Chinese tourists take a roundabout pilgrimage to Lourdes - 800 kms away

It's easily done isn't it?

You arrive at an airport, rent a car, complete with GPS or SatNav, and tap in your destination.

If you're lucky the thing will direct you to exactly where you want to go without any problem.

If you're not, or are hopeless at following instructions, then you could end up taking a route which will allow you to see a little more of the countryside than you had intended.

The chances are though, that you'll eventually reach where you want to be.

Both scenarios of course rely upon your having entered the correct town or city.

But there remains another possible outcome: arriving miles away from your intended journey's end.

(screenshot Mappy  - the green flag is Paris, the yellow one Leuhan, and the red flag is Lourdes)

That's exactly what happened this past weekend to a group of Chinese tourists who had arrived at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris from Los Angeles and decided to hire a car with a GPS, to drive to the southwestern town of Lourdes.

Except they ended up over 800 kilometres away in the village of Leuhan in Brittany, in the west of the country.

As the regional daily Ouest France reported the five women had indeed entered Lourdes into the GPS but they had forgotten to include the number of the département: hence they arrived in the village where the chapel of Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes can be found.

An easy mistake to make!

"They got out of their car and asked me where they could find their hotel," Manée Peron, the owner of the village bar-tobacconist Ti Manée, told the newspaper.

"But when I looked at the reservation slip they showed me I saw that they were looking for Lourdes in the southwest of France and I told them they were in completely the wrong place."

Not surprisingly the women were apparently more than a little fed up but reprogrammed their GPS, and were on their way once again...to the correct Lourdes.

Let's just hope their rental contract allowed them unlimited mileage.

Friday's French music break - Jennifer Lopez ft Pitbull, "On the floor" (Air France flash mob)

Friday's French music break this week is just a little different.

As you can see from the title it's a recent single from one of the world's biggest stars, US singer Jennifer Lopez with a little help from rapper Pitbull (Armando Christian Pérez).

Not much French about that, you could be thinking.

Well that might be the case, except that Air France employees decided to use it as the music for a recent flash mob at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.

Not the greatest dancers, but who cares (screenshot Air France flash mob)

 It might not be a good time for either the company with over 5,000 jobs on the line, or its passengers in a few weeks time when staff are threatening to take industrial action (hooray - that'll make a change) to protest the cuts.

But let's not get too serious about that four-letter word that is the "news" for a moment and have a bit of fun courtesy of Air France cabin crew and ground staff.

Flash mobs of course have been around for several years, and perhaps the most famous is the one performed on Oprah Winfrey by the Black Eyed Peas and 21,000 of her fans in Chicago back in 2009.

You haven't seen it? Take a look.

The Air France flash mob might seem a bit pale (to put it politely) in terms of performance and certainly numbers, but the element of surprise for passengers waiting in Roissy's somewhat soulless modern monstrosity that is Terminal E, was clearly still present.

It all begins, just as flash mobs always do, innocently enough, this time with an announcement coming over the public address system paging Lopez.

There's little reaction when it's made in French, but when repeated in English, you can see that some passengers really think J. Lo is "in the house" - so to speak.

And then the music kicks in, the "performers" take their places and "strike their poses".

All right, so it's not the best choreographed routine perhaps (no, definitely) - and some of the participants look as though they've put in less than five minutes training.

But who gives a stuff?

The waiting passengers appreciated it and heck, it's not a bad way to spend your time before you take your flight, is it? at the airport.

In fact if those threatened strikes occur, it could be the only means of whiling away the time.

So enjoy, and here's hoping it brings a smile to your face ahead of the weekend.

And as always, have a good one.

French "help" for Ben Ali stuck at Paris airport

Equipment to "maintain law and order" including police uniforms and tear gas, destined to be delivered to Tunisia before the fall of its former president, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali has been stuck at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport since last Friday.

But there are conflicting explanations as to why it was never dispatched.

On Wednesday the French government's official spokesman, François Baroin, confirmed that an order, placed by the former Tunisian president with a private company in France, had been prevented from leaving Paris shortly before his fall from power.

"Ben Ali placed an order directly with the company supplying the equipment," he said.

"Customs officials did their job correctly and it never left," he added without, as the weekly news magazine Nouvel Observateur pointed out, wanting to elaborate on what role (if any) the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, had played in the decision.

As far as the French website Rue89 is concerned the load, containing as much as seven tonnes of tear gas, was held up because of "technical rather than political" problems.

