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One of the things that I loved about studying abroad (summer of 2012) was being able to explore new countries every weekend. The European Union makes traveling between countries extremely efficient and affordable, and our program only had classes from Monday-Thursday. This gave us plenty of time to plan long weekends in other countries.
During our initial program meetings on the University of Cincinnati’s campus, we figured out who we wanted to travel with. I knew Danielle (yes, I traveled with another Danielle. Anytime you see Danielle in this article I'm referring to her) from a mutual extracurricular activity we were in, Danielle knew Chris from the business fraternity, and Chris and Jon were friends. Naturally, that would end up being our weekend travel group. We met at the Panera Bread on McMillan Street multiple times leading up to our study abroad to plan our weekend travel. Amsterdam made our weekend travel list on the third weekend of our trip.
Getting to Amsterdam was definitely one of the great challenges of that summer. It tested my patience and ability to think logically and strategically in a high-stress situation. And, it was a big lesson to always have your tickets (planes, trains, etc.) in your possession, knowing that something almost always will go wrong.
Thursday, June 21, 2012
The four of us had purchased 15 day Eurail passes for the summer. This allowed us to take the Eurail any days we wanted to, up to 15 days. Even if you have a Eurail pass, you still have to purchase passenger tickets on the trains. The benefit of the Eurail pass is that you get a discount on your seat reservations. The debate of whether or not the Eurail pass is worth the cost is a debate for another day.
Since we needed to purchase our passenger tickets for our trip to Amsterdam, Chris and Jon offered to go to the Gare de Nantes (train station) to purchase them. That would save Danielle and I a trip to the station. We agreed and decided that we would all meet at Gare de Nantes the next day at 11:45am to catch our train to Gare Montparnasse (one of the train stations in Paris) that departed at noon.
If you’ve ever traveled by train in Europe, you know that it’s only necessary to be at the station 15 or 20 minutes before departure. That’s because the platform that your train will be parked at will not be listed until 15 minutes prior to departure. This is because trains come and go from the station very frequently, and they’re hardly ever late or early. They’re usually right on time and they always depart at their scheduled time.
Friday, June 22, 2012
11:15am — 12:00pm
Danielle and I left the house around 11:15am to get on the bus that would take us to Commerce. Once we got to Commerce we got on the tram to go to Gare de Nantes. We walked into the train station pretty close to the time we were supposed to meet the boys, 11:45am. When we walked into the station we didn’t see Chris and Jon but, we saw our roommates Kenzie and Christina waiting in the train station for the people they were traveling to Barcelona with. We asked them if they’d seen Chris and Jon to which they said ‘no’.
Danielle called Chris multiple times, but the calls didn’t connect. As we were waiting in the train station lobby for the boys, we were questioning if they would have gone to the platform already. Since they had our tickets, I didn’t think they would have gone to the platform without us so we decided to wait a few more minutes. We checked the departure board to see which platform our train was on. We didn’t know our train number but we did know we had a connection in Paris so we looked to see which train was departing at noon for Paris.
We waited a few more minutes until we decided to go to the platform to see if they were there. By now, it was 11:53am, only seven minutes until our train would depart. Before we went to the platform we told Kenzie that if she saw the boys to tell them that we had gone to the platform.
We ran up and down the platform looking for Chris and Jon but they were nowhere to be found. It was a possibility that they could be on the train so we checked the cars on the train bound for Paris — they were nowhere to be found.
By this time it was 11:56am, four minutes until departure. I knew that not every train required a passenger reservation if the passenger was a Eurail pass holder. Since Danielle and I were Eurail pass holders, I found the man assigned to help passengers on the train bound for Paris and asked him if we needed a reservation. If we didn’t need a reservation, we could just jump on. If we did, we would be thrown off the train at the next stop once they checked our tickets. The man told us that we did need reservations so I started explaining to him our situation, hoping he would let us board without a reservation. The language barrier combined with my lack of being able to formulate sensible sentences in French resulted in a confused train worker and ten seconds left until the train departed. He apologized and jumped on the train just as the doors were closing. We watched in disbelief as the Paris bound train we thought we were supposed to be on left the station.
