There’s a huge difference between flying back to Canada and flying to Canada. Grammar offers subtle nuances, and I clung to that one extra word to avoid crying.
I mean, I did cry a bit—when I entered my credit card details to book my ticket in late March, for starters. The whole Ormuz Strait situation you may have heard about.
And I cried some more at random times, picturing the slightly depressing life I know so well in Ottawa.
It’s not great. It hasn’t been for a decade.
I was just fine in Chile, Paraguay, Brazil and France, but inconveniently enough, I missed Feng and Mark in at least two of those countries. This is the curse of a multicultural family. You live somewhere for convenience, not always for fun.
I am very much done with Ottawa, for a long, boring and deeply personal list of reasons I shouldn’t have revisited, yet again, on Sunday night instead of sleeping. Not that I had anything better to do with my brain. I already knew I wouldn’t leave rested because I never do when I have to get up at 04:40 a.m. to catch the 05:59 a.m. TGV to Paris.
My plan was to sleep on the train.
But first, I had to walk to the station. Not Nantes at its best at that hour—late-night parties turned sour, early-morning drift, hordes of homeless people waking up with nowhere to go, rats running the place. I made it to the gare SNCF in 20 minutes flat, carrying a 20-kilo backpack.
“I got shouted at—‘screw your mum!’—three times on the way,” I texted my mum. “Busy morning for you.”
I couldn’t fall asleep. I sat there, dozing on and off, the same thoughts circling. I love my life, but it’s exhausting. I trade lifestyles, climates, languages, apartments. I don’t lose myself, I’m 43, I know who I am, this isn’t teenage angst—but I walk a tightrope between continents, juggling the most important aspects of my life while embracing the unknown, and I’m always an inch or two from losing my balance.
So far, I’m mostly losing SIM cards.
The sun came up. The train stopped a few times, and eventually it was time to grab my backpack and jump off to avoid ending up in Brussels, the final destination—a new life in Belgium isn’t in the plan (…yet?).
Suddenly, surrounded by travellers with luggage, I went into full “I’m going to Canada” mode. Not going back, going. See what I did here. Nice mental trick.
And it paid off right away, I’m luckier when I travel.
“I’m staring at your coffee cup,” I told an airport employee on a smoke break. “This is my next step.”
“Let me see if I have an extra… nope. Just take mine, madame, I’ll grab another one later.”
“Seriously?”
“But of course.”
Who said Parisians are rude?
This time, my flight was leaving from Hall M. I know K and L—M was new.
Nothing is more French than the aéroport Paris Charles de Gaulle.
It’s entertaining, really.
The whole hall—it’s huge, really—was a mix of high fashion, overpriced French souvenirs, snacks, free video games (retro arcade or PlayStation), plus a small museum and a big open-air garden/smoking lounge.
I bought a coffee and a tube of Nuxe face cream at duty-free—café crème, my way. I watched people drop €5,000 on Dior and play video games. I stepped into the free Espace musée and found travellers staring at sculptures of naked women.
“These French, really…” an older American woman sighed, while her husband stood there, “mesmerized” by a Maillol.
I wandered. Watched. Killed time.
I killed time so well that, for almost an hour, I forgot I was flying to Ottawa at 1:10 p.m. The next gate had a flight to Rio at 1:15 p.m. If only… but I joined the Ottawa line.
And yes, Ottawa. No doubt about it. Most passengers were very WASP-y civil servants who all seemed to know each other.
“I remember you, you were at Global Affairs with Karen!”
“Don’t tell me Mike’s at the CRA now, what a move after DFO!”
They’d done something wild, five days in Paris. Can you believe it. And now they were so happy to go home. Standard complaints about France, smoky, dirty, etc. Strangely, never expensive.
Fucking kill me right here.
I took one last look at spring, green fields, trees in leaf, as we took off. Then I slept. Part boredom, part self-defense.
Eight hours later, we landed somewhere that still looked like winter. Bare. Grey.
Immigration was quick, a plane full of civil servants from Paris doesn’t raise red flags. Even I got waved through, Canadian passport in hand.
Luggage took over an hour. The carousels spat out ten suitcases at a time, and every batch got inspected by a detection dog. Why? Anything you’d smuggle from Paris is easier to buy in Canada.
Much to my disappointment, no civil servant got caught with ten kilos of fentanyl. The dog only flagged a green apple.
And just like that, I was out.
Free to go meet Feng.
Let’s make this Ottawa chapter… less painful.
