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bored in Beauvais

At the time of booking, having a stop-over of 5hrs in "Paris"-Beauvais (Ryanair's planners mustn't have done well on their geography exams) seemed a small price to pay to a) fly back home on the desired day and b) do so without spending a month's salary.

I had already taken one car, one ferry, one bus, two trains and a plane to get there, but was nevertheless determined to take two more bus rides to waste my time in Beauvais - which I was sure would be better than sitting around an airport lounge. And that was before I saw the airport.

Beauvais-Tillé airport (Ryanair's planners mustn't have done well on their reading exams either) is about the size of my living room. This is exemplified by the screen which lists 'arrivals terminal 1 (here)'. Too bad, then, that they try to cram about a hundred of my birthday parties into it. These planes full of people must then spend their time between the worlds' most depressing food court (and that is saying something), the world's fakest and worst Italian pizzeria (again, tough competition there), and the hall, where there are about ten seats to be found. Alternatively, they can go outside where it rains. Or they can drop their suitcase/backpack in the middle of anywhere and sit on it. Or they can walk around aimlessly, thereby tripping over people sitting on their suitcases/backpacks in the middle of anywhere.

 The guy at the information desk told me that the bag-drop for my flight didn't open for another three hours. He told me that luggage storage was prohibited in France ('les Francais veillent sur votre securité' ' -'un peu trop!'). This brought back memories of a backpacked sightseeing walk through Bastia back in 2002, but didn't make me particularly happy. And he told me that even if I wanted to do a backpacked sightseeing walk in Beauvais (which I did, oddly enough), the bus schedule was such that I could do so for about 45 minutes. He then told me that if I really wanted to do something I might walk for about 15 rainy minutes to a 'petit parc avec un MacDo'.

Still not resigned to spending five hours sitting on my backpack while being trampled upon by hordes of budget travellers, I embarked upon this great adventure. Before its completion I got sucked into the tranquil-is-an-understatement village of Tillé. I explored the whole of it (and I mean that in a literal sense) in search of any kind of public place that might serve something to eat and/or drink to a lonely backpacker, but eventually ended up back at the airport, a bit sadder and a lot wetter.

A few backpack-sitting hours and a horrible pizza later I queued for the passport check, queued for the security check, queued for the gate and queued for the plane. Beauvais scores one point on Weeze for covering the walkways to the planes (see episode 1) - which is just as well, as we spent half an hour under that cover. Suddenly, the queue turned around. We then queued once more in the arrivals area and waited for another eternity for the obvious announcement: the plane was cancelled.

I could then proceed to queue for the hotel voucher, queue for the hotel bus, and queue for the hotel room.

At half past one I could sleep.

Ryanair had requested us to be present at the airport two hours before departure. This was an obvious invitation to more queuing and backpack sitting, as well as a severe limitation of my well-deserved rest, so I decided one hour would do. And while the queue at the gate was dissolving into the queue at the airplane, I decided a cup of coffee would do.

And left the queue for the coffee bar.

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