Tear gas for Tunisia (screenshot from Rue89 video)

Customs officials authorised the export of the equipment, it says, but red tape and in particular the "need for it to be inspected" got in the way.

The journalist Jean-Dominique Merchet, who specialises in military and defence topics, offers up a different explanation though.

On his blog for the magazine Marianne, Merchet wrote that the 'plane carrying the cargo was due to leave late on Friday morning but customs officials "suddenly became very picky."

Soon afterwards, according to Merchet, the head of Sofexi, the group supplying the equipment, received a call from the "highest authority at the Elysée informing him that delivery was out of the question."

Such contradictory explanations are perhaps only to be expected from a country which the BBC described as having been "in a fluster over the Tunisian crisis"; a reaction that still seems to prevail perhaps as illustrated by Rue89's unsuccessful attempts to discover what will now happen to the equipment held at Roissy.

When it contacted the ministry of defence it was referred to the interior ministry, which then referred it to the Elysée which in turn referred it to the ministry of foreign affairs, from which it is still waiting for a reply...



Du gaz lacrymogène bloqué à Roissy
envoyé par rue89. - L'info video en direct.

Hortefeux says heavy snowfall in Paris made travel "complicated"

Perhaps France's interior minister Brice Hortefeux was living on a different planet on Wednesday.

Or maybe he just hadn't seen a news report or stuck his nose out of the window.

Because at four o'clock in the afternoon, after snow had been falling in the French capital and its suburbs for a couple of hours, Hortefeux held a press conference.

Or should that be a "I haven't got a clue what I'm talking about but I'm going to say something because it's my job" session?

Using what can surely only be termed as political pussyfooting, and thereby denying any responsibility for the authorities having been ill-prepared, Hortefeux told the assembled hacks that getting in and around Paris and the surrounding region of Ile de France was "complicated" but not a "mess".

Brice Hortefeux "There isn't a mess" during press conference (screenshot TF1 news)

Just a slight error in the minister's description of the situation though as anyone in the French capital at the time could have told him.

It was indeed already a "mess", had been for many for several hours and would continue to be so for the rest of the afternoon, evening and through the night.

Just half an hour before Hortefeux made his statement, flights at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport had been suspended (they resumed a couple of hours later), heavy goods vehicles had been banned from the motorways in Ile de France, and only a handful of buses were running.

The snow was falling thick and fast (11 centimetres in total according to Météo France) and tailbacks were already beginning on each of the major axes in and out of Paris.

As television news reports in the evening showed, many motorists were well and truly stuck and would remain in their cars for most of the night.

Tailbacks measuring in total (a record) 394 kilometres were reported at one point, special reception areas were opened for those who were stranded, and even those who tried getting around on foot were having problems.

Extra police were deployed to help out but still the situation in Paris and its suburbs wasn't a "mess" because the interior minister had said so.

Interviewed later on Europe 1 radio, Hortefeux insisted that he hadn't been trying to deny that there had been problems but simply that the situation had worsened very quickly.

And he was backed up by the environment minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet who said (and here there's a bit of paraphrasing going on) that even though the region had been put on alert beforehand, the real problem had been the amount of snow that had fallen.

Ergo even though all the evidence at the time pointed to the contrary and Paris was indeed paralysed for several hours, as far as officialdom was concerned the situation was not a "mess".

Reflecting maybe on the reality of the situation, Hortefeux released a press statement on Thursday morning calling on motorists to avoid Paris and its suburbs.

Of course this isn't the first time recently that a government minister has managed to put a rather rose-tinted spin on what is actually happening.

When oil refinery workers went on strike in October, the then environment minister Jean-Louis Borloo urged French motorists to remain calm and reassured them that there was no risk of a fuel shortage.

A statement which unhappily proved to be far removed from what happened.

"Pagaille" : les autorités se défendent

Hijo, the dog who went missing during a Paris stopover

Lost luggage is one thing, but imagine how difficult it must be, in spite of all the regulations and procedures in place, for an airline to lose man's best friend and the sheer desperation owners must feel when they're told their dog has gone missing.

Sleeping at an airport might not be everyone's idea of time well spent, but a Lebanese-Spanish couple did just that last week as they waited for news on the disappearance of their dog.

Their enforced stopover began last Wednesday when they arrived on an Air France flight from Beirut in transit for the Chilean capital of Santiago.

