Say, for want of example, you were suddenly overwhelmed with the desire to travel to Paris (purely to watch the finish of the Tour de France, you understand), might I advise you not to travel by train if the journey takes more than six hours. Especially don’t consider travelling by train on a Friday afternoon at rush hour - it will be full. Even if you have reserved a seat, Deutsche Bahn will have somehow contrived to mislay three carriages of the train, including the one containing your reserved seat.
But don’t be too disheartened, for the first two hours of the journey, there will be just about enough space for you to stand, crammed between your sweating fellow travellers. Eventually, some people will leave the train and you will find that for the next two hours there will be enough space to sit on the floor, cold air from a vent gently soothing the small of your back. This will feel wonderful, but by the time the train arrives at Nancy and SNCF add five more carriages to the train, allowing you to sit in an uncomfortable chair, you might be wondering whether it was in some way responsible for the dull ache in your lumbar region. By the time you get into bed (which takes fifteen painful minutes), you will be seriously regretting those two hours spent with your feet in the doorwell and your body twisted at 90 degrees to them, resting against the air vent, reading a book.
Next morning though, you will awaken fresh, rested and unable to move. You will discover that despite all those years of French at school, you are unable to remember what “muscle relaxant” or “cortisone cream” are. In fact, it’ll be so painful that at the pharmacie, you won’t even be able to think of those words in English. You’ll manage to get a pack of paracetemol and some “soothing mint gel” though and by five or so in the afternoon feel well enough to be able to write a blog post to warn others, and re-consider the wisdom of standing around to watch some guys in lycra cycle up and down the Champs-Elysees eight times tomorrow, and whether it wouldn’t, in fact, be better to spend the whole weekend in bed.
I’m flying back.
The Deutsche Bahn played this trick one me once, too. Fortunately there were enough empty seats remaining. Since everybody wants you to be in top shape for your weekend in Paris (purely to watch the finish of the Tour de France, of course), you should have started a little debate with the conductor. If they are unable to find you a seat (that you had reserved and paid for in the first place), that’s their problem not yours. If they cannot locate a seat for whatever reason, they should put you in first class if necessary (I am assuming you booked second.). If the chief conductor refuses, jot down his/her name. No justice, no peace.
By the way, you should have gotten the position in London. Your tiptoeing around certain comments made by blog visitors emphasises you are a spindoctor par excellence.
Bon week-end,
JCS
PS: Went to Gallerie Lafayette at Friedrichstr. today. Epoisses, munster and a few other AOC and au lait cru goodies are going to be sampled in a few moments. Vive la France.
I’m glad it’s not only me that has ‘Deutsche Bahn experiences’. I hope the rest of your weekend went well.
See? The karma gods (cleverly disguised as the Deutsche Bahn) are punishing you for not revealing the true reason for your journey. Tell us about the Parisian paramour and all will be well!
Very sorry about your back - that’s no fun at all.
JCS: I didn’t even see a conductor until the majority of the journey was over - the carriages had people standing, filling the aisles. It was completely manic.
J, Christina: The Parisan paramour (who dislikes the term, partly on the grounds of her not actually being French), doesn’t think me having my movements restricted by back pain is much fun either…..
I usually don’t laugh out loud when reading blogs- it’s more of an internal chuckle. So yes, I read this post and I thought my goodness, so it’s not just a conspiracy against me to make MY bahn experience miserable.
I travelled to Prague last Spring. The way there was ok, I had reserved seats and I guess this gave me a false sense of security but my god, the way back. As with your experience, the car that we had our seats reserved on just…….wasn’t THERE. So they gave us the option to take a different train, or just stay get on the train we were booked on and find a seat.
After much debate we stayed on the train we were booked on and ended up sitting in the doorway for 3.5 hours. To make matters worse, someone brought their dog onto the train and it had a tummy problem to put it mildly.
It’s so cheap to fly by plane within Europe, I may never take the train again.
Eek, I have to take the train to Chemnitz next week and I just know that those are going to be the most horrible 7 or 8 hrs of my life. I’m just doing that because I’m cheap and they offer the 29 EUR tickets at the moment.
And did you take pictures of some cyclists’ behinds for me?? Did you, Did you?
Ha! I knew it. Some of your posts were getting too mushy, even for you. This lends itself to my theory of international playboyness. Doing things with a woman who lives in France but isn’t French that involve a limber spine? You slut! I hope she’s American.
Completely off topic:
I’m depressed. Manuscript returned with way too many comments written all over it but hard to miss the REJECTED written across the top. Oh well, that only leaves me with 10 in the past five years. I guess I’ve picked up EasyJetsetters habit of talking about myself on other Blogs.
I’m sorry, I just had to delurk. It’s not the “parisian” bit I object to, it’s the “paramour.” It’s gut-wrenchingly cheesy. It sounds like he jumped out from behind my curtains swishing a sabre and wearing an eyepatch (actually, that sounds fun…)
that girl: The train journey will be fine, I’m sure, but Chemnitz? Chemnitz?
Blogfly: You hope she’s American? How low do you expect me to sink? Travelling to France and then to meet an American? I have SOME standards you know….
Parisian “Paramour”: You had to de-lurk? Why?
That’s it! In future I’ll only be visiting UK-based females.
820: That is indeed less than favourable. I can easily say “been there, done that”, but it doesn’t get any easier because “don’t these people see? This is important work!” I don’t know how narrow your field is, but I/we were able to work out the identity of one of our (negative) reviewers - and got to tear his paprs apart at a later date - I mean objectively analyse, of course.