Incompetant Miserable French Admin aka SNCF

I know that the french have been able to say NO whenever they want and have their rights, but seriously, the government and the people need to collaborate to make the public systems better. By both not givig way and going on strikes and shit, EVERYONE suffers, not just the tourists but the people aswell who commute daily to work. But just as much as Singaporeans are content to not actually do shit i think the people have been content and just carry on their normal avergae day of strikes and goo off to work. We had the WORST experience with SNCF in France, in fact i saw it as an UTTER embarrassment to Toulouse and to the French administration who in french i curse at 'Poutain' et 'Poutain de Merde!'

Okay your holiday may be perfect so far with no hiccups what so ever, but if i thought the London tube service was bad enough (thank god no real thing as strikes) what with people lying around getting stuck on the tracks(seemingly killing themselves just to piss the rest of London off) and rail upgrades Everyday, then think again till you meet

'THE REVENGE of the UNDERPAID, UNHELPFUL, RUDE, MISERABLE, seemingly ENGLISH-SPOKEN FRENCH ADMINISTRATION of FRANCE'

Yes, it is exactly what you read it as. It all started when somewhere last week we decided to extend our stay in Toulouse (Sth France). This would mean firstly changin our train tickets to leave Paris to London to a later date and then changing our hotel dates in Paris to a later date.

So , we already knew hotel dates would be no problem, just a small sum paid to change and we ALSO knew that Ken's ticket was non-refundable and changeable, so we were willing topay ANOTHER ticket to return to London from Paris. That was all Perfectly understood.

It all started when we took our tickets to the SNCF (the train line) to change My ticket because under STA (that i booked it with) i had used my Student card, therefore ALLOWING me to change my tickets ONCE before departure.

1st TRY~~~~At this SNCF branch in Carrefour (which by the way is fucking massive in France), we gave the guy our tickets qnd he spent 15 minutes fumbling around some papers while Quentin explained our situtation, then another 5 minutes trying to use the equipment to read the ticket which he then told us

'Sorry your tickets code is not able to be processed because it says you passed through Belgium to get to Paris and will return that way' ofcourse i'm like huh , no we didn't. SO if you get my drift, some idiot had misprinted our ticket with the wrong code and because of his failed knowledge he then said I CAN'T HELP YOU, go to the main office basically well as quentin explained it was TOO COMPLICATED for him.

HOw can someones Duty to do something be too complicated therefore not his problem. Argh.

2nd TRY~~~~We then rushed to the main branch and the girl at the usual counter assured us that there was no problem in changing the ticket BUT we needed to bring our Eurostar tickets that allowed us into France. POUTAIN!!!!!!!!!!! So okay fine we would grit our teeths and come back tomorrow since we had travelled to the City it would be too much of a hassle to bear with the Traffic.

3rd TRY~~~~We got to the main train office and after queing up at the usual spot we were THEN told to queue in another queue that dealt with tickets for outside of France. Argh. Plus these women had nametags that said ENGLISH SPOKEN. almost bullshit , they could have understood better if i waved my hands around.
Geez. So Quentin started Explaining an dhe was slightly flustered on behalf of us. suddenly after 20minutes of checkign our tickets the woman gave a face and said our train ticket codes were wrong and couldn't help, shoved the tix over thetable while Q was still talking and put the closed sign and walked off.
WTF????!!!!!! Who does that. It was the i realised they didn't want to deal with a so called complicated situation.....

i mean i can't believe she just walked off, close dteh counter and refused to explain why i couldn't change it. Q was Furious and we were in disbelief.SO fuck it, we couldn't care anymore so we bought new tickets. We decided not to let this Rude Awakening bother us.
Well, you can go figure why these people are miserable and so unhelpful.

ANywAY BARCELONA HERE WE COME!!!!!!! Next week after Quentins bday on Friday we will head to Spain by car for 3 hours.

TO be continued once again... with our dress up party.
Bisou
ERIALC