After about five seconds of standing there watching the train leave the station, Danielle started panicking. I'm talking, end of the world panicking. That’s how I knew if we wanted to get to Amsterdam, I was going to have to be the voice of reason and the one who would get us there. I knew we had to move quickly. Not knowing what time our train to Amsterdam was departing Paris, my instinct was to re-book our entire itinerary — from Nantes to Amsterdam. I didn’t want to book one ticket from Nantes to Paris and hope we found Chris and Jon at the train station in Paris. The likelihood of that happening was very slim and odds I didn't want to take. Danielle wanted to take the risk and only book a ticket from Nantes to Paris and bank on finding the boys at Paris Montparnasse. To not waste anymore time, I agreed and we made our way to the immediate departure desk.
12:00pm — 12:20pm
Gare de Nantes is outfitted with an immediate departure desk, which makes it convenient for last-minute travelers. I sat down and asked the man behind the desk if there was a train going to Paris within the next few hours. The man looked through his departure list but told us that all the fast trains to Paris were full. He said we could get on a city bus that ‘goes very slow and is a rough ride’. We’d also have to make multiple transfers and connections. Our other option was to take the ‘slow train’ from Nantes to Paris, which was free but would take five hours to get there. I knew that wasn’t an option. We needed to get to Paris in the shortest amount of time as possible if we chose this option since we would have to find Chris and Jon at the train station in Paris.
Our second option was to go to the International desk and try to book a ticket from Nantes to Paris and Paris to Amsterdam. As we approached the desk, I could see that the man working was the same man we had dealt with a few weeks ago and that others in our group had dealt with. This man had called people in our group ‘difficult’ and ‘stupid Americans’. His name calling is a product of his frustration with us not being able to speak French and his frequent encounters with Americans coming into the train station to book tickets. We sat down and I started explaining our situation to him.
I told him what had happened and that we needed tickets to Amsterdam for today. I made sure to be very clear that we had to be in Amsterdam today. Not tomorrow or the next day, today. After looking through the departures, he found tickets to Paris and Amsterdam, both on the fast trains. We could book the tickets to Paris with our Eurail passes but not from Paris to Amsterdam; there were no seats left for Eurail pass holders on the train to Amsterdam. Basically what that meant was we would get our tickets from Nantes to Paris (30.50 euros vs. 80 euros) at a discount but would have to pay full price for our tickets from Paris to Amsterdam (129 euros). Our new itinerary would take us from Gare de Nantes to Gare Montparnasse in Paris so we would have to transfer via the metro to Gare du Nord. We booked our tickets and headed to the platform for departure in 40 minutes, 1:00pm.
*I’m not sure why the man at the immediate departures desk said he didn’t have any tickets on the fast train to Paris available for today. At this point it wasn’t worth going back and trying to book tickets only to Paris. Going back to the immediate departure desk to try to book tickets to Paris on the fast train (after we were already told there were no tickets left). And, the risk of getting to the train station in Paris and not finding Chris and Jon was too high.
1:00pm — 3:00pm
Our train departed for Gare Montparnasse at exactly 1:00pm. On the way, Danielle and I discussed what we were going to do once we got to Gare Montparnasse. We decided that the very first thing was to get from Gare Montparnasse to Gare du Nord. Once we got to Gare du Nord, we’d try calling Chris and Jon again. And finally, if we ended up finding Chris and Jon, we were going to find out if we could get a refund on the tickets we just booked from Paris to Amsterdam. The fast train to Paris is just under two hours, so we arrived at Gare Montparnasse at 3:00pm.
3:00pm — 3:45pm
When we got off the train the first thing we did was find a worker to ask which direction on the metro we needed to take to get to Gare du Nord. The man told us to go down the stairs, follow the “M” signs for line 4 toward ‘Porte de Clignancourt’. We thanked him and made our way down the stairs to the metro to purchase tickets and catch the next train.
