Way back in 2006, Leigh and I found a deal to go to Paris for only $499 a person, and it included the flight and hotel for 5 days. We were like, how can we not take part of this tres magnifique deal?!
Anyway, when you do one of those deals, they always offer you the cheapest flight and you can pay more to change the time, or the airline. Our flight happened to be on Air India and the times worked. Leigh and I figured, what’s the difference? So we booked it.
We get on the plane and I end up between Leigh and this much older woman who was sitting by the window. Things seem mostly okay; we watch a movie or whatever, we ate the airplane food they offered (which was curry! Pretty good!). Suddenly when the movie is ending the woman next to me starts holding her watch out to me and speaking to me in a language I was very unfamiliar with. She kept waving the watch and pointing at it, so I just tried to say, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. I’m sorry. Yeah, I don’t get it. No, I still don't get it. I don't know. Please stop.” But she just kept hitting my arm and then pointing to watch with a really annoyed expression.
So I turned to Leigh and went “I don’t know what to do here” so for some reason, Leigh takes the watch, changes the time to Parisian time, and gives it back. She was like, “Maybe she just wants it updated.” (Meanwhile, the flight was stopping in Paris just to let off like, ten people. The rest of the people were going to Mumbai and never even getting off the airplane.)
The woman takes back the watch and seems annoyed, but finally stops trying to talk to me after pointing at it a few more times. We try to go to sleep, and just as I drift off in my seat I am woken up by the woman, who has put her head on my shoulder to try and sleep herself. I said, “oh. No. No, no no.” And she just looked at me. I start to sleep and she does it again.
At this point I am starting to get a little annoyed because we don’t have a lot of time in Paris and I need some freaking sleep so I’m not passing out when we land. But I just keep being woken up and trying to use gestures to show that I’m not cool with cuddling with a strange older woman.
After getting maybe 20 minutes here and there throughout the night, they serve the morning meal. I was like, “thank God, coffee.” I stir my coffee and put the tiny spoon down on my tray. The woman next to me picks up my spoon (Why?! She had the SAME EXACT THING!) and as I stare confusedly, she stirs her own coffee, puts the spoon in her mouth, then puts it back down on my tray. It really wasn’t cool. Needless to say, I was unable to consume my tiny plane yogurt.
After breakfast she starts to freak out a little bit so Leigh and I try to let her out of her seat; she doesn’t want to get up, she just is talking agitatedly and apparently nobody on the plane could communicate with her. She spoke a dialect that nobody knew so she was just yelling, I was staring, and the flight attendants were trying to just calm her down. She calms down enough, gets up to use the bathroom, and I am so ready to get off this flight.
The woman comes back and we go to let her back into her seat, but she emphatically gestures to show us that we should just shift in and take the window. I move to the window, Leigh the middle, and the woman sits on the end.
I am like, “oh good, at least now I can look out the window and enjoy seeing Paris as we fly in!” That thought was great for about 5 seconds, until I realized the seat stank. I was like, “uh oh!” and showed Leigh that there was just vomit down the wall of the plane like 2 inches from me. Leigh was like “oh, here, just cover it with this blanket and come share the middle seat with me.” So we jam our 2 bodies into a seat and a half, and then Leigh goes, “oh God, that vomit is going to make me sick” and takes out the barf bag and starts dry heaving. I was in hell.
Luckily she held it together, and we landed in Paris. Leigh gets out of our row and the woman moves back in as soon as Leigh is out. So I stand up and am showing her I have to get off the plane... she just won’t let me out. To the point that a mess of flight attendants had to come over. The woman was yelling and refusing to move, I was freaking out that I was going to end up in Mumbai if I didn’t get the fuck off that plane, and I was really tired of sitting with vomit. They ended up physically pulling her out of the way so I could get off the plane.
Anyway, I mean, Paris was great.
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