Panic stricken in Paris at Charles de Gaulle Airport

So let me tell you the story of the time I went against my very nerdy principles and decided to wing my cultural travel.

Can you imagine having had the most amazing vacation, bags full of gifts for your friends and family, having run through the streets of Paris at 5 am in the morning, to catch the plane back home… except…

From the moment we met, my fiancee and I had wanted to travel to Europe. He’d been there several time getting  his doctorate degree, so he wanted to show me around and I was dying to see the Old Continent.

At last after a couple of years of saving our money and planning, we’d decided to visit Spain, France and Italy, what a remarkable trip!

The trip

The time was mid September, shoulder season, less crowds and a fantastic weather.

We’d been to Barcelona and seen the amazing works of Gaudí, a dream I’d had since I was in college, we had marveled at the scale and magnificence of La Sagrada Familia cathedral and had had the Cripta of Colonia Güell all to ourselves, basking in the artistry of the architecture and interior décor.

We’d visited the extraordinary Plaza Mayor of Salamanca and had had the most wonderful thick Spanish chocolate at Valor nearby.

We’d visited Rome, oh, the Eternal City, who captivated me forever, with its narrow streets and chaotic traffic. So much beauty and art, even if it’s a bit dirty, a bit neglected. So much history!

We’d walked on the very stones that Julius Caesar himself had walked on in the Roman Forum and we’d imagined ourselves in the middle of the crowd watching a gladiator match at the glorious Colisseum.

Then we had gone to Paris and… what could I say about Paris that hasn’t been said already? Wonderful, elegant, fabulous Paris, had so much to teach us about history and pain and beauty!

We were so moved by the endless list of people who’d gotten beheaded by the guillotine during the French Revolution at La Conciergerie and by Marie Antoinette’s cell.

We had had an amazing dinner in front of Les Jardins du Luxembourg, you know, spending a few extra bucks trying to look like Parisians instead of tourists and sitting at an outside table at a café.

We’d walked the beautiful streets of Le Marais with the wonderful corky and stylish shops! And we’d also seen the scary gargoyles looking down at us from Notre Dame.

We’d visited many astonishing places, we’d learned so much about ourselves and European culture and the world, really… It was time to go home.

Heading for Charles de Gaulle airport

We’d bought our plane tickets almost six months in advance, everything was planned… or so we thought. When we first got to Paris, we’d paid the €8 RER train to get out of the airport and now that  we were leaving, we had to again pay the same charge.

So this was a Saturday, just in time to go back to our regular lives at the office on Monday. We had to leave the hotel at 5 am, to be able to catch the 9 am flight home.

We were very good, got up really early and left the hotel on time to go to the République Metro Station and head over to Charles de Gaulle airport, outside of Paris. From République we got off at Gare du Nord, the connecting station to get to CDG. The commute was about one hour total.

So once in Gare du Nord we start looking at the signs to see where we could take the B3 RER train to get to CDG, we follow the signs and for whatever reason, we get to the train. There are no turnstiles, no barriers, no police man checking the tickets, no nothing to stop people from getting on the train.

We looked around, certainly, there had to be some sort of booth or something where we could buy our €8 pass. Maybe we are just dumb,  maybe the 4 am morning call was a bit much, we just didn’t see it.

We thought “Certainly, if we get on the train, we can pay at the airport when we get off, right?”. “Right!” I said, and we got on the train.

The totally unexpected

So we get off the train in Terminal 2 of CDG. The terminal has two floors, so you need to get off the train and then go up the escalators to enter the airport. We looked around, no machines, no booth, nothing.

The station begins to empty out. So, ok, we figured we’d go up the escalators, definitely, there must be a machine upstairs… Nothing!

By now we’re starting to get a bit anxious… The next step was to go through a set of sluice doors that had two sliding doors, once you passed one you had to go to the next one. And everybody had a ticket that they used to get through the first door, and then through the second one.

We looked around, people would pass us by, nobody paying any attention to us.

“So ok, let’s go down again and find a security guard, they can help us” says my fiancée. The security guard doesn’t speak a word of English or Spanish. And we don’t speak a word of French.

Frustrated, both the security guard and us give up, and we go up the escalators again.

It’s 6:45 am by now. We’re really getting scared now. What do we do? If we get back on a train, it’ll be at least half an hour before we reach the next station and even then, how do we know we can buy the tickets there?

