A Day on the Train

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Well, we bid a fond adieu to the Cote d’Azur and head towards Paris by starting on a train wreck. We made it to Gare de Nice on a pretty tight schedule, and arrive to see this TGV sitting there before we’re to leave. The monitors clearly state it is tran #6174 the 9:30 to Paris, and it is running (at first) 27 mins late. Then :54. Then 1:15. Our train, #6176 is due out at 10:35. We figured Hmm, well, the whole system must be one whole train late. (The guys in this photo even told us this was not our [blank]. More on that in a moment.)

So we settle in for long wait. Have bite to eat, rest, wait. Patiently, happily, looking forward to doing 200 kmh. Then at about noon, I stretch my legs and notice the Big Board lists the next TGV is #6178 out at 13:35. Uh, what? I speak to the very same conductor we showed our tickets to this morning, and either due to managed ignorance or my utter lack of French skills, maintains that our train left on time. He proves this by looking at a book. Yes, printed right there. So now explaining the “[blank]” above: Perhaps what he told us when we showed him our tickets (a comfortable hour early) was that this was not our COACH, but he waved us off like it was nothing, not indicating that our proper coach (#3) was about 12 AHEAD of where were standing at that moment. Also in his defence, it is possible that they just decided to consolidate the 9:35 and 10:35 trains into one, and at some point I never saw, changed the electronic signs to indicate this. Nonetheless, I did all my due diligence, consulting the Big Board before we walked in, and the TV monitors on our platform, and asking a SNCF employee and received multiple threads confirming the correctness of my actions. So the trip went from being several hundred dollars below budget, to double the airfare over budget. I promised to make up this deficit.

I wish I had better skills in making a pain of myself, or making my pain someone else’s, and I’m still wondering what I can avail myself of in SNCF customer service in Paris. I’m scribbling this out on the train, 2 hours into a 5 hours trip to Gare de Lyon, Paris. The subtle strangeness of it all is still palpable, a bit like surface-tension on a more viscous than normal reality. I’m really missing contact (internet) and am concerned about the hotel’s network being a disasterous leak-fest of the weaker security of social-networking sites. Burn that bridge just as we step on it.