Off to Algeria...

Not surprisingly there aren't too many airlines fly to the somewhat turbulent state of Algeria. Alitalia and Air France in fact are the only two European carriers who fly there.

Sitting in the Air France departure lounge, I stocked up on my newspapers once again (The FT, The Herald Tribune, Le Monde / Le Figarro, L'Equipe, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal). I generally don't buy the paper while I'm hear, so I use my frequent flights with Air France to stock up on a supply that will last me the whole of each trip. The one story that I've been following keenly through the FT is the Chinese Vs. European Global Positioning Systems (I don't know why there just seems to always be updates on the situation when I've been flying - maybe a topic for a post on its own).

As I've mentioned, this was one of very few flights to Algeria from Europe and the lounge soon began to fill with familiar faces. The German, Polish, French, Spanish and Russian team were all on my flight. I was also joined by Chris Buxton from the British team, who'd flown in from Hungary that morning. We talked for a bit, while through the window we could see the baggage handlers struggling to fit at least 40 fencing bags onto one plane. Sure enough the flight was delayed as a result and I prayed that my bag would not be one of those left on the tarmac.

...

During the flight, the man middle-aged man next to me, turned to me and asked me something. What he had said was unclear and I stared blankly back at him. He repeated what he had said in what I now realised and understood was a Geordie accent. It turned out he was a oil worker for Statoil going out on a six week rotation in Algeria. I could tell he wasn't particularly fond of the place, least of all because it kept him from his wife and children for a month and a half at a time.

We exchanged pleasantries and I spoke about why I was going to Algeria. The general theme of our discussion was 'why would you want to go to Algeria, if you didn't have to?'. Aside from the on-going terrorist threat and recent travel advisories given by many European states and the US, Brian also suggested that the recent earthquake in the last year which killed 30,000 people was another good reason not to go to Algeria. I paused and then asked -

"What do you do in the case of an earthquake?". I remembered from American shows talk of standing in doorways.
"No, you just get the hell out of the building"
"Oh, right", mentally patting myself on the back for choosing to go to Algeria.
"If you're stuck get under a table but mainly you want to get the hell out of there".
"Right, cheers..."

...

Talking to this friendly Geordie certainly passed the time quickly during the flight, if not also thoroughly terrifying me and we touched down, after what seemed like no time at all, in Algers International Airport. The Airport was very modern in fact and had apparently just been completed by Japanese contractors in the past year or two.

Before, we reached the carousels there was a huge queue to get through passport control. This was to be the first occasion where the farcical nature of Algerian society was to be revealed to me.

The process of clearing the passport and visa was of course a lengthy one and each person had to spend the best part of a minute standing in front of their little boxes as the passport police scrutinised them, their passport, their visa, their landing card (which contained all the same information as the passport and visa) and then them again. When this process was complete the was a lengthy series of stamping and more stamping and some more stamping for good measure before the person was allowed pass. The guard would then obviously take a few seconds to collect himself to collect before calling the next person.

As one could imagine then, the 5 queues that had formed went all the way to the back of the hall space available for them and were all maybe 50 people deep. All of sudden however, a random man with a suit, walkie-talkie and of course a powerful mustache came forward and started beckoning all the fencers to come forward to one line. He positioned us all in front of one of the boxes, at which point the guard at that box left his post, never to return while I was there. The Polish at this point tried to skip to the front of the queue to the left of us, to the muffled cry of "mfuff offff!" in countless languages.

I seized my chance while I could and while the Polish were being berated and turned to face their critics I nipped in ahead of them. I went through a quick (pointless) x-raying, metal detector and frisking (I couldn't understand having this at this point) and went on to the baggage reclaim. My bag was already waiting for me there and I wandered on through the exit expecting to see members of the Algerian fed to greet me... but no...

Walking out along the railings there was no sign of anyone official, least not someone fencing offical like. There were a group of inbred-looking football hooligans waiting to welcome back their team after some foreign triumph but that wasn't very comforting. I must have been the first fencer out the gates by easily half an hour. I went to the information desk and asked them in French to call members of the Algerian federation to the desk. I'd texted back to Dublin to check that there was to be a pick-up arranged for the airport but was soon texted back to be told that the Algerian federation weren't answering their phone.

Eventually, the various teams began to arrive out of the gate and I felt somewhat safer amongst there number. In hindsight I'm not particularly sure of the wisdom of standing in the middle of the French team given France's roll in Algerian history but wait I did. All the teams were already out and waiting before anyone came from the Algerian federation.

Finally, buses arrived and I was put in with the French with whom I was to share my hotel - "le Centre National de l'Armeé" [The National Headquarters]. We waited for our police escort and then set off through the suburbs of Algeria.

One of the most bizarre things about travelling around the roads of Algers is that at every possible junction between two and six policemen armed with Kalashnikov's will be standing around by all accounts doing nothing. I was told that Algers has something like 130,000 active policemen in active duty. We must have seen a fair portion of these just on our trip to the hotel.

...

Huge, dilapidated apartment blocks seem to be the stable of Algerian architecture. The towering blocks would be placed haphazardly over uneven ground, some would have bizarre extensions to them hanging precariously into mid-air or over other buildings. The vegetation which interspersed the blocks however was quite lush and green and not the arid waste land one might have seen in the likes of Greece. The vegetation and even grass had a very lush tropical sense to it. One got the impression that there was a country of great natural beauty out there even if it was covered in the excrement of hundreds of year of human hostility and unrest.

...

The five star hotel was quite nice. While it definitely wouldn't have been a five star hotel anywhere else in the world it was obviously the best that Algeria had to offer. Bizarrely enough it was divided into two entirely separate buildings. Myself the French and the Italians were staying in the slightly smaller of the two, which still possessed a lavish marble reception, swimming pool and saunas.

My room was very spacious with a remote control for the lights as well as the TV. I brought my bags in and then flopped down on the bed, tired from travelling. Crack! The bed was rock-solid. It was as if the bed-sheet were a table-cloth on a mahogany dining room table. This would probably prove a challenge, I thought to myself.

...

Jean-Philipe Daurelle (my coach from USMT and French National coach [name dropped]) had suggested that I eat with the French team that evening and with the alternative being eating alone, I gladly accepted. There was a buffet laid on for us and I carefully skirted the salads and anything else that may have been touched by local water and had some lasagne in the end. It was a good chance to get to know a few more of the guys from the French team and I made whatever small talk I could before calling it a night at a reasonable hour.

...

The problem of the rock-hard mattress was eventually solved by taking the two pillows off the second double bed in my room and draping myself across them. Miraculously, I got to sleep quite quickly and had a reasonable nights sleep. Still I have no plans on sleeping on my kitchen table when I get back home...