Paris

Our journey to Paris was as uneventful as expected: check-in went smoothly, the service ran perfectly on time, and I arrived a little more confident in public transport than when I had set off. Gare du Nord was busy, and ticket desks were few (our arrival being shortly after lunchtime), so we proceeded by taxi to Gare de Lyon. What we hadn’t counted on, and nor had the driver, was a demonstration taking place between the stations. However, this gave me valuable time to check in with the client.

While attempting to wrestle their configuration from December 2006 into the present day, the supplier had knocked off all services for half an hour. Knock-on effects were felt for some time, but after a long talk with the client’s IT manager we restored service… except for the original problem which was still unresolved. And then the roads started to look more familiar, and then the taxi arrived, and we rushed to the ticket desks.

There I spoke to another lady — by the name of Marian, I think — who checked our journey possibilities and each time came up with no free seats. She politely asked me to wait and she approached her manager. A few minutes later he returned and explained the problem, and then proceeded to print out some tickets and write on them. I like to imagine what he wrote was an SNCF magical incantation along the following lines:

By the power vested in me through SNCF I request that you provide these travellers — who have experienced the unhelpful hand-wriging typical of the English who deign to call themselves representatives of our upstanding profession of “railway travel” — first-class tickets on a train which is packed to capacity at no cost when they present my mandate and their accompanying, cancelled tickets. May it be so, this third day in January in the year two thousand and nine.

— signed, Directeur Commercial, Paris Gare de Lyon

In reality he wrote far less, and though my French-speaking neurons were struggling against the combined effects of falling into disuse and a lack of sleep (though I believe he did say that it really wasn’t his place to sort things out for us given all the problems started in England) I came away from these three railway customer service encounters: absolutely amazed! I was gob-smacked when, on asking, “c’est combien?” (regarding our ticket “upgrade”) she simply smiled and told me rien.

“Vraiment!?” My mouth dropped and remained open. I was genuinely surprised and taken aback having been sure we were about to go through “claim hell” playing off Virgin Trains and our travel insurer.

“Mais oui.”