The stop to the Gare du Nord was 10 stops from Gare Montparnasse, which gave us about 15 to 20 minutes to talk about what we’d do once we got to Gare du Nord. We decided that we’d check the departure board for our next train (to make sure everything was still as scheduled) and try to get a hold of Chris again.
3:45pm - 4:30pm
We got off the subway at the Gare du Nord and found the departure board; our train was not listed yet. Danielle tried calling Chris again but the call still would not go through. Our next option was to try to find WiFi to get in contact with Chris and Jon over Facebook or WhatsApp. There was no WiFi in the train station and the SFR server was not working on my iPod (I’m really dating myself with that one).
*SFR is city WiFi that is installed throughout many French cities and is available to anyone who has an account. Quinn (another person in our study abroad group) gave me the username and password of his host family’s account so I could get free Internet.
We walked outside thinking we’d get a better WiFi signal outside and away from the thousands of people and devices. As we were walking to the exit, I had this weird feeling about our tickets so I decided to double check our tickets to Amsterdam. I looked at the date and it said 23/06 (June 23). I stopped, reread the tickets twice more, and asked Danielle, “What is today’s date?”. She told me that it was the 22nd. I looked at her and said,“That jackass sold us tickets for the 23rd”. We both couldn’t believe it. After I told the man at Gare de Nantes multiple times that we needed tickets to be for today, he sold us tickets for Saturday (6/23) instead of Friday (6/22). Instead of finding WiFi, we turned around, went back into the station, and went up to the first worker we saw.
We explained our situation to him then asked if we could return the tickets. He said that we could return them, but we would only get a 50% refund since it was the day of departure. Since we wouldn’t be in Amsterdam on Friday with our tickets, we needed to get in contact with Chris and Jon to see if they were still in Paris with our original tickets. I asked the worker if the train station had WiFi and he said no, but he did tell us there was a McDonald's with free WiFi right outside the station. At this point, we knew our only option was to find Chris and Jon since we didn’t have the right tickets to Amsterdam. So, we left the train station and went across the street to the McDonald’s.
Once I got connected to the WiFi at McDonald’s it was 4:21pm. As my messaging app loaded, I was extremely relieved to see a message from Jon. The message said:
“Well we just got off our train in Paris. We've tried calling Danielle about 10 times each. We have no clue where you are. Kenzie told us you were getting on the train so we went straight to the train but couldn't find you in any of the cars. We are going to leave for the Paris Nord station in 15 minutes at 4:20. The train number is 9369 and leaves at 5:25. We hope we can find you two."
I left Jon a message and told Danielle that Chris and Jon were on their way to Gare du Nord right now. Thinking that we should try to get in contact with them over the phone, we went back outside to find a payphone. Danielle asked a man on the street if he knew where there was a phone we could use. Instead of giving us directions to the nearest pay phone, he handed her his phone. She dialed Chris’ number but the call didn’t go through again. We thanked the man and headed back to the train station.
4:30pm — 5:00pm
Since we knew Chris and Jon were almost to the train station, we decided that we should get the 50% refund on our tickets to Amsterdam and bank on finding the boys. Danielle stood in line to get our refunds and I headed to the only departure board to wait for Chris and Jon. I knew that one of the first places they would go to in the train station was the departure board. After about 10 minutes, Danielle met me at the departure board. We were able to get a 50% refund on the tickets, which was better than nothing considering we spent 129 euros on the tickets.
At around 4:55pm I looked down the platform and saw two very familiar faces. Chris and Jon had made it to the train station. I have never been more excited and relieved to see two people in my entire life. I ran towards them and gave each of them a big hug. After exchanging stories of what happened, the key piece of information Danielle and I were missing was that the tickets Jon and Chris had bought for us from Gare de Nantes to Gare du Montparnasse were on the slow train and not the fast train. At Gare de Nantes, Danielle and I had only checked the fast train to Gare du Montparnasse.
After all of that, we all made it to Amsterdam on time and together. On all our next trips, we decided that each of us were responsible for our own tickets so this wouldn’t happen again.