The Comic Tragedy of International Travel for Work

Let me tell you a story. It is a comedy, composed of a multitude of little tragedies. 

It was a chilly Friday morning in Paris. A blogger, who might or might not be called Tom and have a blog called Are We Nearly There Yet?, was trying to check out of a hotel in Paris, only to find that the company for whom said blogger worked had not paid in advance for his stay. OK, thought the blogger, we have a small problem. Not an insurmountable issue, though, as it turned out that another employee of the same company also happened to be staying at the same lovely little hotel in the St Germain area of the city. So, the second employee was called down to reception in order to proffer the services of the credit card their company had so thoughtfully provided. Said second employee cheerfully handed over said credit card. A minute or so later, the receptionist cheerfully handed the card back saying that it had been rejected. A couple of further attempts at paying with the card made it quite clear that the card was, in fact, utterly impotent. For a few moments the day threatened to unravel quite severely, until, employing a thought process which really should have been considered earlier in the exchange, the receptionist asked if she should use the card details provided as a guarantee in order to process the sale. These details, once entered into the magic card reading device, did indeed allow for the payment to be made, and the day was very much back on track.

What followed was, by all accounts, a fairly decent day’s work, punctuated by a rather good lunch. Further drama was reserved for the end of the day, as the blogger happily told the cab driver that he needed to go to Gare du Nord to catch the Eurostar home. Except (and you may have guessed this) things didn’t quite happen to go that smoothly. The cabbie, no hint of mocking in his voice, stated that under no circumstances was he going to deliver the blogger to the destination of choice. And the reason for this grave lack of willingness to perform his duty? Why, traffic, of course. It would be far too difficult to sit in the traffic of a Parisienne Friday evening, and the cabbie intended to do no such thing. He did propose, however, a solution – another station, nearby, from where the blogger could take a single train to get to Gare du Nord in practically no time at all. So, €40 lighter and a great deal angrier, the blogger found himself at Stade de France stadium, struggling to get a 30kg Storm Case^TM full of laptops and a projector through a ticket barrier and onto a cramped commuter train.

Gare du Nord is, of course, a nightmare at the best of times. The blogger found himself surrounded by crazed French commuters, all heading in different directions, most of which involved walking in front of him. By this point the blogger’s bladder was making itself known, which was a shame because the only toilets in Gare du Nord available before check-in to the Eurostar (a pleasure which would have to wait ninety minutes at least) operate on a barrier system. A barrier which was two inches narrower than the Storm Case^TM which the blogger was not allowed to leave on its own.

During the following hour and a half, the blogger did a lot of jiggling around and leg crossing, and fended off one well-dressed conman (a German with no ticket and a story so transparent you could make windows with it), before the allotted time arrived and the blogger could be stopped by customs for having such a ridiculous item of baggage, and then relieve himself in toilets thankfully devoid of barriers.

The train journey itself was practically a walk in the park in comparison, save for the two medical emergencies, and a wait of an hour to be ‘given permission to enter the tunnel’.

When he finally emerged at the other end, tired and quite frankly a little frayed around the edges, the blogger found his car, and, having loaded the heavy trunk into the boot, set off for the motorway and the short journey to his parents’ home. Except, of course, for the fact that very little was going right on this fateful evening, and so when the blogger approached the automatic barrier to leave the car park, his parking having been pre-paid, the barrier conspicuously failed to open. This time the error was not that of the blogger’s company, but that of the car park, and in due course the blogger was allowed to leave, though not before explaining his predicament to a friendly but utterly bored security chappie over a natty McDriveThru-style intercom system.

‘Well,’ thought the blogger, ‘that was a bit of a pain, and no mistake. Still, plain sailing from now on, it’s a short drive and then a nice comfy bed for the night.’

By now you’ll be accustomed to the idea that not everything is quite that simple, though. For no apparent reason, and at a time of year which quite frankly defies belief, it being the start of the weekend before Christmas, not known for being a quite time on the roads, the entrance to the motorway was closed. This caused some consternation, although eventually a now thoroughly frustrated blogger stormed onto the motorway, his mind a fog of French and English swearwords, in possibly the strangest case of train-lag (like jet lag, but not) the world has ever known.

Of course, if you’ve read this far, it should be clear that the sailing from this point forth would be anything but plain, because not only had the entrance to the motorway been closed, but so had the blogger’s desired exit! Oh, the anger, the frustration, the sheer bloody obviousness that this would happen.

A ten mile detour through the town of Sevenoaks, famous for its seven oaks, although six fell over in the wind a few years back, found the protagonist on his way home. After getting stuck behind a car being towed by another with no apparent idea of the concept of hazard lights, our faithful blogger finally made it home. Except, and this would have been a useful nugget of information had anyone known, the doorbell wasn’t working properly, which was clearly going to make the chances of getting in to the house and into a bed somewhat slimmer than they already were.

So it was that the blogger’s mother, checking for his arrival in the early hours of the morning, discovered him wrapped in his coat, fast asleep behind the wheel of his car, where he had retired in desperation, and finally invited him in, where he discovered that the promised bed was, indeed, rather comfortable, and, nearly 22 hours after he got up in the morning, the blogger finally went to bed.

The moral of the story? Well, I suppose you could say that if things start to go bad, get back to bed as soon as humanly possible, should this be an option. If it is not, try to remember that these things always make for an amusing blog entry, something at which you can look back with mirth. From a long way off. In many years’ time. Out of reach of pointy objects…