Welcome to France.
If you were to have the task of building the world's least user-friendly airport; one that makes arriving passengers wonder whether they got off on the right continent; one that goes out of its way to ensure you have the least chance of making your connection; one where finding anyone to help navigate the maze is a lost cause; and one where the staff shows the least interest in customer service, you would do well to come and study Paris Charles de Gaulle airport. They've got all this down to a fine art.
Add the smell of urine in the elevators, the general lack of cleanliness and the ridiculous prices and you've got an award winner. But I digress.
I am on the train to Tours, the penultimate stage of my journey back home after the Camino. And that despite the best efforts of CDG airport.
It started in Santiago. 'Atrasado' the board said, next to my flight to Paris (the first flight of the day it seemed). My flight was delayed. No indication of why or how long. At first I assumed it was a local problem, but it transpired that the incoming flight was delayed by over an hour. Why? Due to delays at the departure airport. No prizes for guessing which airport that was: CDG!
The flight left an hour and a half late, effectively using up any safety margin I had built into my schedule for the connection with the TGV. Given that the TGV station is physically at the airport in Paris, you might logically expect a short and smooth connection would be possible. Unless, of course, we're talking about CDG.
We arrived and hour and half late. Then the plane had to wait out in the far reaches of the airport for other aircraft taxiing. Tick...tick..tick as my chance of making my connection grew ever slimmer. Then the super long taxi to, of course, terminal 3. Those of you who have the misfortune to know CDG will know that Terminal 3 is nowhere near anything. And that buses are used to ferry passengers from the planes to the terminal. Tick...tick...tick. Those of you who know France will know that the French are not the world's most disciplined people for queuing either, but that's another digression.
Then the one bright point in the story: my bag appeared on the luggage belt! This is not something you take for granted at CDG, it's more a cause for celebration.
Now the real challenge, and here CDG knows how to make you suffer: finding out how to get from one part of the airport to another. Last time I used Terminal 3 there was a shuttle bus to the other Terminals (and the railway station). Now there was a series of signs leading outside and along a walkway that seemed to go on forever. At irregular intervals along the way, the one sign you are following (in my case 'Gare SNCF') disappears. This is a clever strategy to make you think you've missed the exit point, forcing you to consider going back to look for it. Compared to this, following the Camino for 1,000m through Spain is trivial.
Eventually I did reach the station, although it wasn't really the station yet, it was a ' halfway station'. The only signs pointing to the TGV station were on the other side of barriers which needed a metro-style ticket to open (and of course, were too small to fit luggage through anyway - after all, who would expect someone arriving by plane to have luggage?)
It goes without saying that there was no staff to ask for assistance.
Tick...tick...tick
After a running circuit of the building, I located the secret passage leading down to the inter-terminal shuttle train. I should have known to follow the signs to 'Terminal 2' when looking for the railway station. After all, I did know that the station was underneath Terminal 2.
Of course the secret passageway was too narrow for the luggage trolley, so I had to carry my bags down to the platform.
Miraculously, the shuttle appeared within about five minutes. Doors opened, people got on. Then the lights went out. Sighs of resignation from those who knew how the game was played: each time you think you will actually make your connection, another obstacle pops up.
'Ladies and gentlemen, following a minor technical incident on the line, there will be a short delay before the shuttle departs.'
In the Paris railway system, an 'incident on the line' is code for yet another suicide, something which unfortunately is not a rare occurrence. There's a special counselling unit for the metro and RER drivers to help them deal with the aftermath of such an event. But this seemed unlikely on the airport terminal shuttle.
'The train will depart in approximately five minutes' The voice might have well have said 'Your TGV connection will depart in ten minutes, and we're doing our best to ensure you don't make it.'
But the shuttle did depart again (in about five minutes). It was 16:10, my TGV was scheduled for 16:21. Now the TGV doesn't always run on time, but you can be sure that when you're late your train will be on time.
'Next stop, Parking station'. They should have been playing elevator music; they could have added the scene to 'The Blues Brothers'.
The shuttle pulled into Terminal 2. Now I was on familiar ground and had the advantage. I could ignore all the signage (which would have wasted significant time had I followed it). Running like a madman (which in a sense I was, for expecting to make my connection) I found the platform - luckily the same one that seems to be mostly used for this line, so familiar ground again.
I stormed down the escalators to be greeted by 'The train now arriving on platform 6 is the TGV 5222 to Bordeaux' and then my train pulled into the station.
I had beaten the system!
When they built KLIA (the new International airport in Kuala Lumpur) before opening to the public, they invited people to come and do a dry run through the airport. They assigned people dummy flights to catch, and then let them loose in the airport, tracking their progress and their success (or not) at navigating the airport, following the signage, and getting to the right place within a reasonable time. Based on the results of this real-life experiment, they modified the signage or processes where they had been found to be lacking. KLIA may not be the world's best airport, but it works pretty well.
I now realise that at CDG they must have run the same type of experiment. However they must have taken another approach: each time someone successfully navigated the system, they changed the signage or process to minimise that chances of it happening again.
And they've got it down to a fine art.
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