Ze French...dey are lazy barstards

I survived my trip to France and made it back to the UK. Nimes, France is not a bad place...if you natively speak French or fluent in French...and have your own hire car...all of which we lacked on our lovely 2-day field trip. Well I say 2 days it turned into 4 days but I'll recount the story properly.

Friday, late morning. I get a phone call from the Business Unit Manager. "Go to France now, now, now!!! Go! Go ! Go!" (well not quite like that but you get the idea of urgency.)

We hop on some trains (there is one flight a day to Nimes and we missed it by HOURS) and some many many hours later pull into our hotel at 23:15 local time. Oh before I carry on, the TGV is one AWESOME train system. Talk about fast and smooth. Superb. Ahh forgot to mention, just as we exit the Eurostar, we get a voicemail message from the Business Unit Manager; he was trying to get us back as the Frenchies are already performing the Engine run. We called back and because we were quite far into the trip, told to go to nimes, pick up a piece of paper and go home.

So back to the story we got to our hotel at 23:15. Next morning we get a taxi to the airport (where the engine run was happening)) and my first impression of Nimes in daylight was...what a shit hole. I had no expectations of the place but from what I saw on the journey the place was a mixture of industrial estate and desolate farm lands.

We get to our plane and told the engine run had no happened due to a hydraulic leak. Which is now fixed but now they have a fuel leak. They tried this and that and we suggested a few possible solutions but it didn't cure the leak and by 2pm the Aircraft Technicians said they need a part they do not have in stock and are now going home for the day and work continues on monday. During the day though I spotted one of our previous customers, Cargo Italia. Their DC10 parked up and looking very very lonely. :(



With nothing to do for the rest of Saturday we hit nimes town centre. Second impression of Nimes, this is a pretty smart place! And damn expensive! Everything is twice the price compared with the UK.

So first up the Colosseum where bull fights happen. The guy pictured is the Workshop Manager who went with me to Nimes.



Some more random pictures:











Time for some random dinner! We ordered stuff and had no idea what we ordered though I do know I got the wrong starter...!
Random starter...

Squid main...the rice was utter cack.

Creme Brulee...mmm...I could eat a jar full of this stuff!


We sort of hit the pub afterwards and met up with a random English brummie girl and some random french guys. I wasn't that interested but I took a picture of one french dude and this brummie girl...This was after it started to rain and to prove our britishness we sat out in the rain till every other person ran back into the pub. We were very very soaked!



Sunday was a total waste of a day. Our hotel was situated in amongst the French versions of Ikea and B&Q and even worse...all the shops were shut on a Sunday. So we spent it idyllically sleeping in our nice air conditioned rooms.

Roll on Monday and what do we see out on "the pan"?



Yeah baby! The Royal Netherlands Air Force DC10!!! Must be good to go, right..? Wrong. Still had the fuel leak issue but after 2 or 3 hours of faffing about it somehow fixed itself...I presume some numpty didn't torque up all the bolts correctly. After that they then complained another part was faulty...*sigh* here we go again...however after a quick swap of one component and we are ready to go.



If you are really geeky and want to listen to an Aircraft engine at various speeds click on these video links. If not...just watching one will give you an idea of the next two hours "at work".







After the run was finished we just had to collect our bit of paper and say goodbye to the Royal Netherlands Air Force guys and goodbye to Sabena, our "hosts". The rush home was manic to say the least. Just about made it to the train station in Nimes to catch the next TGV back to Paris (and in time for the last Eurostar home) only to find out...our magical "fully flexible tickets" were infact now "out of date". So we had to buy another pair of tickets home at some astronomical price rush to the platform and jump on the TGV. Next was negotiating the Paris metro to get our connecting ride home on the Eurostar at another train station on the other side of Paris. we follow the metro signs and...it's all closed off! Enter panic mode and speaking to French people in English and we find out there has been a fire in the Metro and it's shut for the time being.

So we now have to run outside queue for a taxi and somehow make it to the Eurostart in the next 40 minutes! You'd think that was plenty of time...20 minutes of that was waiting for a taxi. Everyone who couldn't use the metro was using taxis!!!

Somehow, we made it to the Eurostar in time and I eventually made it home through my door just after 1am this morning.

It was a fun and eventful trip with the bonus being getting paid some stupid amount of money for sitting on my arse! My best guess is an extra £1400 into my wages before tax. Lovely.