My first ever visit to France
was a 4 day business trip where I spent about 3.5 total hours in Paris (all at
the airport), 10 hours in Boulogne-Billancourt (located about 30 km outside of
Paris, and where my company’s global headquarters reside) and the rest of the
time at Chateauform in Rochefort-en-Yvelines. Chateauform is a converted palace (that’s what
chateau means) that now serves as a hotel/conference center/college campus
student center/mancave. Here’s a
picture:
Chateauform is replete with
TV screens, video games, foosball tables and large quantities of all types of
food and beverage everywhere.
More on all of these things later.
The trip began with a 5:30 pm flight on Monday, May 18 from New York’s JFK airport, which is never a good thing because of where we live in NJ. JFK is a nightmare to drive to and from, especially since I’m returning home at 8 pm on a Friday night and will have to navigate through obscene amounts of traffic. As I’m writing this, my business trip is finished and I’m on the return flight dreading that drive home, but thank goodness my company springs for a car service. We chose JFK because this flight to/from this airport was the only way I could ensure that I wouldn’t land at 3 am on a Saturday.
No issues getting to the
airport or onto the flight to Paris, though I did bristle at the price of a
candy bar at the airport (5 bucks!). I
didn’t feel bad saying “never mind” to the cashier.
My ticket was business class,
which obviously provides way more comfortable accommodations than economy. You can recline your seat to be almost flat
as a bed, you get a meal with multiple appetizers, a main course and dessert, unlimited
bread, unlimited drinks, a pillow, a blanket, socks and slippers, and a travel
kit with a number of other goodies to make your trip as cozy as possible. Very nice when you land at 8 am local time at
your destination and basically have to go right to the office from the plane
after flying through the night. I can’t
imagine having to do that after flying economy.
Business class, however, is a
few steps below first class, which on this airline (AirFrance) meant oversized,
cushiony leather seats that are larger than anything I’d ever seen on an
airplane, plus who knows what other amenities.
We have a recliner at home that my wife and I can almost sit on side by
side; those seats in first class looked bigger to me. My business class round trip ticket cost over
$7,000, the first class ticket must have been double. Wow.
The flight to France was
pleasant except for the fact that it’s clear within about a millisecond that I
don’t speak any French, yet all of the flight attendants insisted on addressing
me in French each and every time they spoke to me. I was turned off forever to the French
language in the 6th grade when I found out that my name would be
“Michel” (pronounced like the female Michelle in English). So I never devoted
any effort to learn any words or phrases except for the words that everyone
knows, like merci or bon jour. The
flight attendants almost seemed put off that they had to revert to English
(maybe that was just my perception). I
have the say the flight attendants on my return flight are very friendly, maybe
because we’re heading back to the U.S.
Once at Charles de Gaulle
airport at 8:30 am on Tuesday morning, it took a bit for me to navigate my way
to the customs area. I had to take a
tram that had multiple stops, but I didn’t know which one got me to the airport
exit. I simply followed people off at
the second tram stop, hoping we were all going to the same place. I ultimately
found my way to the correct exit. After
about 15 minutes of more searching, due to spotty cellular data service so I
couldn’t access my e-mail with the phone number for my driver, I found the guy
who would take me to my hotel, a Courtyard Marriott in Boulogne.
My first meeting at the
headquarter offices wasn’t until noon, so I decided to freshen up a bit at the
hotel. This became problematic because I
couldn’t figure out how to turn on any of the lights in my room. Not one of the 6 light switches seemed to do
anything, including the bathroom, which I wound up using in the dark with the
door open. A bit frustrated, and on a
hunch, I googled “How to turn on the lights in a French hotel room” (the Wi-Fi
worked great) and immediately found a 1 minute how-to video on YouTube. France is very socially and environmentally
conscious, so conservation is a common practice. Case in point is the 2 button flushing system
on all of the toilets that I came across, 1 of the buttons being for “lighter”
jobs that can function just fine with less water, and the other button for
“weightier” matters where a full flush is required.
As you walk into the hotel
room, there is a slot on the wall where you insert your room key (of course I
didn’t see it at first because the lights weren’t on!). With the room key in place, power to the
light switches is activated. This is to
prevent people from wasting electricity by leaving the lights on while not in
the room. Pretty responsible, I suppose. I’m just glad that I arrived at 10:15 in the
morning and not in the middle of the night.
Another interesting item about
the hotel room was the lack of a shower curtain in the bathroom. There was only a pane of glass that extended
about half the length of the tub, from the top of the tub up to the ceiling. I didn’t seem to get any water on the
bathroom floor while showering, so the French might have something with the no
shower curtain thing. I remember a
British guy that lived in the U.S. on an expatriate assignment tell me that
while he loved the States, he felt we were incredibly backwards in the design
of our bathrooms. I may have to concede
to the Europeans on that one.
