We were in Paris last Saturday (June, 23rd) to visit the Le Bourget Aérosalon, the Paris Air Show. Suddenly, there was a large crowd of photographers, and a lot of confusion. By chance I noticed the photographers were wearing badges that said “Visit of the President” (in French, of course.)
We escaped the confusion and went to Dassault’s exhibition stand, which was in immediate neighborhood of the hall we met the crowd. Suddenly we noticed that Dassault’s employees gathered, obviously in order to welcome someone. Guess who it was?
Yup, M. Nicolas Sarcozy, the French president. We were lucky enough to stand immediately at the barrier, so I had a perfect position to film with my camcorder. Sarcozy even came our way, so I held my left hand (because I was holding the camcorder in the right one) out towards him, which he grabbed and shook.
He then left us and climbed into a jet fighter.
I was so excited that I immediately wanted to check my recording. You can’t imagine how pissed I was when I noticed that the whole scene was missing on tape. Obviously when the crowd around us had noticed that the president would come our way, someone must have pushed me so that I accidentially hit the “Record” button with my thumb which stopped the recording again at the beginning of the scene.
Luckily enough, my girlfriend Mona made some shots with my still-image camera. Here is one of them (the arm visible at the left edge of the photo is mine :-)).
I’m not exactly someone who agrees with Sarcozy’s views or way of doing politics, but it was a very special occasion anyway.
