A Hillbilly's Guide to Europe
My first time on the "continent." I was still majorly naive, breathless, and incorrigibly romantic...some things never change, or so I hope.Philippine Star Article, 9/22/00
PARIS --- The only recurring dream I've been having that's worse than the nightmare of being late for my finals -- thereby failing to graduate from law school --- is the one where I'm at the airport terminal, all excited and ready to board my flight to some foreign land. What's so horrifying about it is that I always wake up before the plane ever lands. Which is probably why I've always hated airport departure terminals: partly because of the weepy goodbyes that take place there but for the most part because the people you send off are going someplace you've never been while you get left behind.
Sure, I've been on and off planes and in and out of the international and domestic airport terminals since the mid-80s --- but I'm not ashamed to say that I've never been on a flight that took more than a few hours or involved crossing several time zones. My passport has, until recently, been peppered with immigration stamps from various Asean countries, but it's never borne anything even remotely resembling a visa.
Which brings me back to that nightmare I was telling you about. The Fates had smiled upon me, and I got the best 30th birthday gift ever: an opportunity to fly off to the Old World. The only catch was that I had to go through the red tape of securing all my visas and whatnot barely a week before I was supposed to leave. Everything was in order - my round trip ticket, my hotel reservations, my Eurail pass, my access to international roaming - everything except the all-important stamps of approval: the visas!
I won't bore you with tales of the hell and high water I had to endure to get my visas. All things considered, and after consulting with some well-traveled friends, my experience was relatively painless. But the phrase "parang sumuot ka sa butas ng karayom" now bears a new and familiar meaning.
Suffice it to say that the day before my scheduled flight, through a stunning photo-finish, I had all the required visas in hand. But not before enduring the stress that can only be likened to what a lawyer with an unfinished pleading goes through on the last day of the reglementary period. It looked like my nightmare was finally becoming a terrifying reality; but God is good and I was soon on my way.
Welcome to the First World
Through yet another stroke of luck, I got bumped up from my business class seat all the way to first class. Yeee-haaa! Wide, comfortable seats; gourmet cuisine; drinks being passed every five minutes; a coterie of hospitable Lufthansa flight attendants at my beck and call. My seatmate, a well-heeled Pakistani man, promptly took off his shoes and socks (revealing a pair of feet liberally coated with athlete's foot powder) and slipped off to dreamland. I probably went through the entire inflight entertainment program before following suit.
First stop, the international airport at Frankfurt where I was to take my connecting flight. Business class has it perks: you get to while away the hours and fill up on every imaginable drink known to mankind in a huge lounge with those wide-video wall screens, racks of newspapers and reading material, a business center, and even its own shower rooms. I knew I was no longer in Kansas, so to speak, (in my case, I was no longer in Barangay Culiat) when I first encountered one of those self-cleaning toilet seats. The flushing mechanism activates a gadget that rotates the toilet seat, disinfecting it along the way. The height of hi-tech! As I was by my lonesome in the bathroom stall, I allowed myself to be suitably awed, flushing the toilet a good couple of dozen times just to watch that thing-y go! (Which probably explains the strange look on the bathroom attendant's face after I finally emerged, giggling to myself).
Frankfurt has such a gargantuan airport that you have to take a Skyline, one of those rail cars that resemble an MRT train, from one terminal to another. Having been suitably forewarned that one can easily get lost in the vastness of this German terminal, I merely followed all the signs, and voila! I got to my departure gate without incident.
Feeling like a fish out of water (The Little Mermaid's Part of Your World kept running through my head), I settled down to do some serious people watching before my flight was called. Airport terminals are the best place to engage in this favorite past-time of mine, and this particular international hub of activity offered some of the most unusual sights and sounds. Across me was a group of gorgeous German guys who made the BackStreet Boys or N'Sync look like a bunch of homely school kids; seated nearby were a few waitlisted Pinoy seamen who chatted away in a language that was music to my ears. Exotic Ethiopian women and their beautiful children; whirling dervishes (well, they weren't exactly whirling at that particular moment) on their way to Istanbul; overweight American tourists slumming in their shorts and sneakers --- all promenaded across the floor, going their own way, providing several minutes of visual pleasure to the lone Pinay tourist who discreetly watched their every move.
