train woes

I went to Rouen yesterday and it was so great I almost can't explain. It's a little over an hour from Paris on the train, in Normandy, and is a small but beautiful and active town. So my train was at 10:50 from St Lazare and while I got there with a lot of time to spare, I wound up having to say to the ticket worker guy, "The train leaves in two minutes, so can we hurry?"

I haven't really gotten used to the train system here. There are 2 types of trains out of Paris: the "suburban" lines and the "big" lines. The stations in Paris are dominated by the suburban lines (commuters, I guess) but these only go a little farther than the RER lines, which are like glorified Metros. The TGV and others like it are "big" lines that go throughout France and into neighboring countries. Although Rouen is not far from Paris none of the suburban (SNCF) lines go there, so it was rather confusing to get tickets. I got them online Thursday and it said I could pick them up in the automatic booths in the station.

First of all, apparently the SNCF and big lines don't use the same machines. The machines are also quite slow (silly me, I was thinking they'd be like the LIRR ones). So I ran around looking for a non-SNCF machine, then waited a while to use it. I had about 15 minutes left at this point. Then it rejected my credit card and I had no idea why - it said it was not a valid card to use even though it said it took Mastercard. So I had to go find actual people to talk to (in French of course) and wait in a long line to get to them. By the time I got to a person I had 4 minutes left. The guy explained you can't use foreign cards in the machines and I in turn explained I had to go really, really fast. He was amused and helped me out, getting the platform while the tickets were printing. 2 minutes. I had to sprint to the platform, almost forgot to composter my ticket - you get a huge fine if you forget to composter. I hopped into the last car as the conductor was locking the doors.

But of course these trains are long; I was seated in car 10 and got into car 17, so I had to walk through the aisles for 7 cars. Then it turned out although my ticket said 2nd class my seat was in 1st and everyone was confused.

It was all okay, though. Why? I got to sit next to a nun.