Baggage Fees and Paris Expense, Worth Every Euro
April 9, 2009 | adminA word to the wise when studying abroad: check airline luggage restrictions. When you show up at the airport en route to Paris at 5:30 a.m. with 
a bag that weighs 80 pounds and the luggage capacity is 50 pounds, you’re going to run into problems.
In my case, the Air Canada attendant was nice enough to give me a huge plastic bag into which I threw approximately half of my life’s possessions–mainly shoes–since I was trying to get the heaviest things out of the suitcase. After 15 minutes of trying not to let the creepy guy in line behind me get too good of a look at my lingerie collection, which was now strewn haphazardly about my case, I tied the plastic bag in a knot and tossed it onto the conveyor belt. We then reweighed my suitcase, which came in at 61 pounds – a $75 fee. Not bad compared to the other option of sending it as cargo.
For the average student going abroad, the immediate concerns are obvious: language, culture shock and missing the many benefits of living in the richest country on earth (kiss free refills good-bye). But as a somewhat seasoned traveler, I felt I knew what I was doing… apparently not.
Travel tip No. 1: Check your flight status before you get to the airport.
Me: Hey, I can’t seem to access my boarding pass at the self check-in.
Air Canada Lady: (rolls eyes) Let me see your itinerary.
(Pause, frenzied typing on computer.)
Air Canada Lady: Your original flight going through Montreal was canceled. Instead you’re going to Toronto… except your flight is already closed.
Me: Oh. Damn.
Air Canada Lady: Hold on, I’ll try to check you in anyway. (Gets on phone, begins speaking in tongues even though she’s supposedly from Canada.) Okay, you’re in.
Me: Really? Oh, thank you so much, I really….
Air Canada Lady: Run!
And that is how I got to Toronto.
Thanks to several large sleeping pills, I was able to survive the five screaming babies surrounding me on the flight to Toronto, and the snoring British man on the flight to Paris. Disheveled and feeling slightly ill, I crawled off the plane at 8:30 a.m. Paris time and managed to collect my case and even my big plastic bag.
It was a 20-hour trip altogether, six hours longer than I had originally anticipated and 11 hours longer than a direct flight from Los Angeles to Paris. But I bought my ticket on STATravel.com six months before the flight and took the cheapest option possible–facing two months on the Euro, one has to cut corners somewhere. And once I arrived, it was all well worth it.
Having studied in Paris before, the language was not the biggest adjustment I faced right away. Rather, it was the time difference that really threw me off. Paris is an unfortunate nine hours ahead of California, and it doesn’t help that by May, the sun doesn’t set until around 10 p.m. But, after a few days of taking random naps and waking up at all hours of the night, I settled in and began really enjoying the experience of living in a foreign country.
I decided not to go abroad through USC, since I spent all of last fall in the city. Unless you know exactly what you want to do, however, and have a lot of friends in the place where you’re traveling, going it alone is probably not the best option.
As it was, I ran into a few minor problems in the beginning. I forgot that I had only made the down payment for my courses in French language and culture at the Université Paris-Sorbonne. When I arrived at the university on the morning of inscriptions, I was kindly asked to please fork out an additional €430. Good thing I decided to work at Upstairs Commons last semester.
But, as usual, the many wonderful aspects of being in a foreign country far outweigh the downsides. I am more than willing to drop a couple Euros on a butter croissant, especially when I’ll be eating it with friends on the banks of the Seine, just a few yards away from Notre Dame.
Source: UWire. This article first appeared in The Daily Trojan, the student newspaper at the University of Southern California.
Read the next installment of Rosaleen’s adventure: “Adventures in Paris: The Metro.”
And check out her other stories about Study Abroad @ studentsineurope.com.
