Paris to Oslo

(Contd. Bangalore to Paris)

The journey was more or less okayish except that it was really difficult to sleep on such a long duration flight. I remember how uncomfortable everyone around was as and when I woke up late nights and observed, the girl next seat was struggling with the blanket to let it embrace her from tip to toe and so was I.

It was around 2pm IST, the flight arrived here at Paris airport. Believe me Paris looks ecstatic at least from the top view. Wonderful Landscape, structured residential areas, beautiful curvy roads, greenish background and several lakes around. May be any place looks the same from within the plane window but the neatness & calmness portrayed by the landscape is worth the view and since the day was cloudy it looked even sexier. For a moment there was a flash on my memory of the olden days when a sadhu baba (usually local fortune tellers) looking at my palm said, "Tere haath mein videsh jaana nahin likha" (there's no line on my palm that would ever lead me to a foreign land) and then i smiled & looked outside again.

I had to spend some 4 hours on the airport, initially I thought its a good amount of time, may be I can easily go around the city for sometime but an immediate second thought suggested me to explore the fashion & beauty within airport's premises itself, the sole reason was the thought of my wallet factor (with just 160 Euros in pocket and the Visa card still inactive), it was not a wise step to go for.

Somehow reached the Terminal where I had to check in. Looked around for about decent 2 hours before taking a nap. The hairs of the people actually caught my attention, by the way they are the people working at the airport, the security personnels and of course the passengers included. The stylish hair cuts for which we pay a hefty amount back in India am sure people here manage to get it without any cut itself. The messier your hair structure, better is your style and its not just the language restricted to the young kids but applies to the people of all ages. Quite a fair deal, isn't it? But with all the observations, all I concluded at the end is 'Paris indeed is a fashion city'.

It was the time to check in, at the entrance a big English-men pointed me to several plastic bottles lying on a table, they all were half filled with some sort of liquid, either water or soda or some sort of wine. I actually couldn't understand what exactly was he trying to say and I just uttered a loud 'NO', he then let me inside, I still din't understand what exactly was that but he let me inside, what else matters!

Anyways that big rucksack was through the security check now and their gadget finally alarmed them of something unethical i was trying to carry inside. I know it was little scary & my breath was down to see a team of personnels rushing towards me. The bag was opened, they spread every damn thing out on the floor and there came two bottles which I had packed with extra care in plastic bags and then rolled them with the big cloth pieces. All of them pointed me to unfold the packs, i just kept following and there came two glass jars containing the Mango pickles (An Indian in Norway had actually requested me to bring two of those Priya Pickle bottles). I tried my level best to make them understand that its something that we eat with food but all in vain.
Result: Either leave the bottles with them or put them through the check-in. I din't want to leave those bottles hence followed back to the check-in counter. Soon as I put the rucksack (6kg) for check-in, the person here also warned me about the 22Kg(s) that I've already loaded at Bangalore, so whatever I check-in now is gonna be paid and that too in Euros! Well with a quick thought i decided to check-in the small shoulder bag with just two of those bottles, which weighed about 2kg(s) which should cost some 70 Euros.

Wow! pickles cost just 130 INR. and the transportation charges were approx 4000 INR. And when I asked the guy about the cost, he said, "Thats okay, You now need not pay anything" That was strange but in my favor of course, so theres nothing wrong :). One thing is clear that such cases do happen outside India also or may be my heavenly stars tussled with his and hipnotized him, no to charge anything from me. May be who knows! If such things happen in India, we could have easily related the incident to some or the other emotion that the person must have gone through but what should I relate this English-men with huh?

Alright, while trying to check in again, that English-men again pointed me to those half-filled liquid bottles, this time I decided to decrypt the mystery behind these bottles and followed my intuition, I thought may be we can pick up some of the bottles to carry inside the plane, I was thirsty by now, so I said 'Water Bottle! Give me one water bottle!', to which he replied, "No, No, its not allowed". It was then it clicked to me that the liquid is actually not allowed inside the plane, therefore, he was actually asking the passengers to leave their liquid bottles out on that table itself but by the time i understood, i noticed a few kids already making fun, about what? ... that I wasn't really sure!

Finally everything was through and I could actually board to the flight #2374 to Oslo.