My husband, John, and I were in Paris last week. We had to be at the airport at 6:00 am to catch a plane to Munich, so we found out when the first train left for the airport. Turns out that it left from the RER station near our apartment at 5:15, which would get us to Charles De Gaulle at 6:00. How perfect was that?! We bought our ticket ahead so we wouldn’t have to worry about the ticket machines working or not. We had been taking the trains all over Paris for the week and had talked on numerous occasions about how easy and efficient they were.
This picture was taken during the day, so imagine 5:00 am and it’s dark out – we’ve pulled our suitcases and backpacks from the apartment to the RER and the station is closed! We stood there and thought maybe it opened just before the first train arrives. We stood there for 10 minutes and another man showed up, also heading to the airport. Then, a third man showed up and we’re all just standing around waiting. Finally, a fourth man showed up and said – “oh, they’re on strike again.”
Here comes the interesting part. I had been chatting with the first man and found out he was going to visit his son in Copenhagen. He was originally from Ireland, but had been living in Paris for 30 years. He asked us if we wanted to share a taxi to the airport. Since he knew what he was doing we figured it was our best bet at getting there.
The man travels extensively for business. I told him we’d give our train tickets to him because someone might as well use them. When we all got out of the taxi he said that we could just give him 10 euros as our share for the taxi ride since we gave him our tickets. So, we got to the airport at the same time as if we had taken the train. We met someone who spoke English and was going to the same place as we were. And, it all happened at 5:00 am, when most of Paris was asleep! What do you suppose the odds are of all of those things lining up? I love synchronicity!
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