The waiting game

Sound track of the day:
All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go
I'm standin' here outside your door
I hate to wake you up to say goodbye

Current Temperature: Just perfectly in my range, high seventies

Culture clash: I still attest, as an outsider, that the Portuguese and Spanish languages are very similar languages with similar structures only varying in some pronunciations and minor vocabulary discrepancies.





The light in Portugal is golden and generous. The sky is pure sky blue providing a gentle but solid backdrop for actual white fluffy clouds overlooking a field of homes decorated in bright paints, vivid tiles and colorful clothes hanging on lines outside windows. Even when you don’t have a view of the sea you know it’s there.

But before I got to see any of this I had to wait.

In the morning, we had to get up earlier than I am accustomed to, even as the 9-5er I was just a couple of months ago. Our bags were packed and we simply had to get to the airport aware that our flight could be delayed or, worse, cancelled.

When we arrived in Orly, we entered a small and primitive-seeming airport terminal with low ceilings, lots of gray, and scattered airline counters with little information posted as to which airlines they serve. The first thing we spotted upon entering the regional airport was a long line. From our vantage point the line looked like it extended a good 150 people, or 300 feet, or 100 meters. Fortunately for us, another thing we saw upon entering the airport was the information counter. Now that’s where you put an information counter.

We were relieved to discover, after speaking to the kind bestower of information, that the long line was not ours. However, she told us we did belong to another line – the shorter one to the left overshadowed by those on the right going to Barcelona. Thankful for that little break, we patiently stood in the shorter line populated by several agitated people. After a few minutes we noticed that some people in front of us were leaving the line. At first I assumed they had simply lost their patience, had gone to complain and, as a result, had provided us with a better place in the queue. More for me, I say. But as more and more people left the line we realized something was up. While I held the fort, Melanie set off to find out the scoop, putting her Portuguese speaking skills to serious good use.

It turned out that our line was for people booked on previously cancelled flights, who were stranded due to continued ash expulsion from Iceland and looking for another way out of Paris, and any way back to Portugal. No wonder they seemed so impatient. And who could blame them? Being stranded in Paris with no place to stay, no compensation for lodging, with Portugal as my final destination? Not a chance.

We, however, did not belong in this line. We were members of an exclusive group of people who were scheduled to board planes that day. So we politely moved aside to a bank of empty ticket counters allowing those poor stranded souls some sense of priority in this ongoing saga of delayed flights, bus transports and unpaid hotel rooms. With three hours until our next flight we didn’t feel rushed.

In the meantime, Melanie had managed to engage in conversation with a group of travelers, all Portuguese, who were either on our flight or had been stranded. One woman had been stranded since the day after the eruption, bussed from some city out east to Paris to catch her connecting flight, all on her own dime, and had been in the outskirts of Paris for 5 days waiting for a flight out. I sympathized with her but thought, “couldn’t you have rented a car for less than the cost of the hotels and time waiting?”

The first group, a flock of Brazil and Angola seekers from previous flights, was finally escorted to a bus that was waiting for them outside. Then a group of Lisbonites, including the poor woman mentioned above, were given their pass to leave. Those people would be flying to Porto and given a bus transport from there. Finally they began calling the flights for that day.

The flight to Lisbon scheduled to leave an hour before us was called first. A couple of American girls scheduled to board that plane were originally told they could not board because Lisbon was not their final destination (in other words, they were not Portuguese). Fuck that. Internally, I willed them not to back down. They deserved to get on that flight just as much as anyone. And they did.

That flight took a while to check in. And so, by the time our flight to Porto was called and our fellow passengers pushed toward the ticket counters like hungry penguins for a fish, we were 40 minutes from our departure time. The LED board still listed it as on time, but we knew that was just a mistake. There would be no way for all passengers to be checked in, passed through security and on to their gate in 40 minutes. Not in this mayhem. And so we waited.

We finally checked in and were at the security gate about 30 minutes past our departure time. Needless to say, security was empty, given that there were hardly any flights taking off. We could hardly believe it ourselves, having already resigned to being cancelled and returning to Versailles. We were actually going to take off.

Not so fast though. Before taking off there would be a lot of waiting. Waiting for the flight before us to take off, and that didn’t happen until around noon, two hours after their original scheduled departure. Waiting while two flights scheduled to depart after us had taken off. Waiting and waiting.

But we finally took off. Six hours late, but it was worth it. More to come on that.

One more thing:
There was one person who, despite the stress and chaos permeating the terminal corridors that day, kept his cool, remained kind, and as I observed his demeanor taught me to remain calm as well. He was the one Portuguese counter employee of TAP airlines working at the Orly airport. He, knowing that passengers had already endured so much uncertainty and grief, listened to all of their issues and complains…in full. Even when he didn’t have a solution for them, and even when he was busy, he stopped to listen to each one of them and then tell them all he knew and assure them he would try to find out more. And he did.

Thank you Mister Nice Guy. We do appreciate you.