Ok, what if we wait for another security guard near the sliding doors? Maybe one will come by and maybe he’ll speak English and he can help us!

Fifteen minutes, nothing.
Thirty minutes, nothing.

Our scared faces don’t seem to be attracting any attention. Do we jump over the doors and then ask for forgiveness and where, oh, please, can we buy the freaking tickets?

Or will they put us in jail for getting to the airport without paying the €8 ticket? Had all our traveling dreams come to this? Had all our planning failed at the last minute???

Ok, let’s go down the escalator again, maybe there’s another security guard downstairs and they can help us!

We walk from end to end of the first floor of the airport station, nobody.

At last, this very short, very old white-haired security guard shows up. He’s wearing a uniform three sizes too big for him and an oversized police-looking hat. Yes! Another person! We are saved!

“Parlez vous Anglais?”
“Non, non, je ne parlez pas anglais”, he said.
“Parlez vous español?” I ask hopefully, please oh God, let him speak Spanish!
“Non, non”, he said.

Depleted, we hang our heads.

But the guy signals us to go upstairs, clearly, we’re stuck and we need to get to the airport, right?. So we go up the escalator again with him, and we try to signal, to tell him in English, to tell him in Spanish, that we can’t go past the sliding doors.

We show him other train tickets we had before and what we understood from his sign language was that (maybe?) one of these tickets was ok to be used in these doors!

Of course! How stupid are we! Let’s try our other unused tickets!

“Mercy, Monsieur!” and we wave goodbye at him. Down the escalator he goes.

We looked at each other, breathed deeply and introduced the first white ticket, one door slides open. YES! We did it!

“Get in, quickly!”. Once inside, we use the ticket again to open the next door… Holding our breath…

No. The second door won’t open. It just won’t.

We make several attempts, we try in and out of the first door, but the second one just won’t budge. Jumping over the doors, carry-on bags, backpacks and everything is looking like a pretty appealing idea…

Depleted again, we get out of the sliding doors, we’re back to square one.

7:45 am. “No, let’s go back down again and find the old man”. Down the escalators we go again. The first security guard nowhere to be found. At last, the short old man appears from behind the escalators.

“Please, please, help us, we don’t know what to do! Our plane will leave without us!”.

He signals us to go back up the escalators again and I’m thinking: “Ok, here we go again, this guy thinks we’re idiots and he’s going to say the same gibberish, and we’re going to be stuck again”.

By now I felt just defeated.

So we reach the sliding doors again, and we start signaling him, panic stricken, about the white tickets and how the second door just won’t open and how the plane is going to leave, we still have to check in, and we need to catch that plane, we have no more money to stay any more days, we’d sent it all to ourselves to save on currency exchange rates, we had no hotel reservation, please, please, help us!

RAOK

So the guy reaches for his back pocket and he pulls up his wallet. He opens it and extracts a pink ticket. A small pink ticket.

He looks at us and signals us to go through the first sliding door. We do. We look back at him and he introduces the pink ticket in the small slit at the side of the door.

The second door opens.

And I imagine a choir of angels singing a harmonic tune to celebrate our passing through the damn doors!

“Yes! We did it!”

We look back to the guy and we signal him to ask him how do we pay him? How do we buy another ticket for him?

He waves his hand up and down signaling us to go ahead. Desperately we show him some Euro notes, trying to get him to understand that we intend to pay for our tickets. He keeps signaling us to just go ahead.

With no more time to waste, one last look at the old man and one last “Mercy, au revoir”, we do.

You know how people speak of “random acts of kindness (RAOK)” all the time, from strangers, when the situation seems desperate? This was one for us.

And writing this post I realize, what dummies! We could’ve just asked some of the passengers, we could’ve screamed for help, something… we just didn’t. We even had our credit cards still with us, so emergency money was not an issue. We were having a panic attack and not thinking straight.

To this day we have no idea where to buy the tickets to get to Charles de Gaulle Airport! Do you?
Let me know in the comments!
Have you experienced any random act of kindness during a trip yourself?
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Practicalities

• To get to Roissy Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, arrive at Gare du Nord Station and from there take the RER B3 (RoissyRail) Train that costs about €8 and buy the ticket before you board the train!
• Visit the RATP website to find all the information about transportation in Paris.
• Take a look at this map of the B route to Charles de Gaulle.
• And take a look at this map of all train routes out of Paris.
• To find more information about trains in Paris, go to ParisByTrain.com

 

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Tags: Paris, planning, Stories, tips