As a fellow canadian, I can sympathize with your opinion of YYZ, which for me ranks second from the bottom just ahead of CDG. In all fairness, I used to think YYZ was bad until I had to start travelling through CDG.

Most of the comments of this thread are true, but I can reinforce some in the following manner. I can state without hesitation that lack of multilingual-speaking staff at this international airport is compounded by a serious attitude problem with the staff pretty much everywhere and implicit attitude that you should speak French at all cost. French is my mother tongue, and I have no difficulty understanding the remarks of the staff at the airport. I mean, there is attitude and then there is Attitude!

I find it completely unacceptable to have french-only staff at the RER station. Gee! That's a no brainer that you should make sure you have ticket agents that can communicate with the persons transiting there. Have you ever withnessed a family of tired japanese tourists trying to buy an RER ticket from a ticket collector? Or Russians? Never mind the fact that the imbecile civil servant spoke miserable anything (including French!), she decided to take a 15minute break despite the fact she manned the only wicket open at that time! The attitude from the security agent checking the actual tickets was hardly better! Try asking him for help: "You need to ask at the wicket!". For cryin' out loud! this is an entry point for international travellers and all their f*****g signs are in French only! Then, the mecanical stairs don't work. This, of course, after the frustration of finding your way to the station following ill-placed and often confusing french-only signs (there is one for the shuttle that, if followed properly, will take you to a washroom.). Waiting for this shuttle is hardly better, with completely confusing signs: there were two "You are here" dots on the signpost, and no indication of the direction in which the shuttle (running a loop between terminal) was actually going.

It is hard enough to find luggage carts, you cannot take them in the elevators (which are themselves hard enough to find)! If that were not enough, there is clearly insufficient space at checkin so queues for various destinations and various airlines often get helplessly tangled. (In attempting to checkin for an AC flight to YYZ, I found myself in the queue for an AA flight to MIA.) The passport control officer (there is in my experience a single one unless you are travelling from the AF-terminal - whichever number it is) is not to be hurried by the long lineups of people impatiently waiting for their flights! Why should he bother? They are just tourists!

Have you ever boarded the RER with luggage? Why in Heaven's name did they not make the RER station platforms level with the train platforms? You're stuck hauling your luggage over this 30cm step and God bless you if you have to transfer... That, of course, assumes you have kept your ticket so that you can actually get out of the RER!

Of course, at the airport itself, once airside, it is next to impossible to take a decent walk to kill all the time remaining. (The idea of seating comfortably somewhere must have been originated from a non-French citizen, 'cuz these guys just ignore the concept.) The whole friggin' terminal is artificially partitioned and you must take stairs to get from one part to the other, lugging your stuff through a usually disgusting cafeteria area full of cigarette smoke.

Transfer is hardly better. I had last summer to transfer in CDG from my arrival gate to my departure gate (AMS->CDG->MAD, EU-only connection), which happen to be identical to my arrival gate. Same plane, same gate, different flight number. Of course, I had to walk for quite a while to get landside out of the dry zone, walk back (again landside) to the correct security area, check again at security and come back precisely where I started. 20 minutes of running and security checks for nothing. The security agent decided that it was suspicious to carry two laptop batteries and kept me waiting 5 minutes for a supplementary inspection.

The whole organization of CDG is designed for those who already know the system by heart and don't really need any indication, i.e. mostly the French residents. CDG is to be avoided at all costs; for all the bad things about YYZ (and I agree it is bad), CDG is worse.

That, my friend, is precisely the problem. A design worthy of a Hanna-Barbera cartoon with no place for practicality.

Yours has got to be one of the most truthful posts ever written and by far one of my favs. Aside from what you have so eloquently said, the aboslutely worst part for me is to come to CDG in a fully loaded 777 and then have to board a BUS. What is this, communist Russia in the 60s as we wait for bread?!

The uphill, downhill people movers through the "stems" are bad. But for all the faults of T1 - and there are many already listed, but lets add having only one food vendor near the gates of each stem - I found FRA even more confusing, and without AC in mid-July. It hadn't been on my itinerary, but a ground hold at ORD meant my original 6pmish UA flight to CDG left without me, so I was re-routed via the 10pm to FRA. Coming off 4 extra hours at IAD looking for a normally priced meal (thank your favorite deity for Potbelly) the FRA sauna was a nice bonus.

I'm flying out of T2 to the US on 7 November. What November 7 changes????

Thanks. Guess I'd better plan to get to CDG even earlier than usual. Expletive deleted.

I'd heard about this before leaving before Paris, and consequently didn't attempt to speak English to any Parisien/ne at any time. In fact, the only English I spoke in France was to my friends a couple of "Bosnian" beggars near the Seine, who approached me first. :D As a bonus, no one made fun of my Central Canadian accent or attempted to reply in English, which would have been the typical response in my old home, Ottawa. ^

I did find the RER system to be somewhat...bizarre, but I had just been broken down by the London tube a week before (those same awful ticket-grabbing turnstiles!), and was prepared for anything. In my case, I wasted half an hour attempting to find an open wicket at the Gare du Nord for my return trip to CDG. I just couldn't understand why I had to leave the station itself in order to buy a train ticket, but just chalked it up to inexperience at the time. I did see that most travellers were simply asking one of the many uniformed military personnel in the station for directions, and took that as a sign that I wasn't going to get much help from SNCF staff. :)

This does bring up a question -- I was travelling LIS-CDG, and couldn't find a customs/immigration official ANYWHERE when I deplaned, and consequently didn't get my passport stamped. Was I in France illegally? Oops!

Unfortunately, no. :D There is no immigration check between LIS and CDG as both are within the Schengen zone, and there is no customs check because both belong to a EU member state.

Thanks! I did wonder about that as I did go through an immigration check at LIS after travelling from LHR. Is the UK not part of the Schengen zone, then?

Right ! It seems difficult to convince them to join ;)

i seem to recall having to go through multiple security checkpoints in order to get from my ORD-CDG leg to my CDG-ATH leg, and this was back in 2000 (which is obviously pre-911). Both flights were AF; I still don't understand why we had to go through 3 WTMDs to getfrom one international flight to another on the same carrier. We never even left the austensibly "international zone" (ie: no passport control or customs).

I have to disagree on this one - CDG is bad, but MXP is HIDEOUS.

MXP is more shabby (although the new shopping mall is kinda bright and clean) but connections are much simpler and faster there than at CDG. I've never missed a connection at MXP, and only had one cancelled flight; I've missed several at CDG, and had a number of very close calls. I've made 20 minute connections at MXP (and my luggage made it) and missed 45 minute connections at CDG.

Also, the security checks are more "personal" at CDG- more pat downs, probes.

Please continue to follow this thread in the FT Paris Forum.
Thanks...
Obscure2k
TravelBuzz Moderator