Swiss Miss
After my plane landed in Geneva, Switzerland, a new kind of panic began to take its grip on me. The dreaded immigration counter, the subject of some of the darkest, bloodcurdling true-to-life tales told by Pinoy travelers, was yet to be hurdled lest my nightmare reach fruition. Much to my amazement, I passed through with nary a hitch --- no ominous buttons being pushed, no alerts sounded, no third-degree questioning --- just an entry stamp. The closest I got to the requisite interrogation was a polite "Bonjour, Madame! Habitez-vous a Geneve??" from a friendly customs official, who smilingly sent me on my way after satisfying himself with a cursory glance at my passport. Good thing that I had equipped myself with three Saturdays' worth of intensive French lessons with Madame Gigi; otherwise I would never have figured out that he was asking where I lived.
My hotel was disappointingly a stone-throw's away from the airport, with no view whatsoever except for a few buildings, the main highway to Lyon, France and the Swiss Alps, bereft of snow, in the distance. I ventured out to see the sights, but was intimidated by the unfamiliar tram ticket system. After swallowing my pride and watching a local operate the ticket vending machine (summoning up the guts as well to ask him to break up one Swiss franc to smaller change), I boarded the bus to town (in my frazzled state, I was just about ready to walk the distance, a mere 5 kilometers or so).
It doesn't matter how cosmopolitan you think you are; it doesn't matter that you've grown up in the city your entire life; it doesn't matter that you've been exposed to all kinds of technologically advanced gadgetry from DVDs to PSX 2 to Pentium 300s. The bottom line is that you're still a probinsyana from the boonies when confronted with the complexities of public transport in the First World. I refused to get off the bus until my seatmate had left, with the intention of figuring out when and to whom to turn my ticket in (no such thing as bus conductors in these here parts). When I finally glimpsed the computerized terminal in front of the driver (apparently, when you buy a ticket at each stop, the information is sent to the driver and he knows how many people will be getting on at any particular station), I felt like a Third World savage. Geez.
Sunday afternoons in Metro Manila's commercial districts are characterized by a mass of humanity, choking up the streets and packing themselves into malls, parks, and markets. You can imagine the culture shock of arriving in a city on a Sunday afternoon where almost all the shops, even McDonald's, are closed, with only a handful of people milling around the wide streets of the commercial district. Think Baguio City's Session Road without the traffic and the people. Eerie. I retreated back to the hotel, spooked out of my wits. The only comfort (?!) I got was a text message from *ex-writing partner*, reminding me of his waistline and shoe size. I made a mental note to pick up a pair of cheap briefs and socks for him as pasalubong.
The next couple of days were strictly business, and I was suddenly thankful for the stash of canned goods and local pastries my Mom made me carry halfway around the world --- I was still in a major state of shock to even consider venturing out to find a decent restaurant. I spent most of my spare time watching the only English channel available, CNN, where news of the six foreign Abu Sayyaf hostages' release was broadcast every five minutes. I felt like a hostage myself, albeit self-sufficient, locking myself in my room with canned sausages and just-add-water noodles (transformed into an edible meal by the water heater conveniently provided in the room) for sustenance. Pathetic, oui, but Paris was only a day away!
How do you say "idiot" in French?
For the first few days after touching down on Continental Europe, my body clock was totally out of whack. Manila is six hours ahead on the time zone, so my internal ticker had me up at 2:00 a.m. (8:00 a.m. Philippine time) and sound asleep at 4:00 p.m. (10:00 p.m. back home, a bit too early to hit the sack, but CNN was beginning to bore me to tears).
Perhaps out of excitement at the prospect of officially beginning my European vacation, I was up and out of the hotel at 6:00 a.m. for my 11:00 a.m. to the Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport in France. This time I was flying coach - no cheese and wine or Lindt chocolates to tide me over during the hour-long flight, just the typical fare you get on your average domestic flight to or from Manila: mass-produced chocolate cake and orange juice (at least they didn't serve mamon and Zesto).
CDG is 45 minutes away from Paris, and my trusty guidebook advised me to take one of those free shuttles to the RER and find my way through the metro system from there. Of course, and for the first of numerous times to soon come, I nonchalantly dismissed the suggestion and instead hopped on one of those Roissy buses to the Opera district, where my hotel was purportedly located.
