I was really excited to take the train from Barcelona to Paris. I have excellent memories of taking an overnight train from Paris to Rome when I was younger, and I was hoping to replicate the experience. I was looking forward to a fun adventure, one that might not be reproducible with the advent of high speed trains. What I forgot is that adventures tend to be a lot less fun when you're actually living them. They make for good stories after the fact, though.
We got to the train station at around 4:00 for our 6:30 train. The first train took us to Perpignan, about an hour and a half away. The second, overnight train left from Perpignan at about 9:40 and would get us to Paris at 7:30 the next morning. We'd bought a bottle of wine for the journey and getting to the train station so early gave us time to get the lay of the land and find sandwiches for dinner. It also gave us a ton of time to sit and read, which we did until the train started boarding.
At abut 6:10, when the line had died down a bit, we went up to the counter to present our tickets and board the train. We were not allowed to board the train. Our tickets were for the following day.
I'm fairly certain that at this point my heart stopped beating as it plunged into my stomach. I couldn't believe I'd made such a stupid mistake when booking the tickets.
I proceeded to panic, barely holding it together enough to follow Kevin around as we tried to first exchange our tickets, then scrap them and buy new ones. I'm not lying when I say that I was barely holding it together. I was beginning to hyperventilate, and was having trouble thinking clearly enough to figure out a next step. But Kevin is completely cool under stress and was able to follow everyone's directions and get us into the correct line.
I should also mention that it's a damn good thing he trained me like a dog. Anyone who has spent a significant amount of time with us will have noticed that Kevin has a specific, two-toned whistle that I respond to almost subconsciously. (He trained me to do this without my knowledge.) Like a dog, I can even hear it when almost no one else can, because I'm so attuned to it. But it's especially useful when, for example, we get separated in a crowded French train station. I can always find him almost instantly and with very little conscious thought. Handy when I'm panicking.
We made it to the counter with about seven minutes to spare. The man helping us was old and cranky and didn't speak a word of English. He got really mad at us for not understanding the credit card machine when it came time to pay. But we got the tickets, ran back through security and up to the counter. The man who'd rejected us before recognized us, waved us forward, and called down to ask them to hold the train for another minute. We made it on right in the nick of time.
At this point I began to calm down, but we still needed to figure out the second leg of the journey. Luckily we'd have about an hour and a half at the next train station. We figured that would give us plenty of time to work everything out.
But the train station in Perpignan was closed. There was a lady at information, but she couldn't really help us. Not for lack of trying, I should note; she just didn't have the power to exchange our tickets. We figured out the electronic ticket counter after several tries, but it claimed that the train for that night was fully booked. The lady at information said that it was worth waiting for the train to arrive and talking to the conductor. Sometimes there were cancellations or no shows that meant we still had a chance of getting on the train.
So we waited.
Finally the train pulled up and we found someone official looking. He seemed optimistic about our situation and directed us to the front of the train. The man there also seemed optimistic and sent us back along the train a bit. We talked to a couple of more people before we finally found the correct person in charge. He immediately shut down our request. We didn't have the right tickets, nothing he could do. The train left without us.
On the bright side, Europe is introducing high speed trains all around the continent. There was one leaving at 5:30 the next morning that we could get on and that would put us in Paris around 10:30, just a few hours later than we'd planned. We exchanged our tickets and even got vouchers for the price difference. We're hoping we filled out all the paperwork correctly to actually get that money back, it will help offset the cost of extra tickets we had to buy.
With the tickets exchanged we went in search of a place to spend the night. There was a hotel right across the street from the station - it was literally closer to the train tracks than the bathroom. They had rooms for 50 Euro so we booked one. Actually, they had rooms for 40 Euro, but that extra 10 Euro got you a shower. The toilet was still down the hall, though.
The room was tiny, the shower was absurd, and Kevin saw a bug early on that made us super paranoid about bed bugs. But we had a bottle of wine, so it wasn't a total loss. We drank it, went to bed, and got up at 5 the next morning to make it on the train.
Thankfully there was food for sale on that train, so I didn't have to go without breakfast which would not have been pretty. I went to buy a pain au chocolat, but ended up with a hot chocolate instead. Then I got made fun of for not knowing French, but the man did, thankfully, give me my chocolate croissant. Back in my seat I read some and slept some and watched the countryside go by while the train slowly filled up. Everything worked out in the end, but I'm still mad at myself for messing up the train tickets. At least we got that adventure I'd been hoping for. Sort of.
