My Arrival in Nice

I wonder if God gives an indication of what is in store or do things up spat in the face....My journey from Phoenix to Nice is one tale of "RG upon RG" with some sudden twists added for taste....I did not take god's blessings in the small mandir in dd's house and dd ne tok diya is baat par...maybe this was god's indication of things about to come or maybe this was the mistake for which i paid for later.....


Reached Lufthansa counter at 2.00...flight for Munich was at 4.15....long Q and i had lots of baggage...two overfull suitcases, a rucksack which was supposed to be my cabin baggage and a laptop bag which was almost bursting with stuff...i had had a long discussion while leaving in which my sister had strictly instructed me to overload one suitcase and pay excess baggage charge of 25$ but i was not really keen on the idea....i broke the achar bottle while i tried to transfer stuff from the rucksack to suitcase...at the counter the two suitcases weighed 24.6 kgs each while the allowed limit was 23kgs only..i was relieved when he dint say anything and then the bombshell....he refused to let me take the rucksack as cabin baggage and asked me to weigh it...it was 16 kg while the limit allowed is only 8!!!! i wud have to check it in and pay 50$!!! my plea of being a student and unable to afford it had the reaction of only being asked to step aside and make my choice of reducing 8 kgs (which was impossible) or checking it in.....after a few minutes of seeing my intense sadness and confusion, he took pity and asked me to shift stuff to suitcases and labelled them as 50 pounds each while they were at least 12 pounds over!!!

i was spsd to reach Munich at 12.30 and my flight for Nice was to depart at 1.00 and frankly i dint have any idea how i was spsd to do the connection...i had asked my agent and he said that the airline had allowed it and it meant that it cud be done and i had taken him at his word....BIG MISTAKE!!! i had asked the stewardness before landing about it and she had advised that i cud make it if i ran since my departure gate was just one level below our landing gate...so that was what i literally did on landing at 12.35....i ran thru passport control and thru security where i got into the Q for first class and business class and ran all the way to the gate and was so pleased when i reached with 5 min to spare and i cud hear my heart breaking into pieces when i learnt that the flight was closed!!!

well i trudged along to customer service where the nice lady gave me a ticket for the 3pm flight, a 10 euro meal voucher and allowed me to call long distance to Christophe who was spsd to pick me up in Nice. I was not feeling well and somehow managed to get water and orange juice from a shop (they are not too fluent with english at Munich airport unlike Frankfurt airport where everybody knows english)...well this was not all....my flight got delayed - we left at 4 instead of 3 and finally reached Nice at 5.20

irst sight of Nice was breathtaking....the airport is on land reclaimed from the sea and the plane starts climbing down over the sea and just as you think you are touching water and will fall into the sea, it touches the runway!!!! too beautiful and exciting to be put into words...luckily i did not have an inkling of what was in store for me and was able to enjoy it!!!

at the baggae counter, i realised that i needed 1euro coin for the trolley...now this is a common practice in US but only for the domestic flights....the trolleys at the international counters are free and makes sense since international visitors might not have the money on them....which was what happened to me....i had a 50 euro note and the machine giving change accepted only 5,10,20 euros....i was asked to go the bank's money change counter to get it changed (nobody offered me the change notes!!)....well the counter inside that area was closed and i wud have to go to the other counter outside but once out the exit i cud not come bak....and being inside the arrivals area,i cud not access any shop to buy anything for change....the person at the "avia parnter" counter finally said that if i pinged him on the videophone he wud let me in as a special favor....at the counter i was finally given change after waiting for more than half an hour and being reminded that they are not there to give me change....the machine also initially refused to eat the note i was feeding it but finally i got it...and then i cud not locate the phone...after 10 minutes of inspecting all the phones in the area, i asked the arrivals desk and was thankfully directed to the right place....1after full ONE HOUR of struggles i had a baggage trolley!!!!!

then i had to call up christophe who was nowhere to be found...then after a lot of exploring i found at the tourist desk that i needed a phone card to use the phones!! the lady kindly allowed me to call christophe who said that he had already left after waiting one hour for me ( i dont know why he dint enquire about the flight!) and so i had to take a taxi. Taxis are bloody expensive here and the driver confirmed thrice that he wud take 25 euros for the 1 km journey and that too in cash. At the destination he refused to wait or help me and on reaching the entrance after dragging all my baggage i saw that i needed a key to enter the buildings. luckily i saw a bell for the receptionist who personally took me to my apartment even though she did not understand a word of english ( small favor god did since here apartments dont have nos, only building nos and i wud never have found out the right one on my own). Well, we found the apartment locked and she communicated to me to wait here until my friends returned. After an hour of sitting outside the apartment on my rucksack and no sign of any of my friends, i started wondering if they were even going to come - they might be still at the other apartment we had taken for the guys! i went 2-3 times to the ground floor to check if there was a phone i cud use to call the manager of my apartment or to try to locate the other apartment's address...it was highly unsuccessful since nobody knew a word of english and so i cud not look for the other address and i cud not use the phones outside without a phone card....Moreover, once outside, i cud not enter the building again since the reception had closed....finally i came bak upstairs and selected an empty electric room off the landing where i cud sleep in case nobody turned up! finally after more than 2 hours of waiting , the poor ppl turned up looking for me...they had asked christophe to bring me to the other apartment and he had failed to pass on the msg!!

This was my fateful adventurous journey from Phonenix to Nice....Life has been an adventure since then and i will write about it in later posts.....