Stuttgart and the Eurail Solution

Pictures are finally up on facebook. And I'm finally at a hostel with an internet connection faster than a 28.8 modem. Actually I have to give this hostel props. It's Inter-hostel in Stuttgart and it is really nice. Very clean, really nice people. Really nice bathrooms, kitchen, and laundry. Great wifi. All around great hostel. Stuttgart is really nice so far too. Had to suck up a 100 euro train ticket to get here, but it was worth it. Tomorrow I plan to go to the Wilhelma "Zoo" althought it's more than that. You'll see in the pictures.

Yesterday I went in to talk to the Eurail office in Paris Gare-de-Lyon. In my documentation it had them open from 10am to 2pm on Sundays. Not only were they not open, it didn't look like they had ever been open. They had a sign, in front of one of the regular ticket offices. The sign claimed this was the office, but it was blocking the window, and it had collected quite a bit of dust.

So I went to talk to the regular ticket office. Once again I got a disgruntled employee who did not want to help me. I explained I had a flexible schedule and could stay overnight in any city. I just needed to eventually go to Stuttgart. He basically told me off and said it was 100 euros to go to Stuttgart. (And he spoke perfect, advanced English with the man before me, but all of a sudden had trouble with me....) I asked if I could do standing seating, an option which in my documentation was allowed by Eurail. This should allow me to go on any train, regardless of reservation, I just won't have a guaranteed seat. He said Paris no longer allowed this due to previous problems with Eurail pass members. (Can't verify if this is true or not. Just repeating what I heard)

So enough about my problems. Here are my solutions! I used Rail Europe to lookup what trains are available with my pass. I double checked that my pass was locked out of trains I knew I already could not get (ie the Paris-Stuttgart trains). This was true, so now I knew that the website was showing me what was actually available to me. I have written down 3 seperate itineraries from Stuttgart to Rome on July 3rd. I intend to go into the Stuttgart train station tomorrow, and ask the man politely to reserve these trains for me. Hopefully, my advanced notice, advanced planning, and my research into polite German phrases will pay off. I'll keep you all posted tomorrow.

Lost in Spain/France Thanks to Eurail

So now we get to today. Today was both very adventurous, and a nightmare. So apparently, Eurail works great for INSIDE countries. But anytime you want to cross the border, it becomes something of a pain. All the trains that cross the border must be reserved, and most are reserved well in advance. This was not made very clear in the literature for Eurail. Not that it isn't in there, it is. But they didn't make it clear just how quickly these spots fill up. See the trains only allow a certain number of Eurail passengers per train. (The part they don't publish very well.) That number, I'm guessing, is very very low. So you do the math.

So that was problem one. Problem two was that I didn't learn this until 7am today, when I arrived in Barcelona asking to organize a trip to Paris and the attendant stared at me with a blank face. She looked through todays trains and said I could go to Cerbere and catch a train. So I do just that I catch the 8:45 (not the 10:45 like SHE told me). A very nice beautiful scenery local train to Cerbere, just inside the French border. The smallest train station on the planet! With only one North outbound train every 2 hours! Which I promptly ran for as fast as I could to ANYWHERE else. It seems the Spainish train operater just wanted to get rid of me and pointed me in the direction of France.

While on this new train, I quickly looked at a map for the biggest city on the local route I was on. There I found a nice French ticket person who didn't just blow me off, and helped me get to Paris. He really did some research too cause he was looking for like 30 minutes. Even got me bumped to first class somehow. Really nice guy. I got my fluently French speaking mom to call my hotel (cause I couldn't for some strange reason) and tell them I'd be a little late. The train ride was goregous and relaxing. Just what I needed.

So now I'm in Gare-de-Lyon, and I go to the booth to try and see if I can reserve a ticket to Stuttgart for sometime in the near future, doesn't have to be soon... and I get blown off again. I think it's just the major cities maybe? All their ticket operators are either disgruntled or just plain stupid or both. I'm not saying I shouldn't have made a reservation, but their job is to help me. I don't know the language well enough to be impolite here. I say merci and gracias like they were commas.

Anyway, new plan. Gonna stay a second night in Paris, gonna go to the Eurail help office, gonna plan out every international crossing from here to Greece with the Eurail official. Thankfully my trip is very flexible, so I should be able to make some crazy connections, and get where I want to go... which is kind of what I like about all this. What I don't like is disgruntled ticket operators and bad Eurail documentation. So let's cut those two out and get back to the awesome train rides, and crazy adventures that don't get me stranded in the south of France with no place to sleep.