Charles de Gaulle experience

As promised in previous post this one will be dedicated to one perfect day, which I spent in Paris airport Charles de Gaulle. 11 hours is enough time to get to know the airport well and to observe few things, which usually stay closed to the people, who just rush for the connection flight. So:

• I spent most of the time at terminal 2B, from which I was flying to Prague and where most of the flights are from or to EU destinations. It is small terminal with around 15 gates, several shops, two restaurants and around 20 seats... There were just three places with chairs, where tired and bored passengers could sit down and relax for a while. I realized it while looking for some place, where to sit down and write few thoughts about my journey home - and the very first idea, which came to my mind was that I have to sit at floor in front of the Swiss airlanes VIP lounge (they have carpet there)...
• Second surprise was the organization of the check-in, passport control and boarding. I have never seen airport terminal (it doesn't mean, that I saw many...), where you first go through passport control and then you check in the lugage and right next to it you have the boarding gates. Which actually makes a life of passengers complicated, because there are just too many numbers - and it took me a while to realize, that some of them are the number of gates and some of them are numbers of check-in counters.
• SLOVAKIA IS IN EU!!! - If I didn't want to spend the whole day at terminal 2B (which as I mentioned is quite small and there is nothing to do), I had to get out through passport control. There are busses, which are connecting all 6 terminal halls, but you can get there only with the flight ticket and as I was already at the 2B terminal, I couldn't use them. So I tried to talk to passport officiers, that I just want to see the airport and that I didn't fill any documents in the airplane from Caracas. But it was totally useless - I just gave the passport to the officier, he saw the slovak symbol on it, looked quickly inside and let me go without a word... That was a very good feeling, knowing that he is aware, that Slovakia is in EU and that he should not be doing any problems...
• WINTER IS HERE :) :) :) - When I got through passport control, first I was just wandering around other terminals and then I have decided to go to the CDG railway station, to see, how much is the ticket to Paris and how long does it take. OF course I didn't understand nothing in French, and I didn't have any EUROs with me, so it was more curiosity, than real interest. But when I got to the station, I realized, that I can go to the platform, which is outsie, which means, that there is not A/C or heating, which means, that there should be a cold air, which means, that I can finally feel the Winter... And it was like that - when I got to the platform, I felt the cold air on my face and when I was breathing out, the steam was coming out of my mouth. I looked as a small child, which got new toy - Holywood smile #32, wide open eyes... Not much is necessary for man's happiness.
• I went to the railway station also because of the another reason - I wanted to see the famous TGV trains. And I had the opportunity to see one train coming and leaving the station. Well - I don't know. The shape of the train reminded me another famous train (famous especially in Czech Republic). The only difference was, that the TGV train (comparing to Pendolinos I saw in Prague) was quite old and incredible dirty. I know, that it is much faster then Pendolinos (in case they are moving), but the first impression was, that it is just another train, which probably is bit faster, when it gets out of the station.

How to effectively waste two days of your life

29,5 hours plus 7 hours of time difference means leaving Costa Rica on Wednesday 10:40 and arriving to Slovakia on Thursday 23:15 - two days of traveling - what a perfect way how to waste your time.

As I mentioned, my flight from San Jose (Airport Juan Santamaria - SJO) was scheduled for 10:40. Used to the European airports I was thinking about arriving to the airport around 9:30. But my friends told me, that it is suggested to be there 3 hours before departure and as I am flying by TACA (central american airline) I should be there even earlier, because they use to oversell the flights, so it might happen, that they will "offer" you the flight next day => I woke up at 6:30, arrived to airport at 7:15 and 7:20 I was already checked in and also payed 26$ departure tax to Costa Rican government. So what am I going to do next 3,5 hours? Premek had a great idea to walk around airport, find some good place and watch the airplanes landing and taking-off. SJO is not a big airport, you can go around it within 2 hours, and there is very good place to watch airplanes - at the and of the runway, which is about 15 minutes from the main building - or 1 hour and 45 minutes if you take the other direction... Guess, which direction we chose with Premek.

After walking almost two hours around airport and seeing several airplanes taking off I came back to the airport and went through the passport control and waited half and hour for the boarding time. To my big surprise we left San Jose on time (all my 4 flights to Costa Rica half a year ago were delayed). TACA has another special characteristic - there is no food served on board (unless you want to buy some sandwiches - I didn't find the courage to ask how much it is). As I am not used to have a breakfast I didn't eat anything before departure and was getting quite hungry during the flight. When we landed and I checked in to the next flight, I examined the food court at Caracas airport (CCS) but all the prices were in Venezuelan currency and I decided to wait for the flight to Paris, where we were supposed to have dinner, and it was supposed to leave in less than 1 hour. So I sat down and was watching my airplane to be loaded (Boeing 747-400 is quite a big plane...). The scheduled departure from CCS was at 17:50 Venezuelan time, but Mr. Murphy declared his wisdom again and as I was watching the airplane being loaded I realized, that is 17:30 and we are still in the departure hall (and it will take definitely much more time than 20 minutes to board more than 400 people to that airplane). When we finally headed for the runway, it was 19:30 and I was starving to death. After dinner, which disappeared within seconds I decided to watch some movies - Air France was really innovative, and you could choose from two languages - what a luxury. Unfortunately as we were flying from Spanish speaking to French speaking country, the languages were "logically" French and Spanish and I wasn't in mood to read the English subtitles.

