Our Final European Chapter

Paris To Abu Dubai!

We drove our sad, sputtering, backfiring, camper van into Paris and headed immediately for the Indian consolate in order to get our visa. Unlike other countries where obtaining a visa is a simple 20 minute formality, getting into Idia would not be so easy. Kim had fatefully volunteered to walk through the process, and wound up in a tiny, hot, standing-room only room with 40 other people waiting through various mislabeled queues waiting, only to discover that our passports would have to be rushed back to the United States for approval at an expensive $70-90 each. After some 4 hours the paperwork was started and it appeared reasonably likely that we woudl indeed have our visas at closing time, 4 PM, on the afternoon before our departure to India.

We spent the remainder of the afternoon relaxing at our pleasant campsite on the banks of the Seine River, considering our prospects to sell Spot, accomplish our other errands,obtain our visas and actually get to India by weeks end.

John tried to contact newspapers to put ads in to sell Spot, but his French skills only suffice to make French squirm and get indigestion, so it fell to Kim, the partner with the language skills, to find out that we had indeed missed getting an ad in the weekly newspaper used to sell used cars in France.

So here it was, Tuesday. We had only our Friday morning departure to dispose of Spot. We obviously were getting desperate and after visiting a handful of local dealers who would only look at Spot if she were some fifteen years younger.

Although the car was fundamentally in sound shape, the increasingly rough sounding engine, the more freqquent stalling, the need for increasingly frequent push starts, all led to a sense of crisis in our minds and we knew it wasn't going to be easy to convince a prospective buyer of dear Spot's good intentions...

It was now three days before our departure, so Kim dutifully checked in with Gulf Air Airlines only to find that we hadn't called a full 72 hours prior to departure and our seats had already been released. Some code required from our travel agent also hadn't been filled in that caused additional anxiety.

Since many students were in Europe and the Middle East, but needed to return home to India in time for college, all the flights in the region were heavily oversold. The next open flight wasn't until two to three weeks later. Things looked grim.

Kim continued calling Gulf Air and speaking to various supervisors about alternatives but there wasn't too much hope floating in the air for over a day. We started considering delaying our departure which would also simplify dispossing of Spot.

Again and again it came down to the fact that we had missed getting an ad in the one paper used for such purposes and would have to wait a week for the next oppoortunity. We were getting really desperate.

We started brainstorming how we could even give Spot away and started contacting friends and charitable organizations. After a visit to the Paris registrar who handles the paperwork of importing and relicensing a car, we were even less sanguine about our chances -- as if that were possible!

One clerk reported that we'd have to either return to Germany and get a new license -- using some permanent German address that we didn't have -- or take the car to the USA and register it there. We had already found that out to be impossible through correspondence with the Washington State Department of Motor Vehicles.

Things were loking really bleak and I clutched the only tenative solution, a form releasing the car to a junkyard for crushing when the man next to me in line asked me what was up.

He stated that the clerk didn't know what she was talking about, that he routinely did what we were trying to get done, and that it was all quite possible. He even suggested I copy the form he routinely used to sell such vehicles.

Thankfully I left, uncertain what would be possible, but feeling some scant hope -- if we could locate someone to take the car.

The previous evening, after a dealer suggested we consider putting the car on the street with a for sale sign, we had done just that, leaving Spot in a run down area of the city that apparently was used for just this purpose.

That evening our hotel clerk reported getting a call from someone interested in the car, but the clerk couldn't understand them and was busy, so ended up not taking down any message. We almost had dual nervous break-downs when we heard that.

That day's Gulf Air flight to Bahrain crashed killing all aboard. Within a few hours a spot in the next day's flight somehow opened up and Kim and I had a seat again -- though even more questions about our chances of making it to India in one piece!

Finally the next morning we got a car from Bruno, who had driven by the car and called on a whim. Why did we leave the car there he wondered? That area of town was used exclusively by drug dealers and theives to dispose of their stolen merchandise and vehicles! We confessed our nievite and urged him to take old Spot for a test drive.

So one day before our flight, Kim left to pick up our visas to India, and I left to convince Bruno to take dear old Spot -- at any cost! During the test drive Spot needed four push starts and started backfiring really loudly (enough to hear a block or two away), but still John managed to convince Bruno that his family's future included Spot!

As it turned out, Bruno had already bought a larger camper earlier, unbenownst to his wife and family. They enjoyed it for several years, but wanted something smaller and ideally with a refrigerator. Spot, fortunately, had an excellent refrigerator that was only a few years old and that seemingly was what kept her from getting squashed.

Although Bruno only had partial payment, he obviously fell in love with Spot's charms and John was eager to see any cash at all from Spot. The alternative was to leave her on the side of some road with a big "FREE TO A GOOD HOME" sign.

So Kim returned with the visas (though for 45 minutes it appeared they had closed for the day without having the visas) and John returned with some cash, so we celebrated with a trip up the Eiffel Tower.

The balance of the evening was spent wrapping up our final additional items to be sent to the US, going to Paris' 24 hour post office near the Louvre at 4 AM, discovering they were open 24 hours but wouldn't take parcels until 8 AM, and returning with barely enough time to complete the paperwork, catch a train to Charles DeGualle airport, and catch our flight.

Arrivingh at the airport, we found that Gulf Air changed ticket counter locations frewquently enough to require a third chart -- in addition to those displaying flight arrivals and departures -- this one stating where the ticket office for the day was!

As we handed our tickets to the ticket agent, we noticed a flurry of activity by the police and soon military looking peoiple with automatic weapons and dogs were clearing our area of the airport. Our ticket agent appeared non-plussed and said someone have left some unattended luggage nearby -- yet again, and asked us to return once the crisis subsided. she kept our now priceless tickets and dissappeared into the offices behind the counter while we waited nervously for some 90 minutes for the crisis to get cleared up.

Eventually all was resolved, we got our seat coupons, we got through the now huge backlog of people struggling to get into the terminal and found our seats.

Whew!

The flight to Bahrain, then to Abu Dubai was suprizingly uneventful, though even the brief stop over in Abu Dubai was incredibly hot and humid. We took a photo immediately on landing and decending from our cool airplane and laughed when we saw how the camera and lens immediately was covered in condensation.

The Arabic and Muslim influence in the two ports was dramatic and a huge eye opener. Unfortunely we didn't have enought time (or permission) to leave the airport, though there are apparently lots of quicky tours available for those who do have a lengthy enough layover.

We continued on to Trivandrum, our first stop in India. Although we had no problems aside from a poorly communicated gate change, we found out that the subsequnt night's flight had been severely overbooked and passangers had been forced to resort to a four hour protest to get a response from the airline.

We knew we had earned a day or two of relaxation!

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