Ten Years Later
On September 11, 2001 I was in Paris. I'd traveled from LA to Paris with a classmate from UCLA business school as part of an international field study project. On that day, as the world had changed forever, I was at the airport headed from Paris to Nice. What struck me as extremely unusual as I was about to board my flight was the flood of armored soldiers carrying machine guns through the airport. I had never seen a machine gun up close before and here were dozens of soldiers moving through the airport with machine guns drawn.
Little did I know at the time that shortly before my flight was set to depart, the terrorist acts of that day had occurred in the US. I just assumed that machine gun clad soldiers in an airport was commonplace in France (this was my first trip to this country). When we landed in Nice, where we were going to attend a meeting with our field study client, a big sign greeted me and my classmate. It said that our meeting had been cancelled due to "events in the United States." At this point, I had no idea what had happened. We got in a taxi to head to our hotel. The driver was listening to the radio of a news report (in French of course). Throughout the newscast, the only words I could make out and understand were the names of the airlines that had been impacted-as these were the only words that were in English. We assumed there had been a plane crash, but of course we did not understand the full extent of what had happened. When we asked the driver what happened, he held up his middle and index fingers on one hand, and thrust the fingers on the other hand at them. He did not speak a word of English and we had no idea what he was trying to tell us.
It was not until we got to our hotel that we learned what had happened. The lobby was packed with people that could not check out because they had no place to go. No flights were available to take them home. It was then that we learned from the stranded business people and tourists what had happened. It was not until I finally got moved to another hotel and turned on the TV in my room that I really understood the impact of what had happened earlier that day.
Reaching friends and family back in NY was not possible for the first few days I was in Nice. I tried the phones and the Internet cafes relentlessly to get through, but with no success. Days later I was able to book myself on a flight back to LA, but the only flight I could get left from London.
With the 10 year anniversary of this tragedy upon us, I can remember the details of the days following 9/11 with great clarity. I can barely remember what I did last weekend, but events 10 years ago I can recall like they happened yesterday. 