Paris, France, Thursday September 23rd

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The sun rose as we flew from Zurich to Paris. We were just as intrigued by the sight of the new land above the clouds as on the first occasion that we saw such a fluffy mass. This time mountain tops pierced that layer and then disappeared into the layer above. As the ground became visible in France, I kept exclaiming about how neat it all looked; field after field of straight lines, and even the forests seemed to be neatly contained in geometric shapes. The towns were not full of buildings looking like unfilled teeth, left unworked on as they went gradually up or collapsed down, as we had experienced on our flight from Tanga to Pemba. We arrived at the airport in the early morning, Paris time, after a reasonable but disturbed amount of sleep.

We had hoped to be able to stay with Jean and Renée again, but when we rang their house was full of grandchildren who were staying. The tourist bureau provided us with a list of hotels near the airport, but the cheapest was a bit dear for us. We rang Joel to see if he could find anything, but all his leads turned out to be full. Back at the tourist bureau, we took the cheapest of the possible options with a free shuttle bus, and imagined that it might be in a village somewhere.

It was lunchtime before the shuttle bus dropped us and about ten others off about four kilometres from the airport. Five huge hotels rose from a plain of fenced industrial sites, in a triangle surrounded by major roads.When we booked in, we were given a code for the lift and a code for the room. There was wifi for the internet, but only if you paid ten euros to the hotel next door. There was no internet café, but there was somewhere to buy a coffee. We explained that it was the internet bit we wanted, and it turned out to be incredibly expensive for fifteen minutes. We were a bit nonplussed by being nowhere in reality and nowhere in cyber space too, and even more so when we went to find the shops and there weren’t any. The restaurant wanted about $A15 for a plate with three vegetables on it, so we tried the café. There were tables and chairs and people were eating and drinking. We sat down and I asked for the menu. There was none. Instead there was a wall of fridges with multiples of frozen dinners in them, and we could make a selection for the waitress to microwave in the wall of microwaves. It was surreal and Keith commented that we had stepped into ‘1984’, or rather the imagined 1984. We selected a gourmet, and hence very expensive, vegetable gratin, and a free glass of water.We had only just started when the manager arrived to count the takings, and lunchtime was over for the day, at 1.45. A wall of doors covered the selections and new people were turned away. Our hotel had also featured a fridge of frozen meals and perhaps they would be magically heated for you when you pressed the right numbers.

Keith went up to the top floor to see if he could see anything promising in the distance. From on high, and from our window, we could see the largest of rabbits, living the good life on the lawns of our hotel and of the hotel next door. They were such a welcome sight in this barren world. Our room was very pleasant, with designer touches and hot water; things that felt very French and which we had done without for our weeks in Tanzania.

We took turns to sleep and work on the computer, and Keith made a foray to look for food, returning only with a bag of McDonalds chips for each of us. We were not sure of the time when we went to sleep, but it was just after midnight in Africa. We have two days in Paris but feel that we are not really there yet.