Charles de Gaulle is a very nice man

Charles de Gaulle

Like all other students who leave their homes for college, parting has rather lost its poignancy. At the risk of sounding maudlin, my first farewell is still an extremely vivid memory: a sea of tears, promises of undying friendship and a sense of impending doom because I was leaving my then boyfriend of two months. Subsequent goodbyes got progressively more nonchalant as I adopted the mantle of the seasoned traveller (and one feels particularly seasoned after over 24 hours without bathing), especially since I was shuttling in and out of the same airport over and over again. By the time I left New York after the fall term, I knew Terminal 4, John F. Kennedy Airport inside out, and had my arrival/departure routine down to pat.

This time however, I would be travelling to a different airport, different country, speaking a different language. As de Botton says, language is a terribly powerful indicator that Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore. Frissions of excitement bubbled beneath as I attempted to maintain my sangfroid.

However, the real giant signpost that I wasn’t on American soil anymore was customs. Typically, the worse part about JFK is the incessantly long wait for non-Americans to get through customs because they scrutinize everyone for a good ten minutes trying to assess terrorist tendencies. “Left thumb, please. Right thumb. Look straight ahead at the camera. What will you be doing in the United States?” (My visa already says student.)

I was prepared for worse in Paris. Before I left, I had heard a thousand and one stories about the inefficiencies of the French and how it would take me at least two hours to get through immigrations. It took me fifteen minutes, and the officer barely even looked at my visa. Given the immense hassle that I had gone through to get that little sticker – documents sent half way across the world, constant reschedulings etc – it seemed a bit anticlimactic. Worse yet, purportedly some students who came with the group flight breezed through without even having a visa.

Customs, though, and the interesting crisscross of escalators were the only things that set Charles de Gaulle apart from a standard airport. Once I was through with those, I fell into the usual formula of baggage, customs and taxi. Then I was off to conquer Paris.

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