That's when they discovered that their boxer dog "Hijo" (or "son" in Spanish) who had made the journey with them, albeit as “accompanied baggage” in the cargo hold, was missing.

According to the airline, there had been something wrong with a handle on the transportation kennel and Hijo had escaped from it after the 'plane landed.

But as far as his owner Alain Daou was concerned, the baggage handlers (and as a consequence the airline) had somehow been at fault.

"The cage was brand new," he said. "They must have dropped it."

Air France apparently offered the couple, who were without visas and for obvious reasons didn't want to leave for Chile until Hijo had been found, one night at a hotel.

But that was the extent of their responsibility, according to Daou, who had less than kind words about what had happened.

"The airline did nothing during those three days," he said. "As far as it was concerned our dog was simply a piece of luggage."

Although the story ended well, the couple surely deserves sympathy for having spent so long at an airport which a poll back in June revealed was far from being a joy for any traveller.

Published by the independent Canadian-based website sleepingairports.net. the poll ranked the airport as the world's worst, and the comments made by those who had voted for (or should that be against?) it, had more than a ring of the familiar about them to anyone who has had the displeasure of passing through the French capital's main airport.

According to statistics released in March by the airline watchdog, the Air Transport Users Council (AUC), losing luggage happens with frightening regularity.

"Airlines mishandled 42 million bags worldwide in 2007," said the AUC, "Compared with 34 million in 2006 and 30 million in 2005."

As if you needed telling, that's an awful lot of disgruntled passengers. But there was worse.

"Of the 42 million mishandled in 2007, 1.2 million bags, or around one bag for every 2,000 passengers, were irretrievably lost."

And the inconvenience of arriving at a destination while the luggage failed to make the same journey, hit this particular traveller hard earlier this year when he touched down in New York with just his carry-on after a flight from Paris.

It's official, Paris Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport is the world's worst

To anyone who regularly (or even infrequently) has the displeasure of passing through Roissy-Charles de Gaulle, France's major airport, the findings by the independent Canadian-based website sleepingairports.net that it ranks as the worst in the world will come as no surprise.

Back in April this year even this mild-mannered Brit was forced to bash away at the keyboard to share with others some of the horrors offered up by what has to be the biggest mess and work in progress, Terminal E (read more about that here).




But according to the website the problems experienced by passengers at CDG aren't just limited to one terminal.

The site asked its readers to rate airports on what it calls the "four Cs"; comfort, conveniences, cleanliness and customer service. And Roissy failed to deliver the goods on all counts.

All right so it might not be the most scientific poll ever taken, but the results, albeit only for the first six months of this year, and the comments, aren't far off the mark, as anyone regularly faced with the prospect of passing through CDG will know.

Filthy, noisy, unwelcoming and full of outright rude and unhelpful staff were just some of the comments made as Roissy beat out Moscow's Sheremetyevo, New York's JFK, Las Angeles' LAX and Delhi airport in India for the least coveted title of the world's worst.

The findings haven't gone unnoticed here in France, although the perhaps Aéroports de Paris (ADP), the authority that owns and manages both Roissy-CDG and the capital's other major airport, Orly, might wish that they had.

But at least they had one defender (of sorts) in the form of Jacques Attali who, among many other hats he has worn, was an advisor to the former French president, François Mitterrand.

Even he had some difficulty though in downplaying the arguments and comments of what is after all an independent website and whose contributors hadn't exactly been coerced into making their remarks.

He argues that although the reputation is without doubt unjust as there are plenty of ADP staff at both Roissy and Orly who "do their best to welcome, help and make the experience of passing through the airport a pleasurable one" there is also some substance to the findings.

He imagines arriving in France for the first time and seeing rather "hideous and vague signs, reminiscent of East Berlin".

"No human being there with whom to interact and no welcome," he writes.

"And it's worse for those arriving early in the morning when there are in general just a couple of police at passport control doing their best to deal with thousands of passengers arriving from North America and Asia."

Ah yes, Monsieur Attali, ADP and sleepingairports.net, there's many a horror tale this (and I'm sure other) user(s) of Roissy-CDG could tell.

Perhaps some will comment here and recount their stories or even (now this really would be a surprise) others will come to the airport's defence.




One thing's for sure, Roissy-CDG is a far, far cry from Singapore's Changi airport, which has consistently received rave reviews, regularly rates as the world's best, and charmed this traveller when he passed through for the first time earlier this year.

A holiday in its own right.