Another difference in
bathroom design is the public men’s rooms at the hotels and in our company
offices. There are 2 main differences;
there are no urinals and the toilets are not in stalls, they’re in full,
individual rooms with a real door and floor to ceiling walls. Very nice for privacy, and again, I believe
an improvement on the U.S. version. At my last company, somebody used to hang
long strips of toilet paper over the seams of the stalls in the men’s rooms,
presumably to guard against anyone sneaking a peak while they were in
there. I don’t know about you, but the
last thing I want to see is some guy doing his business on a toilet, but maybe
that’s just me.
Also, I almost flooded the
bathroom, because I decided to shave and I couldn’t figure out how to unstop
the sink. The water filled to the top
and almost spilled over before I located a lever that was “hidden” behind the
base of the faucet.
After my little hotel room
adventure, I took a cab to the office, which wound up being only about a mile
away and 15€ (about $17). So after my
meetings ended around 6 pm, I decided to walk back to the hotel (I won’t bore
anyone that’s not already bored with the content of any of the business
conducted during any meetings on this trip).
It did start to rain about halfway back; thankfully I had a small
umbrella that I always keep in my work bag for such occasions. I felt smart.
Spotty cellular service was a
common theme throughout the trip. I
didn’t pay attention while the taxi drove me to the offices, so I Google mapped
a walking route back. Not only did the
French street names spoken from the app sound unrecognizable to me because the
proper pronunciation doesn’t seem intuitive (unlike Spanish or even Japanese),
but I lost connection to the network at least 4 times. So I found myself walking in the wrong
direction and in circles. Another
challenge was the lack of street signs on a street post at every corner. Many times the street name was posted on the
side of a building, which I didn’t realize until about 25 minutes into my
journey. In all, it took me an hour to
walk about a mile.
A couple of observations
during this return walk to the hotel:
-A lot of people ride
electric scooters and motorcycles, both 2 and 3-wheeled. There are dedicated parking spaces on the
streets for motorcycles, like the parking spots for bicycles in the Netherlands
or the city bike parking spaces we have in NYC
-I definitely felt like the
out-of-shape American. Lots of people
walking on the streets and not really anybody looked heavy to me. Even my French co-workers all appeared to be
in terrific shape. More on being out of
shape later
-Many people were smoking
cigarettes, so while people looked in shape, perhaps their overall health was
not so good. I was also surprised at the
number of people from my company that smoke, I don’t really see a lot of smokers
at our offices in the U.S.
-On the sides of the street,
many places had a slightly raised curb area, on top of which cars could park and
then a higher sidewalk where people walk
-The only evidence I saw of a
U.S.-based restaurant was a KFC
-Finally, there were quite a
number of naked statues, male and female, everywhere. There was a painting of naked statues in my
hotel room, statues in a park that I passed and then again all over the outside
grounds at the chateau where I spent the majority of the time. All done in the same spirit of Michelangelo’s
“David” statue. Sheesh.
While on my way back, my boss
called me and said that if I was done for the evening, that I should just go
straight to the chateau to meet up. He
had been there since Monday at some other meetings, my first meeting was
scheduled there for Wednesday, and so I was going to spend Tuesday night at the
Marriott, then head over on Wednesday morning. It was about 6:15 pm when he called, and the
chateau was about 40 minutes away, so I decided to go for it. I needed to check out of my hotel, so that
meant that the company paid for 2 nights at the Marriott, Monday night, which
allowed me to check in at 10 am on Tuesday when I arrived, and then Tuesday
night, where I checked out at 7:30 pm.
So a total of 1 hour in the hotel room, half of which was spent trying
to figure out how to work the lights, cost 659€ (around $725). I’m glad I’m not paying.
I didn’t have time to
exchange any dollars for euros at the airport, and the cafeteria in our office
building only accepted cash, so I just skipped lunch. I was very hungry, and I figured that dinner
would be over by the time I got to the chateau, since I would be arriving at
around 8:30. So I grabbed a sandwich at
the hotel restaurant. It was a
quadruple-decker grilled chicken breast, hard-boiled egg, bacon, lettuce and
tomato with mayo, a CEBLT, with a side of fries. It was very good, but I only got halfway
through it before I couldn’t eat anymore.
I arrived at the chateau to
find that it really was a palace. It was
enormous. There is an uphill, curving drive that was maybe a mile long, you
arrive at the top to a large pool, reminiscent of the Capitol Reflecting Pool
in Washington, D.C. There are palatial
columns all around, and many acres of greenery, including a full golf
course. The story goes that this palace
was built by royalty 150 years ago, by a husband as a surprise gift for his
wife. He had it designed as a replica to
another palace that was just outside of Paris, but 3x larger. However, when the wife was presented with
this gift upon completion, she rejected it because even though it was humongous
and opulent, she didn’t like the fact that it was not unique. So it remained unoccupied for many decades
until it was converted into a hotel/conference center for businesses to hold
meetings and events.
