Day 10 -- Toulouse to Nice

Saturday, 16 September 2023

(Yeah, yeah, I know I still owe you some earlier days, but I wanted to do Day 10 next because it was more eventful than most.)

I got up pretty early to walk to the train station to catch my train to Nice. I bought a croque monsieur at a bakery along the way for breakfast. It was delicious. I even managed almost the entire interaction in French. 

The train from Toulouse to Marseille was the least smooth ride so far. It was almost like airplane turbulence, but only side to side, not up and down. It made it hard to sleep. When I arrived in Toulouse, I took a look at my ticket for the leg from Toulouse to Nice. It said something in the small print about needing a supplement to first class. My Eurail Pass is for second class travel, and I thought I had only booked second class travel. So I got in line at the service counter and when my number was called, the nice gentleman told me that as long as I had the ticket in my hand, I'd be fine. And that I must have paid for a temporary upgrade in order for the ticket to say that. Whew!

I barely had time left for lunch at the Marseille train station. (Or so I thought.) So I grabbed a burger from Carl's Jr. There weren't many options inside the station. I made my way to my train and took my seat in the first-class section. I felt out of place, but the seat was nice. They have armrests for each seat, so I didn't have to share. And it was a window seat. And good air-conditioning. But then the announcements started. In French. And the text messages started coming. Also in French. Between Google Translate of the text messages and the nice couple next to me translating the overhead announcements, I learned that there was some sort of accident on the tracks between Marseille and Nice, so the train was being delayed by 50 minutes. No worries -- I had a comfortable seat in an air-conditioned train car, and I would still have just enough time to check into my hotel in Nice and get to the 5:45 p.m. match. 

Fifty minutes later ... another announcement. No text message this time. Just over the public address system in the train. So I'm reliant on the friendly couple. They said the track was still closed, and that the delay would be another 50 minutes. Ooof. That's gonna be cutting it really close. But maybe I can leave my backpack in a locker at the train station and skip checking into the hotel until after the match, Yeah, that ought to work. But then the couple asked if I was going to the rugby match. Ummm, "oui". Ohh, in that case ... the announcement said that people travelling to the rugby match should move over to the train on the next platform. I had no choice but to believe them.

I left the train and found an SNCF (the French train service) representative on the platform to see if I could confirm the information. The first one I found didn't speak English, but he found one who did. The second rep agreed that I should go to the second train, but didn't seem super confident about it. But he did confirm that the same ticket would be adequate. I quickly learned that it was because the second train was not reserved seating.

I got onto the second train -- notably not a high-speed TGV -- and found a spot to stand. No window seat, and no air conditioning. And still not moving toward Nice. But hey, I'm on vacation in France on my way to a World Cup rugby match, so I was able to do a pretty good job of staying positive.

Another hour or so later and the train finally left Marseille. I pulled up the new train's itinerary on my phone and saw that it would be making six or seven stops on the way to Nice. I'm still not sure why SNCF thought it would be better.

After the second stop, enough people got off that I could find a seat. Shortly before that, an SNCF employee  -- I'll call him an assistant conductor -- had come through the train car and asked for a show of hands from anyone going to the rugby match. There were seven or eight of us, and as it happened, one of the seats that opened up was in a cluster of four with two other rugby fans. Welsh, from the look and sound of them. So I sat next to them. We talked most of the rest of the way to Nice. They even offered me a beer from their stash. When I declined, Joe #2 -- they were both named Joe -- said "Ehh, it's already warm, so you probably wouldn't have liked it anyway." 

They were impressed with my knowledge of rugby, and of Wales in particular. When I told them I knew that Llanelli and Pontypridd were big rugby towns, they said "How does someone from the middle of the US know that?" (The answer: From the scoreboard reports from Brian Vizard and Dave Sitton on the Championship Rugby show on Fox Sports World back in the 90's.) They were also gobsmacked that I was going to 27 matches, so we talked about that for a while.

The assistant conductor -- I'll call him François -- came by a few more times to tell us that the SNCF was working on plans to get us to the match as quickly as possible. Joe #1 was worried about what mechanism would be in place for our bags, since none of us would be able to check into our hotels before the match. In broken English, François said they would have something in place. All he was able to tell us for sure was that we were to get off the train at the Saint Augustin stop in Nice, and not go all the way to the primary train station, called Nice-Ville. Now it started to make sense why they moved me to this new train. My original train was not going to stop at Saint Augustin so it would have taken me all the way to Nice-Ville in downtown, and then it would be a much longer tram ride to the stadium.

As the train approached the Saint Augustin station, François again came through the train car and told us all to follow him. As we stood to go, a rugby fan who had been across the aisle from the Welsh Joes and me handed me a piece of paper with his phone number and said "My name is Justin. Give me a call and we'll get a pint. Twenty-seven matches is impressive. The record is twenty-eight." As we were following François off the train, I joked that I might see if I can find a way to get to one more match. Justin said "I hope not. I'm the one who holds the record". 

François took us to an area off to the side of the platform. There, some other SNCF folks had us put our bags down on the ground, with space between them. A security patrol and a dog came by to check them for drugs and/or explosives, and then they gave us claim checks and put the bags in a secure room. By this point, François had gotten back on the train to continue on, but Justin and I each made a point to the remaining SNCF people that François had done a great job of looking out for us and he should be recognized for that.

Another SNCF employee then walked us the block or so to the tram station and pointed us to the tram that was headed to the stadium. "Get on this one and you'll get there. Come back here on the 'C' line after and you can get your bags."

The tram dropped us pretty close to the stadium. Justin and I ran the rest of the way. I got to my seat just in time for the second-half kickoff, which is only because of the great work of François and the SNCF. The rest of the match details are here.

After the match I took the tram back to the Saint Augustin station to get my bag, then got the next tram to a stop near the hotel. I picked up a pizza at Pizza d'Or on my way to the hotel, Villa Bougainville. The clerk at the hotel was a lot of fun. He appreciated my attempts at French, and then he switched to great English. I still tried to answer a few of his questions in French -- "Five nights?" ... "Oui, cinq nuits." -- and he complimented me on my initiative.

More info:

• An article about the fatality that caused the delay. Google will probably offer to translate it for you.
• The Guinness entry for Justin's record.
• A WalesOnline article about Justin's feat.

...doug