Je Suis Ici

I was going to start off by saying that the weirdest thing about traveling these days is how un-weird it all is: Then I got to the Paris airport:

First off; there was no convenient sign board showing the departing flights. Then when I found one, it didn't have my flight. Then when I found one with my flight, it didn't have the gate number. Then when I finally found someone to give me the gate number there was a scrum of several hundred people waiting to go through passport control so as to get in the departure lounge:

So then an official says that American passports can go through another door and up the stairs, but when I went through that door one could only go downstairs. Anyway, ten minutes later when I finally get in the departure lounge, it turns out that it's 4 bucks for a cup of coffee, 5 bucks for a coke, and there are only ' bathroom stalls for 12 gateloads of people.

So the French are indeed quite capable of living down to their reputation.

Not to mention that it's hard attempting to be creative when you're trying to type on a French keyboard, which is 85 percent the same as a 'real' one, but...

Anyway, you're probably much more interested in finding out what Casablanca is like, but for that you're going to have to wait 10 hours until I've gotten some sleep. For now I'll just point out that it's not like the movie at all: I have yet to see a carload of Nazi soldiers drive by.