Around 8:35 pm, I found a
group of about 15-20 work colleagues in the “lobby”, seated around a large
table of various breads, cheeses, meats, and of course lots of liquor. You know how the French revere their
wine. I figured they were wrapping up
dinner, but it turns out, they hadn’t even started yet, they were waiting for
me to arrive. It is customary to eat
dinner after 8 pm, and sometimes not until 9 pm. I was actually ready to go to bed after
having slept only about 3 hours on the plane ride the night before, and the
time change was starting to get to me.
However, we all went into a dining area where we were served a 4-course
meal until about 11 pm. And we did that
each of the 3 nights I stayed there, the last night we didn’t finish until
after 11:30, where many people then went to do karaoke in one of the other
rooms. I called it a night when they started
singing and dancing to “Dancing Queen”.
One of the things you notice
is that the sun doesn’t set until around 9:30, so it’s still very light out
until 10 pm or later. My kids would
never want to go to bed if that was the case where we live in NJ.
We did work from 8:30 am to
6:30 pm every day, but the nights were full of food and drink, which I
understand is customary for French business meetings so that people can build
relationships outside of the office.
This is very important to the French culture, so I had to play along.
Everywhere you turned
throughout the day, there was quiche and freshly made crepes and a dozen
different cheeses and breads and fruits and desserts and jars of candy and all
kinds of drinks:
The consumption was
non-stop. I really never saw so much
food at a work event in my life, I can’t imagine how much it cost to put all of
it together. Ultimately, there were
about 50 colleagues from all over the world that participated.
During breaks and before or
after hours, there were game rooms where you could play video games, throw
darts, play golf, do archery or participate in dozens of other activities.
One of the things I did was
go on a bike ride with a German colleague I met, his name is Veysel. Very nice
guy, invited anyone that wanted to join for ride at 7 am, before the meetings
were to begin at 8:30. I went with him
on Thursday morning. What I realized
when I joined him was that he is an avid biker.
He showed up in full biking gear, with the biker pants, special shoes,
his own helmet, gloves, and the whole nine yards. I later found out that he bikes about 20
kilometers to and from work every day. I
should have known because even though he isn’t tall, his body build looks
solid, akin to a finely engineered machine that the Germans are so well known
for. Dummy me also forgot that the
palace is at the top of a hill, so as we set off down the road that let up to
the castle, it hit me that I would have to get back up there at the end. Duhhh!
We exited the palace grounds
and did a loop through the surrounding neighborhood, it took about 25 minutes,
but I could tell that I was holding Veysel back. After the first loop, my thighs were
screaming and I was spent, especially with the knowledge that I would now have
to climb the hill, hopefully in time for our first meeting. Veysel asked if I wanted to do another loop,
I kindly declined, telling him that I didn’t want to hold him up anymore. Plus, I didn’t want him to watch me agonize
over that mile-long climb. He took off
for a second loop and I rested for about 5 minutes. Then a horrific thought
came to me. What if he does a second
loop around the neighborhood and then beats me back to the castle! I was almost in a panic as I “raced” back up,
checking frequently over my shoulder to make sure he wasn’t on my tail. Raced
is probably a kind term, it was half-pedaling/half-frantic walking the bike,
terrified that I wasn’t going to make it back in time. My pride was left somewhat intact as I
stumbled back to the finish, put the bike back in the rack and quickly scooted
to my room before Veysel could see me.
A couple of other things I
observed about the interactions with my French colleagues. Men are generally dominant and the women
generally accept this. I noticed it
during a number of previous business meetings, where the men would sometimes
make playful, “off-putting” comments about women in general, even about the
women in the room, and the women would just laugh about it. They would be comments like “needing a man to
do a job correctly” or “that project was probably in trouble because a woman
was handling it”, and the like.
Something you would NEVER get away with saying in the U.S., and if said
often enough, could eventually lead to disciplinary action in the workplace. And of course, not true. The majority of the things I learned about
the technical side of my career, I learned from women. I was very surprised that this was just
laughed at by the women in the room.
Perhaps because the men making the comments were in senior positions,
and the woman were being respectful but still, way not OK.
Another practice is the
opening of a wine bottle at dinner. If
men and women are seated together, the women are not supposed to drink until
one of the men opens the bottle, takes a whiff and a small sip, and declares
the wine acceptable. I saw this happen
without fail. On the last night, I was a little late getting to dinner, there
were 7 or 8 round tables set up, and the only table with open spots had 5 other
women already seated. I sat down and
they said that it was my job to open the wine.
I hadn’t eaten with any of them yet, so they didn’t know that I don’t
drink, it was only after I said that I don’t know how to open a wine bottle
that they agreed that they should just go ahead themselves.
Anyway, that’s about it. I hope to go back to France for a visit
again, where I’ll have time to do some sight-seeing. The landscape was very green and pretty, it’s
the first thing I noticed when we landed at the airport in Paris. Reminiscent of landing at Newark Airport in
NJ. NOT!!
