Two Funny Things Happened to Me While in Europe

One was the London riot. The other was that the electronic ones and zeros representing my son’s electronic airline ticket blinked out of existence. I say that these things were funny only because, ultimately, I was not really effected by either one of them. But while standing at a US Airways counter in Paris, trying to explain to the clerk that my son did not stowaway on our outbound flight from Philadelphia, while a mute TV tuned to CNN played an endless loop of burning and smashing – they didn’t seem funny.

Prior to standing at that counter I only saw brief flashes of the London riots. The TV news in England is creepily similar to the news broadcast in every dystopian sci-fi film made in the past ten years. Think of the TV news moments in the movie “Children of Men” or “V for Victory” and you know what I am talking about. The smug calm of the newsreaders is amplified by the musical accents. Unlike here, there is no pretend counterpoint to the talking head so there is perfect calm even when reporting about alarming catastrophes in the middle of an AM news chat show. I was overdue for a media blackout and English TV news helped me get off the dime on that.

As a result, I first heard about the riots from a fellow tourist on the night before we were set to leave. He was breathless, but as he described it, I was unimpressed. The protesters seemed to be out in some poor suburb. Typical. Poor people burning down other poor people’s stuff because some poor person was shot by a cop. Change the word poor to rich anywhere in that sentence and I would have lurched to attention.

By the time we got to Paris, the CNN graphics over here made it look like all of London was aflame. It wasn’t of course, but some protesters…I mean rioters, got to Oxford Circus. That would have been interesting if our tour of London was only one day longer. *sigh*

Paris was restorative of course. Paris is the balm. That’s why so many peace conferences are held there. It was easy to maintain my media blackout in Paris because the TV in our room didn’t work and even if it did by the time you have dinner in Paris and walk around for a bit, then have one last drink, it is 11:30 and you thought it was just past 9:00 and you have to get up early the next morning. Wake up calls, in Paris, C’est pas vraie?! Oui, C’est vraie. I was touring with children and my wife’s parents. DId I mention that?

There were six tickets purchased through travelocity and six cheerful travelers in line at Charles de Gaulle airport just moments before the gate clerk informed us that a member of our party didn’t pay for his ticket and therefor would need to buy a ticket to travel with us.

It was “S” our youngest, the same member of our party who the department of homeland security keeps on a “watch list.” He is eleven. My father once asked my why I don’t take the steps to have him removed from the watch list.

I said that, “having worked for the government, I’d expect asking to be taken off the list would only result in us ending up on a list of people even more suspect than the list we are currently on.”

Fortunately, the clerk at the desk was sane – and after only 20 minutes came to the conclusion that “S” didn’t stowaway on our flight from Philadelphia to London. But was instead the victim of an unfortunate computer glitch. Unfortunately the clerk’s sanity could not repair the computer file. The only thing that could do that would be for us to buy a ticket. The clerk said so, his boss said so and their boss – the computer said so.

If anybody is curious, it cost $1,489 to go from Paris to Philadelphia if you are panicked or footloose and fancy free enough to buy a ticket one hour prior to the flight being called.

I’m not sure what the moral of all of this is. Have a credit card. Don’t watch TV news. Do maintain a media blackout when traveling in London and Paris. A better writer than I could probably tie this all together. I can only wrap this up by noting that Travelocity is reimbursing us for the ticket I had to buy. They really were not big tools about it either. Maybe because they know how unreliable electronic ones and zeros can be.