Sunday, June 15, 2003

The Trip Friday morning, we got up at 5:00 AM to get ready to leave Tunisia. We got cleaned up, finished throwing a few last items in bags, and woke the girls up at 5:40. We got to the airport a little after 6, and by 6:30 we were done with check in. Killed an hour in the Tunisian airport before boarding the plane around 7:30 for an 8:00 departure. It was a little sad to leave Tunisia, though I wouldn't want to spend much more time there. It was an enjoyable ten months there, and a lot happened. It felt strange to walk out and know we probably won't go back. The first flight from Tunis to Paris was only a couple of hours; the girls were a bit demanding, but largely because they hadn't gotten enough sleep. Still, it was enough to make us fear the next flight from Paris to DC, which was over seven hours long. Listen to me: The Charles De Gaulle airport is the worst major airport on earth. And it's not at all close. Not even remotely close. We arrive on time, with 90 minutes until our connecting flight. We walk down the steps onto the tarmac, where we board a shuttle bus. The shuttle bus takes us to a small room. The purpose of this room is to tell passengers which shuttle bus they need to ride to get to their terminal. So that's a bus to get to a place to find out what bus. We wait for fifteen minutes. Our bus arrives to take us to Terminal One. However, before that we have to stop at terminals 2F, 2C, and 2B. I do not know how one gets to 2A, 2D, or 2E. We drive in what seemed, quite literally, to be an indistinguishable series of figure 8's through a massive part of the airport. Terminal 1 is, seemingly, in Germany. After a 15 minute ride, we get to terminal one, which is actually a series of small terminals. We're in the last one. So we have to get out, run inside, take two underground walkways (all the while, remember, carrying heavy carryons and two children) before arriving at the right place, where we discover that at some point between the Bus Room and Terminal One, we were supposed to get boarding passes. No one knows where. They direct us to the security counter, where a man sets a new record for slowness in writing. He writes down the luggage numbers for our bags on a single piece of paper sitting on his desk. What purpose this serves is unclear, probably even to him. He takes us to a desk where, after a woman enters into the computer precisely the same information he had written down, we receive our boarding passes with fifteen minutes to spare. As they are calling final boarding, we get searched thoroughly, and four people look at our passports. Ultimately, we barely make the plane. Our luggage does not. The flight was long but the girls were great. I watched the better part of three movies (with a lot of interruptions while entertaining girls and changing diapers). The movies were "The Recruit", "Daredevil", and "Shanghai Nights." Here is my review of these films: "The Recruit" is a grave embarrassment to Al Pacino, as well as the entire human race. "Daredevil" couldn't possibly be more formulaic. Just terrible. It's a good comic, too. Just a terrible, terrible movie. "Shangai Nights" is not a "good" movie, but it's by far the most entertaining, because Jackie Chan is cool and Owen Wilson is just really great. They have surprisingly good rapport. Bad but fun. We arrived about twenty minutes early. We were thrilled to be back in the States. Then everything went to hell. First, we discover that our bags didn't make the flight. This is not a catastrophe, but it sucks. I blame the French, obviously. Second, we get to the rental car company and discover that they have no car seat for Mercedes. Now, I knew going into this that rental car companies are remarkably irresponsible about car seats, despite the fact that it is actually illegal to drive without a car seat for your child. So I had called ahead and confirmed the seat. Still, they didn't have it. I freaked out. The guy was impassive in the face of my verbal assault. I should have kicked him in the jimmy. Third, we arrive at our corporate apartment to discover that they have screwed up royally, assigned us a one bedroom apartment, and that there are allegedly no two-bedrooms to be had. A major, major problem. The first two problems have been resolved; we have a car seat now, and luggage arrived. The third has not been resolved yet. Hopefully Monday morning. We'll see. It's great to be back. I have a lot of comments about it, but I'll save those for now.       10:45:55 PM    Let's hear it. []