Escape from Paris

After nearly seven weeks of backpacking across Europe, the end was in sight. We were heading to the last country on our list: Spain. The plan was simple: take a train from Paris into Madrid. What could go wrong? Well… everything.

We felt like this guy trying to get out of New York...

For one thing, France doesn’t let you buy tickets online with your Eurail pass, so we had to find a station and buy the tickets in person. That wasn’t so bad; we found a station while we girls were visiting Normandy. We explained to the woman at the counter that we wanted to arrive Thursday, July 25. To our great delight, she even found us a night train so we wouldn’t have to switch trains in southern France (I didn’t really want to bail out at midnight and try to find my way around in French). It looked like a perfect solution. The only problem: she sold us tickets for the Tuesday, July 23 night train instead

We discovered the mistake that evening and went to fix it as early as we could the next morning. It was a different lady at the counter this time. We told her what had happened and the date that we really wanted. But then she told us that there was no way we could switch to that date, since the section for Eurail holders was full. There was plenty of room if you wanted to buy a ticket at the full 180-euro price, of course. But French trains only reserve probably ten spots for Eurail pass holders, since they’re too cheap to let go of 180-euro tickets in exchange for 42-euro reservations that such pass holders buy instead. We did not really want to spend the equivalent of $250 each for a ride to Madrid, so she switched us to the next possible date: Sunday, July 28. But Faeth was leaving Barcelona on August 6, so that meant we only had about a week to explore Spain instead of our planned 10 days.

But we weren’t going to give up yet! We started looking for other ways to travel and managed to find a 17-hr nonstop bus from Paris to Madrid. It left at 2 p.m. one day and arrived 7 a.m. the next. While it didn’t sound as comfortable as a train, and we weren’t entirely sure how much sleep we’d actually get overnight, it was only $80 per ticket, a heck of a lot cheaper than 180 euro. We decided to keep that as our backup plan should we not be able to switch train tickets.

Our last full day in France, we visited Paris for the day. Before we rode the regional train in, Geoff and Jennifer tried to help us switch tickets one last time. But the result was the same: there were no open seats, at least no open seats for Eurail pass holders.

Could we put what we’d paid for these tickets (103 euro) towards full-fare night train tickets? we asked, deciding it might be best to break down and just buy full tickets. A 10-hr night train sounded a lot better than a 17-hr bus ride. But no, the train company wouldn’t let you do that. Could we get a refund? we questioned next. Oh, yes---a whopping 10 euro back of the original 103 euro we’d paid. That was just insulting. We started to resign ourselves to that 17-hr bus ride; there was no way we were going to lose out on three days in Spain because France was being stupid.

It was like trying to reason with Squidward

But then Geoff had an epiphany: all the trouble about buying new tickets revolved around our Eurail passes. Eurail passes are international passes you can buy for train travel in Europe. We had a 10-day, 2-month pass, meaning than within two months, we could travel by train 10 different days. In Germany, it was great; we didn’t need any reservations and could hop on and off all day with our passes. In France, you needed to reserve, and that’s where things got dicey, since French trains were too cheap to allow many Eurail seats. Most of the train station workers we talked with hadn’t even heard of Eurail passes and had no idea how to process them. (I must say, French train employees don’t seem to take much pride or care in their work.) Geoff’s idea was simple: just ask to exchange our tickets without bringing up our Eurail passes. We tried that in Paris and, happy day, it worked! They actually let us exchange like normal people, not the sub-class peons they consider Eurail pass holders. We were able to snag spots in the night train Thursday night, arriving in Madrid Friday around 10 a.m.

How we felt when we stepped off the train in Spain

The moral of this story is that France is a pretentious, cheap nation that doesn’t care much for poor travelers, and heaven help you if you try to travel through France via Eurail. If you must travel by train, reserve your spot weeks or months ahead—though that’s very difficult, since usually you need to buy the ticket reservation in person. I’d suggest flying instead. It’s a whole lot less of a head ache.