After a 5.30am start, a 2 hour long flight, two trains and and hour's time difference I finally arrived in Bourg en Bresse at 2.30pm to a very Welsh welcome of torrential rain. I'm still not entirely sure as to whether this made me feel more at home, or more shit because, you know, it's rain.
The journey went pretty smoothly, other than one small hitch in the form of my first big cultural error on the train from Lyon. When the conductor came round he looked at my ticket and told me should have 'composté'. Cue the classic 'je ne comprends pas' look of the unseasoned tourist which I had hoped never to adorn my (actually fairly well travelled) face.
"Err, where I'm from, composting means letting it rot and growing plants in it," ...is what I should have said, but instead I faltered at 'err' and mumbled something sorry-like. Next time I'll prepare a better retort.. or perhaps I'll just learn how to compost the damn thing by stalking someone who looks like they know what they're doing. Hopefully they won't lead me to a nearby garden centre.
The journey went pretty smoothly, other than one small hitch in the form of my first big cultural error on the train from Lyon. When the conductor came round he looked at my ticket and told me should have 'composté'. Cue the classic 'je ne comprends pas' look of the unseasoned tourist which I had hoped never to adorn my (actually fairly well travelled) face.
"Err, where I'm from, composting means letting it rot and growing plants in it," ...is what I should have said, but instead I faltered at 'err' and mumbled something sorry-like. Next time I'll prepare a better retort.. or perhaps I'll just learn how to compost the damn thing by stalking someone who looks like they know what they're doing. Hopefully they won't lead me to a nearby garden centre.
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| Train and rain |
I made the same mistake nearly every time I got on a train in Spain! So annoying!
ReplyDeleteJust came across your blog from a retweet by the British Council. Quite interesting so far and good procrastination for me from studying French. :P
ReplyDeleteDid you figure out what composté means? What was the difference in train tickets?
Thank you! How useless of me not to include this information, though!
ReplyDelete'Composter' basically means to validate (they sometimes also say 'valider'). There are little yellow 'sncf' machines dotted around French train stations; you basically have to push your ticket in and it stamps the time and place on it, I guess so they know where you got on the train? I'm not entirely sure why it's useful, but you have to do it. I was lucky this day, apparently some people get hefty fines for not doing it!