We made it within 15 minutes. Pop had talked to the bus clerk and she told us to be at station 1 for Bus 5 and that would take us to the airport. I wasn’t sure what to expect. There was no where to put our luggage like there is with our big buses, so we grabbed seats quickly and held the luggage between us. It took about 30 minutes with stops in between to finally get to our location.
When we arrived we didn’t know where to go, though the airport is accomodating and has its signs posted in different languages. We self-checked in, but still had to go in line for the airport employee to look at our passports and check both our large suitcases and small carryon bags. We left the carry-ons with her to check, and only ended up taking my purse and T’s backpack.
Security was a little bit different than America’s. We walked through metal detectors and I got buzzed. I think it’s because I forgot to take off my belt. A woman patted my hands and my sides with those pieces of papers that identify certain chemicals and then let me know to grab my bag and met her colleague off the side. There, he asked if I could open my bag and I did, and as he scanned it and tapped it with another slice of paper, he asked me where I was going. I let out a nervous squeak, “Uh...Paris.” And he nodded and let me know the search was over and I could proceed.
Once we made it through Security, we found our gate and sat for a second. Luckily T noticed our plane was boarding. My ears just didn’t pick up the language indicating that, so luckily he was paying attention to the others boarding.
The attendant reviewed my ticket and asked for my passport, and then we were on the way. Once in the plane...
We sat for three hours. The pilot and staff told us multiple times there was something wrong, but they weren’t sure how much it would delay us. As it turns out, it wasn’t fixable after those three hours and they told us that we would have to disembark and go back to the airport. This was all very difficult to understand since they told us in Italian and then follow up in English, but they then everyone was talking when they updated us in English. It was a little frustrating to not know the language and just have to follow everyone else.
They started unbelting, so we unbelted. They started leaving the plan, so we left the plane. They boarded the shuttle, so we boarded the shuttle. We all headed back to the airport where an employee was updating us in all languages. Once we picked up our luggage, we would have to go back upstairs to Departures and try and get on another flight. There were no more non-stop flights, so we’ve got a layover in Frankfurt because we head to Paris.
This time going through security they did not pull me aside—wooohoo! I took off my belt and tucked everything but my iPad into my purse (which by the way, broke this morning) as we were walking to the bus station). It’s really intimidating to not know if whoever pulls you aside speaks any of your own language. After we made it through security, we took our dinner vouchers to a cafe, where no one spoke any English and somehow with handgestures and nods, they gave us our food. It’s really isolating and I think I take the feeling of safety for granted.
