Paris-1

The high-speed Thalys from Amsterdam to Paris was, well not very high speed and reached Paris 35 minutes late. I read somewhere that "late" for Japanese is 1 minute. For British it is 10 minutes and though I did not know it then, for French it is 30 minutes. So we were very late by Japanese standards, though on good time by Indian standards. Just an anecdote here. My biggest influence for this whole trip is Paul Theroux's 'The Railway Bazaar', and I took it along for a second reading. In it he describes a transfer of 700 passengers from a train to a ferry in Japan which takes about 15 minutes. He compares it with a similar operation in India which took about 8 hours. I am not saying this to make fun of Indians, but to say that Japanese are little robots with little printed circuits in their tiny heads.
My hotel was near the Charles de Gaulle airport. Getting there from Paris Nord was a joyous 1.5 hr ride. I had to take what in Paris is called RER A, which to be honest guys, with all due respect, looked like a train out of Somalia. The train was dirty, with graffiti all over, was full of dodgy looking people of one color, dressed like they were in Africa not in continental Europe, and the biggest shock for me, there were so many beggars on that train. The only outsiders apart from me were a couple of American guys who looked like they were mercenaries from a Rambo movie. Weirdly enough, they asked ME which station we are at, when we stopped somewhere.
After I finally managed to get to my hotel, I got my first taste of what a budget hotel is. Seriously, the toilet was a totally plastic piece. That is, it was a big chunk of plastic in which a toilet, a shower and a sink are moulded out. I just fit in it to take a shower. And for the first time in my life I was happy that I am not anymore fatter than I am. Tommorow I will post a pic of an escalator in Paris, and you will understand why I came up with the slogan "Paris-not for fat people".