Work trip to Paris, France - 15th to 16th October 2007

Quick trip to Paris, to see all the French people who are pretending not to care that England just knocked them out of the rugger World Cup, in their own backyard. Don't believe a word of it. The trip started with a very early Eurostar, and some very weird food whilst on the train - some sort of sausage thing that looked like a small brain. Just what you want, first thing in the morning! On the way, we came to a standstill somewhere in northern France, and were amused as the train manager explained that this was because we had "hit a dare", which we later worked out was actually a "deer".

Arriving in Paris just before lunchtime, it was a lovely sunny Autumn day, although things did start to get very cold as the afternoon turned into evening. A bit of a wander around in the evening, near the Elysee Palace where I was staying, and some good food for dinner - one thing that Paris is great for.

The main point of my visit was to go to a conference in La Defense, the Canary Wharf equivalent of Paris. It seems to be one of the "party" venues for the rugby, and had a huge screen up in the main square of La Defense, which strangely was showing the football between Scotland and Ukraine when I was looking at it. Seeing Shevchenko's face on a 20-foot TV screen was very disturbing. But the Grande Arche de La Defense was a very impressive sight in the autumn sunshine.

After an absurdly elaborate lunch (lentils with foie gras for a starter, anyone?), it was off to the Eurostar home. There, I encountered the "traditional" image of French customer service. Staff refusing to speak English at all (if you pay £450 for a return between France and England, they really should!), and refusing to do even relatively simple things to help out. Maybe they did care about the egg chasing a bit more than they were letting on, or maybe they were just being deliberately obstructive. Given that the entire French public sector (railways, metro, airport workers, etc) is on strike later this week, maybe they were just starting early.