We got to the train station at around 4:00 for our 6:30 train. The first train took us to Perpignan, about an hour and a half away. The second, overnight train left from Perpignan at about 9:40 and would get us to Paris at 7:30 the next morning. We'd bought a bottle of wine for the journey and getting to the train station so early gave us time to get the lay of the land and find sandwiches for dinner. It also gave us a ton of time to sit and read, which we did until the train started boarding.
At abut 6:10, when the line had died down a bit, we went up to the counter to present our tickets and board the train. We were not allowed to board the train. Our tickets were for the following day.
I'm fairly certain that at this point my heart stopped beating as it plunged into my stomach. I couldn't believe I'd made such a stupid mistake when booking the tickets.
I proceeded to panic, barely holding it together enough to follow Kevin around as we tried to first exchange our tickets, then scrap them and buy new ones. I'm not lying when I say that I was barely holding it together. I was beginning to hyperventilate, and was having trouble thinking clearly enough to figure out a next step. But Kevin is completely cool under stress and was able to follow everyone's directions and get us into the correct line.
I should also mention that it's a damn good thing he trained me like a dog. Anyone who has spent a significant amount of time with us will have noticed that Kevin has a specific, two-toned whistle that I respond to almost subconsciously. (He trained me to do this without my knowledge.) Like a dog, I can even hear it when almost no one else can, because I'm so attuned to it. But it's especially useful when, for example, we get separated in a crowded French train station. I can always find him almost instantly and with very little conscious thought. Handy when I'm panicking.
We made it to the counter with about seven minutes to spare. The man helping us was old and cranky and didn't speak a word of English. He got really mad at us for not understanding the credit card machine when it came time to pay. But we got the tickets, ran back through security and up to the counter. The man who'd rejected us before recognized us, waved us forward, and called down to ask them to hold the train for another minute. We made it on right in the nick of time.
At this point I began to calm down, but we still needed to figure out the second leg of the journey. Luckily we'd have about an hour and a half at the next train station. We figured that would give us plenty of time to work everything out.
But the train station in Perpignan was closed. There was a lady at information, but she couldn't really help us. Not for lack of trying, I should note; she just didn't have the power to exchange our tickets. We figured out the electronic ticket counter after several tries, but it claimed that the train for that night was fully booked. The lady at information said that it was worth waiting for the train to arrive and talking to the conductor. Sometimes there were cancellations or no shows that meant we still had a chance of getting on the train.
So we waited.
Finally the train pulled up and we found someone official looking. He seemed optimistic about our situation and directed us to the front of the train. The man there also seemed optimistic and sent us back along the train a bit. We talked to a couple of more people before we finally found the correct person in charge. He immediately shut down our request. We didn't have the right tickets, nothing he could do. The train left without us.
On the bright side, Europe is introducing high speed trains all around the continent. There was one leaving at 5:30 the next morning that we could get on and that would put us in Paris around 10:30, just a few hours later than we'd planned. We exchanged our tickets and even got vouchers for the price difference. We're hoping we filled out all the paperwork correctly to actually get that money back, it will help offset the cost of extra tickets we had to buy.
With the tickets exchanged we went in search of a place to spend the night. There was a hotel right across the street from the station - it was literally closer to the train tracks than the bathroom. They had rooms for 50 Euro so we booked one. Actually, they had rooms for 40 Euro, but that extra 10 Euro got you a shower. The toilet was still down the hall, though.
The room was tiny, the shower was absurd, and Kevin saw a bug early on that made us super paranoid about bed bugs. But we had a bottle of wine, so it wasn't a total loss. We drank it, went to bed, and got up at 5 the next morning to make it on the train.
Thankfully there was food for sale on that train, so I didn't have to go without breakfast which would not have been pretty. I went to buy a pain au chocolat, but ended up with a hot chocolate instead. Then I got made fun of for not knowing French, but the man did, thankfully, give me my chocolate croissant. Back in my seat I read some and slept some and watched the countryside go by while the train slowly filled up. Everything worked out in the end, but I'm still mad at myself for messing up the train tickets. At least we got that adventure I'd been hoping for. Sort of.
No comments:
Post a Comment