Watta trip!!

Recently (December 3-6, 2009), when my office nominated me to a seminar in Paris, – the city of Love/Lights/Fashion - little did I know that it would turn out to be probably the most memorable of all my trips till date. Though the official program was only for two days, I had decided to stay over for the weekend to look around the city and take it as much of its rich culture as possible. The program ended on a fairly decent note with a fair amount of knowledge sharing across the participants and I acquainted people across other EU nations. After the conclusion of the trip on the second day (4^th December), I had literally dragged my boss who was with me to visit the famous Eiffel in all its lit up glory. So, there I was – leaving for the evening outing not knowing that a long night awaited me on my return.

By the time I was back to the hotel, it was about 10.30 pm as per their local time. My primary intention behind taking the laptop was to keep downloading pictures on a daily basis and make space for fresh ones in my digital camera. I took out my cam and looked around for my notebook – eagerly awaiting to see the results of my clicking on the screen. Then, there was the moment of dawn; that was when I realized that it was not to be seen anywhere. I turned my small hotel room upside down – searched every possible corner of it and with every passing minute, it was becoming more certain – that the laptop has indeed been stolen. My attempts at going down to the lobby of the Hotel and creating a ruckus saying I got to speak to the owner of the place, need to call the cops, etc. did not really help. So, there I was in foreign land, losing probably the priciest of possessions, unable to communicate it in their language, and really getting into a spin.

Even much later when I dialed 017 which was their emergency police number, I had enough reasons to conclude my attempts were going futile – none of the voices that answered my call at the opposite end spoke English. But, surprise, surprise, exactly in 15 mts from my call, there were 3 French police officials at my entrance with all their police wear, badges, raincoats in tow (it was pouring outside), waiting to help me. It was almost like a scene straight out of a Hollywood movie with me playing the role of a damsel in distress.

A series of interrogation followed – I answered questions on why I was in Paris, till when would I be staying, which organization do I belong to, etc. and was asked to show photocopies of my passport/visa and office ID. By this time, there was another twist in the tale – an American attorney who was in the 5^th floor (I was put in the 3^rd floor) had also lost couple of his laptops and a video camera at almost the same time as mine. After documenting the story in broken French and English, I was told that the case was too complex and would be transferred to a special officer from the ‘criminal investigative agency’. I was anyway furious and was in no mood to give up (would have even met Mr. Sarkozy, if need be). Naturally, I was only more than eager to await the next set of cops from the ‘criminal investigative wing’ to takeover. The process that followed was a repetition with about half an hour of interrogation with the new set of officials. Finally, I was told that I have an appointment the next day at the police headquarters of Paris to formally register a complaint.

So, after finishing a half-hearted site seeing tour which could not be cancelled since it was booked prior to this incident, I headed to the police HQ on my own. When my turn came up for the one to one with the officer, the special officer’s room resembled more like some rugby/baseball teams’ backstage room – had loads of baseballs, caps, jerseys and car/bike posters. The officer, who didn’t know one bit of English helped himself – and me – by organizing for a translator. The lady translator giggled more than she spoke and had one paragraph to translate to the officer for every single sentence that I told her!! During the process of explaining the scene, the biggest challenge for me was to explain whats a laptop!! Needless to say, I tried my best too – even tried saying it was a portable computer; finally, thanks to an advertisement of a HP notebook in one of the magazines lying around, I managed explaining the stolen object. Anyway, this process took about an hour and culminated in a six page report in French which was the equivalent of the ‘First Information Report’ in India. Phew!!

Apart from the above incident, I covered quite a bit of the “must-see” places in Paris - even squeezed in sometime on Saturday evening after my appointment with the cops to do some shopping for my people back home. The visit to Galeries Lafayette and The Printemps was awesome – whoever said shopping is the biggest stress buster is SO right!

Sunday began with a firm resolution that I am not going to let the theft incident screw up the one day left to look around. I made a list of places I wanted to see and covered almost the entire city by foot/the metro train network. They have 18 metro lines and 4 suburban lines connecting the entire city and the service is truly impressive.

The places I covered included a visit to the topmost floor of the Montparnasse tower (through the fastest elevator in Europe which traverses 59 floors in 38 seconds), the Notre Dame cathedral, the Montmartre Church, the Pantheon, the Eiffel Tower, the Latin Quarter, St. Louvre Museum, Tuileries garden behind the museum, the Grand Palace, the Concorde, the Conciergerie, and a final stroll of the Champs Elysees before hitting back to the room. But the best part of the day was the walk along the banks of River Seine. The river gives a classic feel to the entire city; the buildings along the banks of the river, with their historic architecture still intact, lend an almost dream feel to the entire stretch. I, for one, absolutely enjoyed the leisurely one hour stroll along the river and its picturesque banks after finishing my visit to all the above historical places. One of the flipsides I noticed about Paris was that every 4^th guy smokes in public places – for someone who detests smoking (active and passive), I landed up inhaling quite a bit of it.

To sum up, though I did have the quintessential language problem which any non-French speaking tourist would face, there are several impressive things about the city and its people – they respect their history, culture and language immensely and are indeed very proud of it; at the same time, they are also accommodative in terms of embracing people from other parts of the world; whoever said that the French guys are normally rude and arrogant, my experience was quite different; the metro network – with its 18 criss-crossing lines – is superb; the French cops are extremely professional and helpful too (I get a response to my emails from them in about an hour’s time)– I cannot imagine EVER even in my dreams, an Indian police officer responding by reply e-mail to a foreign tourist on a theft complaint; direction sense of the people - natives deftly manoeuvring across the city with their hand-help maps and encouraging tourists to do so too – was a lesson in self-sustenance.

While I am extremely patriotic, I couldn’t help thinking of the several takeaways for my country in terms of the areas we need to improve to become more people friendly – both to natives and tourists alike.

On a personal front, it was, no doubt, an adventurous trip which boosted my confidence levels – for someone who has hardly travelled even within India, I, for sure, know I can manage alone in any country now amidst the direst of circumstances; however, it was also yet another reminder to myself on how to be a more cautious traveler next time around!!