{"id":39284,"date":"2014-05-27T21:59:53","date_gmt":"2014-05-27T21:59:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/?p=39284"},"modified":"2014-09-14T00:00:51","modified_gmt":"2014-09-14T00:00:51","slug":"39284","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/?p=39284","title":{"rendered":"Wrong side of the town"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>REB B line fm CDG to Paris cost \u20ac9.75 and it&#8217;s an hour long ride. It departed at 9:55am and got to Gare du Nord in only 30 min. The scenery on route is extremely ugly. Just when two tall buildings appeared &#8211; I thought we were about to enter the civilization, the train went underground.<\/p>\n<p>No passport checking<\/p>\n<p>A good payback for my own laziness: I asked for direction at the airport instead checking my own note. The staff gave me the wrong direction so I ended up at <em>Gare d&#8217;Austerlitz<\/em>. I felt something was wrong when I arrived at the station <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/?p=39010\">where there&#8217;s no bums around<\/a>.\u00a0The female clerk at the ticket booth was rather rude.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/20140826120425-909239d1-me.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-39331\" src=\"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/20140826120425-909239d1-me-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"20140826120425-909239d1-me\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>I went up to the street and still saw no bums. I asked a man who&#8217;s walking by for direction. He looked at me\u00a0sadly\u00a0and replied,<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Roland Garros? You&#8217;re at the wrong side of the town.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>OMG, I cried out loud.<\/p>\n<p>A bad habit: I didn&#8217;t bother to write down the Metro route thinking I could always ask, IF I forget. Think again. I forgot which Metro station to go to once I landed. At the Information booth at the CDG, they directed me to the east side of the city <em>Mairie de Montreuil<\/em> on Line 9. The Open is at <em>Michel-Ange Auteuil<\/em> on Line 10, at the west side of the city. I knew something is wrong because I didn&#8217;t see any tennis bums on the train. (I had a little unpleasant exchange with the woman at the ticket booth). I got on the street and asked a person who was walking by me if he knew where the Stade Roland Garros is.<br \/>\nHe stopped and said,<br \/>\n&#8220;I think you&#8217;re at the wrong part of the city.&#8221; He looked down at me.<br \/>\nI was depressed.<br \/>\n&#8220;Who told you to come here?&#8221; He asked.<br \/>\n&#8220;The information man at the CDG.&#8221; I replied.<br \/>\n&#8220;You know what,&#8221; He shifted a little and said, &#8220;you asked me the same question the last time.&#8221;<br \/>\nI was totally confused. How could that be?<br \/>\n&#8220;You were here the last time when you went to the Open.&#8221; He insisted.<br \/>\nI just couldn&#8217;t believe it. So I asked if I could take a picture of him. He agreed.<br \/>\n&#8220;You can use a cup of coffee.&#8221; He said.<br \/>\nI wanted to hit something or scream. but mostly mad at myself. I came here for the French Open, and all I needed is how to get there. How difficult would that task be? Or at least remember the gener al direction. (Now come to think about his claiming that I&#8217;d asked him once before, it could not have been because I went there only once and I went to the right Metro station.)<br \/>\nHe ended up ushered me back\u00a0to\u00a0the station and gave me a ticket.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>REB B line fm CDG to Paris cost \u20ac9.75 and it&#8217;s an hour long ride. It departed at 9:55am and got to Gare du Nord in only 30 min. The scenery on route is extremely ugly. Just when two tall buildings appeared &#8211; I thought we were about to enter the civilization, the train went [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39284\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}