After 6 hours of flight I was so bored, that the idea of reading subtitles didn't seem as bad as it was few hours ago. I realized, that I am really bored, because I was laughing at such stupid movie as "You, me and Dupree". The only learning point of the movie is, that Lance Armstrong is probably interested in show business - this is the second movie, in which I see him acting and again is it very low-intellectual movie (the first one was Dodgeball).

Finally we are arriving to Charles de Gaulle airport (CDG) - of course delayed - and I am running through the terminal corridors to get to the other terminal, from which the airplane to Prague is departing in 25 minutes. It is 9:30 and my flight ticket is for the evening flight (19:00), but I want to try to get to the plane, I would really prefer to spend the day in Prague than in Paris... After trying several counters, even the Sky team VIP lounge, I am told, that my ticket can be changed only, when I pay 109 EUR. Even if they have the available seats, they will not allow me to board the plane... I politely thank for the conversation (read "Dakujem za rozhovor") and fully excited think what am I going to do 11 hours at the CDG. As I spent there lot of time, I would keep the experiences from CDG to special post.

Finally the evening came and I boarded the plane to Prague. One very important point to mention here is that flight was operated by Czech Airlines, which means, that there was Czech food and mainly Czech drinks served. Few months ago I was writing about my first visit of German pub Gasthaus in Panama - well the feeling was even better, when stewardess asked me, what I want from drink and I just said: "May I have a beer?" And the Gambrinus can came to my hands...

In Prague I had around 50 minutes to board plane, so nothing much happened there and I quickly got to the last plane of the day - in direction Kosice. After 29,5 hours from leaving SJO I landed in Kosice and just the last surprise was awaiting me. My passport looked a little but damaged since October (when it got wet and the last page was falling apart), so I was bit afraid of traveling with it, but during my last flight I told myself, that it is ok, no one had any problem with it (police officers in Panamanian-Costarican border, at Costarican, Venezuelan, French and Czech airport) - together around 20 people took my passport. Just the last one - passport officer at Kosice airport started to examine the passport closely and asked me for another ID. But it was 11pm, after 30 hours of traveling, so I didn't have energy to explain him anything, I just gave him the driver license and passively listened to the lecture about how should I go and ask for new passport...

Something's wrong

For several months I was preparing the post, where I will write about the weather in Panama, where I mention, that I am currently experiencing the 30+ temperature, while in Europe you are freezing and thinking about the next summer... But as I am looking at the weather news, I see, that my post will not have such impact as I thought. 10 degrees above 0 is not something I expected.

I started to think about it, and realized, that something is wrong since the beginning - when I left to Central America, there were 30+ temperatures in whole Europe for several weeks, sometimes it was hotter than here. I was complaining at the weather here, but at home it was even worse.

And now, at the beggining of december, when the summer starts in Panama (= it is not raining anymore, the temperature is the same), and I wanted to get my friends little bit angry at home, there is 10 degrees in Kosice. In three weeks I should be skiing at home, but so far it looks, that I will skip this skiing season...

Spanglish dictionary

As probably everyone is influenced by English language to some extend, Central America is not the exception. Here is the short list of words you should be aware of and which might have a little bit different meaning when used by Spanish native speaker:

• Assist - Very often delegates in Central America assist the conference, training or the session. We also assist the company meetings... The reason is very simple - translation of the English verb "to attend" is "assitir", which is usually translated back as to assist...
• If you tell to someone, that you had a nice discussion, his/her reaction might be a little bit strange and he/she might try to explain you that it wasn't discussion, just conversation. Don't be afraid, the Spanish word "discusion" is translated into English mainly as debate or argument, after that as discussion...
• Dynamics - I am not sure, if I am right, but I don't think this word exists in English. Anyway people here are using it a lot. The Spanish word dinamica means something like activity, role play, some game... And it is used not only in AIESEC, I have already heard it in normal conversation...
• I was a quite shocked, when in the middle of conference one of the OC members came and told me, that he has to cancel the hotel (I was conference manager at that conference and there was still one and half day of agenda). As he saw my face, he explained me, that he has to pay the rest of hotel fee... The Spanish word "cancelar" is also translated as "to write off the debt".
• Next word actually does not exist in English, but probably because it "sounds" as word taken from English language, it is very often being used. So when someone tell you, that today we have capacitation, it means, that there is some trainig, education or something similar.
• Responsability - no, it is not misspelled word. Here it is very usual to hear or read this word. Of course it means the same as word responsibility. The reason is again very simple: Responsibility is translated into Spanish as responsabilidad.
• Octuber - the very same reason as Responsability: In Spanish it is Octubre.
• Agenda - I heard from one of the managers when setting up meeting: "I don't have my agenda with me." He didn't refer to any conference as we are used in AIESEC, he just said, that he doesn't have his diary with him.