a confused guilt. It’s as though she was obligated to be rude to me (well, I’ve heard of the rudeness of the French), but after I smiled, she had second thoughts about that obligation.
The flight from Paris to Amsterdam wasn’t that pleasant. Thankfully, it was a short one. The flight attendant was rude and would only speak in French, but she obviously understood what “orange juice” means. After all, the label on the can was in English.
But some of the passengers were actually nice. The man who sat next to me (I had a window seat) was already there and he smiled when I told him he didn’t have to get up yet until I put my bag up in the compartment. And after I did, he thought it was funny when I said, “Okay, I’m ready.” And another man two rows down offered to take down my bag for me.
Amsterdam is obsessive about security. There was a long line at the gate the first time I went through that airport too. This time, there were agents interviewing passengers and I don't remember that the first time. They were very nice though. The agent asked me a lot of questions: how many bags I had, who packed it and when, how I got from my hotel to the airport in India, what I had in my bags. But the longest question was what electronic equipment I had with me. Ha-ha! Little did he know I had long list of them. But he let me go through my list until I couldn't remember anymore and I finally just said, "... and other small things." He seemed amused. As he started putting my tickets back in the holder, I remembered, "And my cameras, of course." "Of course!" he agreed, as though every traveller naturally brings more than one camera along.
As soon as we landed on Amsterdam, Niels went ahead of us because he was meeting his wife and eight-month-old son who were staying in Amsterdam while he was in India. When we boarded, we saw Chris who was waving at us from one of the aisle seats. Then when I found my row, I noticed someone talking to his wife in the row ahead of me and I said, “Hey, Niels!” The guy looked up and it wasn’t Niels. I apologized. I explained that Niels was traveling with us and we lost him. I don’t think the guy believed me, because he said it would have been someone with a shaved head. Later, I saw Niels in the opposite side of the plane, carrying his baby. Later, Joyce commented that she also saw that same Niels look-alike.
I was in the window seat of a two-seater row, and I chatted up the man next to me almost as soon as I sat down. His name is Oliver and he works for 3M in Dusseldorf, Germany. I thought it was a strange coincidence that on my Minneapolis-to-Amsterdam flight, I briefly chatted with a man going to Dusseldorf, and now on my Amsterdam-to-Minneapolis flight, I meet a man coming from Dusseldorf. Oliver from Dusseldorf 3M works in the marketing department and he said that the last time he went to the US was a couple of years ago, but he traveled around Europe for business about once a month. We kept chatting on and off during the eight-hour-forty-minute flight. The rest of the time, I was blogging or sleeping, and he was reading some thriller fiction.
I think we took a northern route because I saw a lot of snow halfway through the flight. Oliver thought we were over Greenland when we saw land with snow.
When we landed, I wished him a nice stay and he wished me luck on my MBA. I didn’t see him again, so he must have breezed through immigration and customs. And I met Niels and his family at baggage claim but I didn’t see Joyce or Chris again.
Temperatures in Minneapolis were in the 30s, and I thought I’d be cold when I got here, since Bangalore had temps in the 80s. So I wore a CoolMax shirt leaving Bangalore and changed into a medium-weight sweater in Paris. I also had my jackets and gloves in my suitcase pocket for easy access, but I really didn’t need them; I was just fine in my sweater. Then again, I was outside only briefly.
I was home by 6pm Central Time. Ahh. Home, sweet home.
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