Away we go.

I knew it would be difficult traveling to Europe alone with two children so I prepared myself mentally for about a month leading up to the trip.  On Tuesday evening my two small children (ages 2 and 10 months) and I headed for the airport to journey to Bern, Switzerland via Paris and Geneva.  For the first time in my life I packed very light for the trip; we only brought one suitcase, a backpack, and a stroller.  Check in went smoother than ever and we made to our gate without any shenanigans from my toddler.  Everything was going great until we were about to board the plane and the gate agent told me that I would be picking my stroller up in Geneva, not during the connection in Paris!  If you are a mom you will understand the fear that struck me at that moment.  I said, “How do you expect me to drag two small children through the Paris airport to make our connection to Geneva?  Can someone from the airline help me?  Can you please just bring up my stroller in Paris?  It’s right down there! Please? Pretty please?”  The French flight attendant I was addressing stood stern faced and simply said, “No.” (insert snooty French accent here).  She said no to all of my pleas, nothing moved her.  I asked other flight attendants and they all simply said, “No.”.  I began to think that maybe French people don’t have children.  Maybe they just incubate their young until adulthood and don’t have to deal with screaming, squirming toddlers and babies.  Worst of all they kept speaking to me in French, and I kept reminding them that I do not speak French.  I mean who do they think they are?  Do they really expect me to speak French on an Air France flight to Paris?  Can’t they tell that I am not refined enough to be speaker of French?  And most Americans speak French so badly anyway, why would they want to listen to a terrible American accent?  I say this all in gest, well about 50% in gest. 

I took my seat and figured I would have 11 hours to figure out the stroller issue and how I would get my little stinkers through the airport without the stroller.  11 hours later we arrived in Paris and I still did not have a solution.  A flight attendant told me that the airport would have loaner strollers just past the gate, lies all lies!  When we landed the Paris police were waiting at the gate looking for someone on our flight so it took forever to get off of the plane.  We had to wait in a long line while they checked every single passport, all while holding my 20lb 10 month old and trying to get my two year to stay in line and not have a major meltdown.  We had only an hour between flights so I knew we would have to book it if we were going to make the flight to Geneva.  Very funny, right?  Moving quickly is not possible with two small children.  Of course my two year old moved at a snails pace and at one point just sat down in the middle of the airport and started crying, refusing to move any further.  We still had to go through security and passport control.  When we got to passport control my two year old was just absolutely done.  She started crying and throwing her body on the floor.  I tried to put my infant in one of those luggage carts because I was willing to do anything at this point.  An airport security guard saw me and came over and told me I could not do this and she also asked why my daughter was crying.  She kept asking her, “Why you are crying?  Stop crying.  Can you stop crying?”  Proof again that the French obviously don’t have children.  My daughter screamed so much that she finally let us cut to the front of the line just to get us out of there.  My daughter sat down again after we passed immigration and I finally had to grab her by the arm and drag her to our gate.  We just barely made it to our gate and I asked the agent, “Can someone please help us down the ramp?  My daughter won’t walk and I can’t carry them both.”  She simply said, “No.”  I almost started to cry right there and I heard an American accent say, “Ma’am I can help you.  What do you need?”  An American woman, another mom, took my baby and carried him to the plane while I carried my daughter.  My daughter cried until she passed out on the plane to Geneva.  We got off the plane and went to the luggage carousel to wait for our suitcase and stroller and we waited, and waited, and we waited.  The stroller, which they emphatically told me would come out on the carousel in Geneva, did not come out.  They lost it!  Maybe the French don’t have strollers either?  Maybe they think I’m just a big weenie for needing a stroller to survive with two small children.  The lost baggage office told me they would deliver it to my hotel that night because they would surely find it.  So we went to the train station in Geneva and caught a train to our final destination, Bern. 

We’ve been here for two days and still no stroller.  I think I may have pissed off one of the French flight attendants on the flight and they are holding my stroller hostage in Paris.  The moral of this story is, when travelling with children to France only one child because they are apparently offended by the size of our gigantic double strollers.