Saturday morning, leaving Amsterdam. Buy something to eat/drink on the train, and get talking with an Australian lady from Melbourne while we are both sousing out English-language newspapers at the shop. Recommend to her the International Herald Tribune, as it's only 2-50 euros, half the price of most English-language newspapers in Europe. She and her husband have been through the U.S. and the U.K. and were astounded when I said that I loved travelling by train. I think they were looking upon train travel as the lowest point of their trip. I mentioned to them that I'd made a blue, because I'd left it late and bought the ticket at Amsterdam Station (105 euros), when I could have organised it over the net for 73 euros. They gave me the glad news that they'd bought theirs at Schiphol Airport (Amsterdam) for 68 euros.
The train stopped at Schiphol, The Hague, Rotterdam etc, and soon filled up completely. Unfortunately there was a youngish Dutch couple across the aisle, obviously part of the beautiful people set, and the guy so fond of the sound of his own voice that he didn't stop talking loudly the whole trip. I read the Herald Tribune from cover to cover. I have read so many American newspapers and magazines this trip that I'm beginning to feel like an expert on the current financial meltdown in the United States.
Suddenly the train stops, and when everybody piles out, I assume that we are at Gare Paris Nord , although I'm by no means certain. I follow the others, and am a bit disoriented for a while, as I'm thinking back to when I arrived in Paris by bus, at Gare De l'Est, but now of course I'm at Paris Nord, which is however also visited by the 350 bus. I inquire for the bus from three police persons who seem to be investigating an abandoned car, and get short shrift, but a nearby man points me in the right direction. Stop first at an Indian supermarket, and buy a few things for tonight, as I'm assuming that the cost of dinner at the hotel will be astronomical. I forget to take my big pack off and carry it in the shop, and manage to knock a large bottle of some brownish liquid onto the floor in passing by the checkout. This galvanises the shop staff into a rescue operation, but nobody seems to suspect me, and my eyes are darting about a bit like Mr Bean's as I slide out of the shop (when he's just left a trail of chaos in his wake). Get the bus okay, and tell the driver I want to go to Roissy-en-France, which is where the hotel is, but I'm assuming that the bus won't go real close to it. End up at the bus terminus, which is also a railway station at the airport, for trains from Paris. It was all a bit confusing, because at one point I could see the hotel (and several others) only two or three hundred metres away, but we continued on for several kilometres to the terminus. Wait ages for a shuttle bus, as each hotel has their own, and after a 20 minute journey, check-in at the hotel about 5.30 pm. Ascertain that the first shuttle bus goes at 5.05 am, and organise an automatic wake-up call from the telephone. After having a feed, I set my mobile's alarm as well, and lights out in a very comfy bed. Am out of bed before the alarm anyway, and soon go downstairs and pay and wait for the shuttle-bus, along with about 30 other people with the same idea. I need terminal 2D, and bit of a bad moment when after stopping at 2A, 2B and 2C, it goes to 2E, 2F etc but finally ends up at 2D. I'm the third person to check-in (before 6am) and note that check-in doesn't close till 7.10, which means a long wait for another bus to take us to the 'plane, which we have to scurry to in a torrential downpour.
From Paris to Helsinki I sit next to a large girl, possibly French, who is in the window seat and sleeps practically the whole way. Problem is she has lifted the arm rest, and once she is soundo her not-inconsiderable rear-end ends up half in my lap, but after such an early morning start, I also am inclined to snooze most of the way. A stopover of two and a half hours in Helsinki, where one side of the airport is one of those tall Nordic forests coming right to the edge of the farmost landing strip, so that you get the feeling that the airport has been carved straight out of the forest. Everything very expensive in the airport shops, with Indian travellers spending up big on duty-free goods. On the flight to Delhi I sit next to a quiet Indian lady and her husband. There is only one TV progamme, firstly that sitcom with Charlie Sheen, with no sound and Finnish subtitles, then a modern Indian movie with no sound and English subtitles. Arrive at Delhi on time, and a goodly number of Indian passengers indulge in a round of applause for the pilot for a quite smooth landing, which may possibly be unusual here. And so I pick up my things and prepare to enter the cauldron of Delhi......
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