French Diary: May 10,2009

May 10, 2009                                                                                                                      11:35 p.m

Huh! What a day! First the boarding pass problem and then I missed my connection flight from Paris to Nice( which was obvious since, there were only 40 mins in between the two flights), then the wireless problem..

Right now, I am in my room (single) with a great mountain view and with an Internet access (this is an important point as only few rooms in Basion( the building in which I am staying) have the internet available with them. The thing is all the rooms that are close to Agora building( which has the router in it)  are able to catch the wi fi).

I have already told you about the boarding pass thing..

Connection flight & Laptop Wi-Fi: I was to reach Paris at 6:15 and had to check in at 6:45 for a flight from there to Nice. There were so many immigration checks that I was bound to lose my next flight, which I did. Julian , one of the PhD student in our group, had already told me about these problems( He was the person who was supposed to pick me up from the Nice Airport) and had asked me to inform him if such a situation arises.

After you lose your connection your connection flight, you have to go to a specific counter (F25A) so that they can arrange another flight for you( Btw, the Paris CDG Airport is big !! infact it is huge). The next flight to Nice was at 10:25 and I had to check in at 9:45 so that meant I had nearly 3 hours to pass my time and I was also to inform Julian about the change of flight. The officials were nice, they gave me breakfast coupons (which is like customary if you miss a connection flight). The Airport was Wi-Fi but you had to buy a Login Id and Password to access it. I thought that there must be Café nearby where I could access the internet for like 10 mins and inform Julian about it, but to my dismay, there was no such café at the airport. So I had to buy the coupon( 6 euro for 30 mins!!! That’s like Rs420 for 30 mins internet, In Sangrur you can do it for 15 rupees…) but that was not the end of problems. Due to my reinstalling both the VISTA and UBUNTU, I didn’t have the drivers of Wireless and wi fi was not working on my laptop. (The things couldn’t have been more bad, I never expected this could happen)I started looking around so that I can find a person having Laptop( now the only and perhaps the biggest problem in France is that people do not speak English here, Even if they know the language, they are reluctant to speak it). I asked a guy who was working on a laptop but he plainly refused it   saying that he fears there are lots of Viruses in the network!! I asked another guy ( who seemed to be quite decent) and he agreed to lend his laptop to me for some time. The problems do not end here…He had a French keyboard and due to lots of special characters in my gmail password, I had a really hard time figuring out the keys( there are even 4 characters on one key). I was somehow able to do all this, had my free breakfast, didn’t miss the new flight and was able to reach Nice by 12:15 where Julian was waiting ..( Btw, you can take the trolley  at the Nice Airport only if you pay 1 Euro !!)

Julian left me at CIV with Ronan( a guy from Brazil who is also doing an intern in the same group).( Julian told me a number of things about Nice, Antibes, our group during the car journey from Nice to CIV) and through Ronan’s laptop, I was able to get my wi fi working ..

CIV: co -ed.. co-ed.. co-ed.. After staying 4 years in boys hostel ( 2 for JEE preparation and two in IIT), I finally got a chance to live in a co-ed hostel. There is no distinction and even the bathrooms are common( In IIT, the girls hostel is 1.3 Kms away from my hostel and now there is a girl’s room at less than 10 feet from my room J ) CIV seems to be a great place to live in, the rooms are clean, furnished and weather is awesome. I have not yet talked to my “niegbour” but would do that in next few days. Met Nisarag and other IITB guys ..

It is 1724 words till now !!( last 26 hours) and I cannot blog anymore. Plus I have to wake up early, do not want to be late on Day 1(and no idea  whether I would be able to continue blogging like this..)

Bon nuit!!