An hour and 48 francs later, the bus dropped off its load of passengers right by the fantastic L'Opera. Left to my own devices, lugging a small suitcase trolley and a backpack getting heavier every minute (those canned goods were beginning to take their toll), I walked all over the streets of the 9th Arrondisement for approximately two hours, in a vain effort to locate my hotel. My friends Alex and King, wise Parisian sages, had advised me to "get lost in Paris!," but this was ridiculous. My Dad likewise taught me a nifty trick: look like you know exactly where you're going so as not to assume the demeanor of a country bumpkin. An attempt to take the metro was frustrated by my adamant refusal to ask any questions (thereby betraying the fact that I was indeed an ignorant hillbilly) and receive all-important information about how the subway worked. I was tempted to call my French friend David in Manila for some assistance (yes, Virginia, global roaming works like a dream --- even better than domestic), but I was grim and determined. So I walked and walked and dragged my stuff all over town, until finally I found my hotel tucked into one of the side streets off the Place de Clichy, just a few minutes' walk from the Moulin Rouge.
To reward myself for a job well done (yeah, right), I treated myself to a late lunch at an Oriental restaurant beside the hotel, where 29 French francs (roughly P210) got me a big plat a emporter of spring rolls, sweet and sour pork, and a huge serving of Cantonese fried rice (with a Coca-Cola light to boot). Rice deprivation can do a lot of damage to Asians, so I had my fill of the staff of life. Bon apetit!
C'est Magnifique!
Sufficiently invigorated, I headed out to conquer the intricacies of the Parisian metro system. I had enough change to buy a ticket from the vending machine, which thankfully had an English language option. I was later to find out that should you be in desperate lack of loose change, you can buy tickets from the booths outside the station's entrance (although they reportedly close before 10 p.m.). I have never been on our MRT, but I've mastered to some extent Hong Kong's MTR system, so using that precious Metro ticket was a breeze. However, the number of lines interweaving the Parisian underground system escapes immediate comprehension, since you have to get on and off various stations to catch another connection that will take you to your destination. I began playing the game of connect-the-dots until I figured out how to get to the Musee de Louvre and Palais Royal.
Emerging from the recesses of the underground, the first thing I saw was a enormous, magnificent building spanning what seemed to be several city blocks. I am not one to be easily impressed; but seeing the Musee de Louvre in all its glory made me feel like falling to my knees in sheer awe of it all. I could've died right there and then --- and I hadn't even gone inside yet! I picked up my jaw from the ground, and paused to wonder at the Conseil d'Etat, in front of which several inline skaters were doing their tricks. Buoyed by the splendor surrounding me, I took a few moments to visit the beautiful church of St-Germain L'Auxerrois right across the street from the museum. Since it was getting late, I put off viewing the contents of the Louvre for another day, and instead strolled along the Seine, where several lone tourists had plopped down with a book and/or a camera. Taking a cue from them, I sat on a bench and pulled out my own precious accessory --- my cell phone, from which I texted family and friends about how Paris had taken my breath away.
I had sincerely intended to walk all the way to the Eiffel Tower, which I could see in the distance from across the Seine (although from where I was sitting, it looked like a bigger version of one of those unsightly TV network antenna-towers), but although the spirit was willing, the wounded flesh on the bottom of my feet was weak. Every step I took towards the Place de Concorde was agony, so I finally decided to call it day and give my toes a much-needed rest. But not before taking a few pictures of the Place de Concorde, its obelisk, and its fountains (I also mustered up the courage to ask some kindhearted tourists to "take my picture, and I'll take yours!?").
While I thought I had the metro system down pat, I spent a good hour and 45 minutes underground before finally getting back to my hotel. The trains are so efficient and spotless that it wasn't too much of a drag trying to get to where I was going, despite the fact that I was hopelessly lost the entire time. Instead of being bummed out by my ignorance and stupidity, I took the opportunity to master the connections, eavesdrop on conversations, and boy-watch! IMHO, Paris has more handsome men per square meter than anywhere else I've been; and, in my experience, are perfect gentlemen (no matter how old or young they are, they'll willingly surrender their seats on the metro or bus for you, and help you with your heavy luggage). But I'm getting ahead of myself. My friend Jinggay, who was recently on the continent, has always maintained that she likes Italian men most of all --- but I still had to see for myself. Rome was the next stop on my itinerary, and, if it held as much promise as Paris, I couldn't wait to get there.
posted by Honey Oliveros @ 11:38 PM
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