My first day in France consisted of a serious of (mis)adventures. I arrived safely on Eurostar and was all set to hop on the metro for what should have been a 15 minute trip. All I needed to do was buy a week-long metro pass.
Of course, I don’t speak French. The woman at the ticket window did her best, telling me “Photo! Photo!” and making scissors signs with her fingers. It took me ten minutes to realize that I needed a passport-sized photo for the travel pass, for which I needed Euros, for which I had to leave the station and find an ATM. Thankfully, the ATM had an English option.
Returning to the ticket window with brand-spanking new photos in hand, I purchased my metro pass. And so an hour after I arrived, I found myself pacing in front of the metro turnstiles trying to figure out how to open them. Other people were just waving their cards at the turnstile. I tried that. No luck.
I took out my card. No magnetic strip. Hmm…
There was another American there, looking as lost as I was. Working together, we finally realized that the tiny piece of cardboard they gave us each along with our photo pass had a magnetic strip on the back. That’s the ticket!
Inside the Paris metro, there are not one, but three maps displayed prominently on the walls. Only one of them is a metro map. Can you guess which one? I couldn’t. Nevertheless, I did somehow manage to find my way to the correct stop, where I disembarked and walked to my friend’s office.
Oh, the two sides of the street are numbered differently? And I’ve been walking in the wrong direction for 20 minutes? Sounds about right.
Of course, I couldn’t figure out how to dial international calls from my cell phone once I found his office, so I couldn’t reach him. Back to the streets. Do you speak English? You do! Could I make a very quick call from your cell phone? No, I didn’t think so. Thanks anyway.
The payphones here accept credit cards, but they have to have a smart card chip in them, which of course American credit cards do not. So I bought an apple to get some change to use for the 10 cent phone call, only to realize that the phones don’t take coins, either. Which left me walking the street trying to find a store that sold phone cards for the pay phones.
I did eventually find one, but their smallest denomination was 15 Euros. I am not spending $25 to make a phone call.
Finally, I found a flyer for a number to call to bill my credit card for an international call (even if it was to France, from France). If I was thinking, I would have cracked open my laptop, tapped into a wireless access point and just used Skype. Ah well, learning experience. From now on, my non-French-speaking ass is budgeting three times as much time as I think it should take to do anything.
And don’t even get me started on doing laundry this afternoon…
