French Train System

So my first experience with the French train system came a couple years ago when I went with a friend of mine to stay in France for a couple months over the summer, for a study abroad program. I had had the worst two or three days of my life leading up to the trip (relationship drama), and so the plane ride for me wasn't exactly the best thing I've ever experienced. Plus my traveling companion was a new friend, and I didn't know her that well at the time. So upon arrival, I was incredibly stressed out and jetlagged and upset.

Our school had told us that to get from Paris (where Charles de Gaulle is) to Tours (where our university was), we could take the TGV speed train (pronounced, by us silly Americans, as Tay-Jay-Vay). We were told that there is a student discount on it, we were told that it runs every hour, we were told all kinds of nonsense that had little to now basis in actual fact. We arrived somewhere around 9 AM, grabbed our luggage, and made a beeline for the train station terminal in the airport. The French woman behind the counter, acting, as the French do, as though she had no idea that there were people in the world who couldn't speak French, was incredibly unhelpful. She told us that we were not going to be able to catch the train we wanted, and we would have to wait til the afternoon train. She also told us that she had never heard of any such thing as a student discount. We purchased our very expensive tickets and waited patiently for our train to arrive.

The actual train system is pretty nice. You stamp your ticket and get on board. The TGV is very speedy, and people are not allowed to talk on cellphones in the main compartment, you have to go into another special cellphone area so that you don't bother anyone. That's all very nice. It wasn't very nice that we didn't know the difference between first class and coach, and we got in in a first class car and then had to walk almost the length of the train with all of our luggage dragging behind us and knocking into people's elbows. It also wasn't very nice how incredibly tired we were. Finally, the connecting train from the TGV station in St. Pierre-des-Corps to Tours, the final leg of the journey, wasn't very nice: it was almost like a cattle car.

However, the train station in Tours is one of the coolest I've ever been in. Once we arrived we hurried to our apartments which were only about a block away and slept the rest of the day away.

Later, when buying tickets for another train trip, we found out that yes, there are a such thing as student discount tickets and no, we weren't entitled to a refund just because the TGV lady had overcharged us. Wonderful. Anyway, just as anywhere else in Europe, if you are doing a lot of train traveling you probably want to invest in a Student priced Eurail pass.

The non-speed trains are also very nice, and give you a lovely chance to look at the french countryside as you roll by. However - maybe we misunderstood the system, or maybe we just weren't paying enough attention - but when we next returned to Paris for a weekend, we spent an incredibly long amoung of time on the train, rolling through cities which seemed pretty out-of-the-way. My grasp of French geography is not the greatest, though, so maybe we did everything correctly and the TGV is actually three or four times faster than the regular train. Who knows.

Rating: 5 out of 12. Clean and efficient, but awfully expensive and the fact that you have to deal with jerkass French people the entire time is a major drawback.