I’m not going in order. I’m just telling stories as they come. We went to France before we went to Switzerland. Using our Eurail pass, we could get on any train in our designated countries for free (a couple of them required a supplemental fee). Some required reservations, some did not and it was a bit hard to find out which were which, so we tried to make reservations when we could. We spent our first hour in Paris standing in line to make our reservation from Nice to Switzerland. By this time, we had pretty much concluded that when you were crossing a border you needed a reservation. Finally we get our turn only to be informed that we must make said reservation in Nice. A few days later in Nice, the line was so long that we thought we’d outsmart the system and find a phone number to call to make a reservation. Tricky, eh? So we asked around at the station (there are employees everywhere) and finally got a phone number and headed out. I called the number from our hostel but we were disconnected several times.  And, I forgot to mention, each time we tried to make this reservation, saying the name of our destination was tricky. In English, which is the language we were using for these conversations, we say Switzerland. But in Switzerland they have about 148902743812 different languages and, depending on the region, the country is called a number of things, such as Schweiz, Suisse, Svissera. And sometimes I would be rudely corrected or I’d talk to someone who just had no clue what country I was trying to get to. Anyway, despite the language difficulty, I tried the next day to make a reservation by phone, to no avail. Oh well, we thought, we’ll just have to do without a reservation. Or we’ll get to the train station early and make one that morning.
My grandma and Hans had met us in Nice and they took us to the train station. Early. There was no line and we were feeling confident. “Two to Geneva, please.” “Where? Oh, Geneve? Iz not possssssible.”  “Alright, how about a little later today. Or a different route. Or a different city in Switzerland. Or if we leave from a different train station.” “Iz not possssible.” So we sat at a cafe in the train station so grandma and Hans could get their much needed morning cup of coffee and so that we could regroup. We had to get going to Switzerland, we’d already cut that part of our trip short. Also, we needed to start heading toward home. One thing my mom always taught me was that if you don’t like the answer someone gives you, ask someone else (although, I just realized that this strategy was NOT recommended in our home. Asking dad for something mom just said no about was looked down upon. How’s that for a double standard?). So I stood in line again and strategically got another person to help me. This nice woman spent forever on her computer looking for a way to make this work for us. Thanks, mom, for the tip. We had a few more hours to spend in Provence with the grandparents and then we’d head out to Geneva. Or Geneve. Or whatever you want to call it.
