Day 1 - First Part
“Ladies and Gentlemen:, we’re arriving the Charles-de-Gaulle airport. The local time is
2.40pm ..and the weather is predicted to be clear. Thank you for boarding on Aeroflot, and enjoy your stay in
Paris
the announcement from the Russian air-crew, with all the stressed “R”..woke me up from my nap. And from the small airplane window, I caught my glimpse onto something which I would remember forever…
My first view of
FRANCE !!!!!!!!!!!!
The green land looked welcoming…even before I could touch my foot onto the soil, or practically breath the French air.. the atmosphere simply looked welcoming.. and on that particular moment, I knew… it’s gonna be a great adventure… far from the disgusting memory of
Moscow
One great thing about being a commonwealth citizen, is that u don’t need any visa to get access to any EU-members country… and in my case,
France ..
It’s like being given a special treatment, they greet u with the popular “Bonjour monsieur.”, they looked once at your promising Malaysian passport, recognize the emblem, trusting u with your heart, welcoming you with the well—known French smile,.. and before u even knew it, the let u pass…
It’s only after my 3rd step did I realized about the drawback…. We wont have any stamp on our passport indicating we’ve been in
Paris …….. ooooooooooooooo……..that’s bad.. I mean, this might be my only chance coming to
Paris , at least I want something to mark the event… (even though it’s only a passport stamp)
But its ok..at least the smile of the officer in charge could be a good marker for this historic event..in comparison to the treatment one would get when they pass thru
Moscow passport control… this is heaven
After we got our luggage, we head directly to the Gare (Fr: Train Station)..I mean the train terminal inside the airport..but then, the airport is huge. So we head to the nearest map instead and try to find any sign that might look like train station. This is when the 2nd miracle happened.
“Bonjour, monsieur…parles vous anglais?” a voice caught our attention, asking whether we speak in English
“Oui..” – the least French I knew
“So..how may I be of any help?” a 20+ lady was standing next to us, and she offered us her assistance in case we might need any.. and of course at that time we really did. Well, my feelings at that time…I was shocked… ok, it’s no big deal.. but since I leave
Malaysia , I rarely got such offer from any Russian, so I was simply shocked by the high level of mannerism shown by the French towards its visitors.
When we reach the “Gare”, I was shocked by the number of people lining up to buy the billiets (tickets).. I went to line up.. but what happen 5 minutes later was more shocking to me.. The staffs worked so efficiently ,that in around 20 minutes, we already have the ticket to Marseille (where my friends live) , and plus, a discount card which might give us discount up to 50% the next time we book a train to any destination from France… OK, it might not sound very useful to me…but then, it’s a priceless souvenir from
Paris
Its
3pm ..and we still haven’t leave the airport.. It’s bad.. due to the plan, we should already on move right now to our hostel, then checked in, and then head to Gare du Nord (The North Station) where we would meet Atak’s sister, Izwah which will arrive all the way from UK via the express line train, Eurostar.
So, the next 30 minutes, we managed to get our train tickets to Ile-de-Paris… (lit: our Airport is located at zone 5..while our destination is zone 1..so, we need to take a train there).. along the journey inside the comfortable RER interzone train system, my attention was caught to both the beautiful scenery of
Paris outskirts, and the colorful Grafitti painted almost in every wall available.
After 40 minutes journey, we reached our destination, the RER station Barbes..somethin’ (atak, fix me up with this one!!)… We searched for our hostel “Friends Hostel”.. The online document told us that the hostel should be only around the corner..but we spend around 1 hour going up and down along the road to find it… Disappointed and tired, we decided to stop by one muslim shop and asked the shopkeeper.. That;s really our first joke in
France ..the hostel is practically in front of the station’s exit gate!! And we actually had passed it several times…I wonder why we didn’t recognized it at the first time
(it didn’t took me long to realize why I faced such difficulties.. influenced by how a hostel should look like in
Volgograd …my vision was blurred by this images, and I never imagined our hostel could really be this nice and cozy..at 20euro per night..it is really worth it!!!) Friends hostel – Recommended
the owner of this hostel is a muslim.. next to the hostel is a muslim restaurant..and it is located directly in front of the RER station.. owh.. couldn’t it be any more strategic??? Thanks Atak for spending so much time searching for this one!!!
We checked in, do our prayer…and before we even managed to catch a nap, it’s already
6.00 pm … only an hour more before Izwah’s train arrive in Gare du Nord.. and we didn’t plan to keep her waiting.. so, although tired, we desperately made our way to Gare du Nord
To be continued…
