My Train Ride to Lyon

The weekend of May 15-17 I decided to take the first solo train trip of my life. I have traveled with my family and friends quite a bit, but I had not gone out into the world completely by myself before. I originally wanted to visit the CERN Super Collider in Geneva Switzerland, but after some Web investigations I found that individual tours are now suspended and no tours are given in the subterranean sections of the facility. So I looked for alternatives. I wanted to stay in France to continue practicing the French language, so I decided to try Lyon. The bottom line is that I had fun and all worked out well, but there were a few hiccups along the way. Once I located my connecting train in the Marseilles St Char train station, I quickly found a seat labeled according to my assignment, second class seat number 61. There I happily remained until some new passengers boarded at a subsequent stop and confronted me with the assertion that I was in their seat. Upon showing them my ticket I received a free explanation about the importance of knowing your CAR number as well as your seat number. I could see that my new found teacher was indeed right, his ticket specified car 6 seat 61, whereas my ticket did not have the car number specified. He suggested that I try the next car over, car number 5. I apologized for the inconvenience, gathered my things, and headed toward car 5. I followed the numbers up to seat 61 and found that it was also already occupied by a handsome twenty something year old European male. I approached him with my ticket and explained my situation hoping that he could clear things up. He compared the ticket with his own and noticed that the departure times on the two tickets differed by 10 minutes. Hearing the words “mauvais train” come out of his mouth sent my mind into a tailspin, preparing myself to deal with ending up in some other random city in France and having to pay for another hotel room in addition to the one that was already reserved, and calling my parents to explain to them how I was not competent or adult enough to make it to Lyon by myself. All the worries were more or less put to rest however when I remembered that the conductor had announced at the beginning of the train ride that this train was indeed bound for Lyon, so I was going the right direction regardless. Unsure of my next move, I found a folding chair in the “between cars” area and took a seat to asses the situation. There I remained until our next stop in Avignon where the influx of new passengers forced me back into the train car. I sat down in the first empty seat that I saw, just to get out of the way. It only took a couple minutes before somebody showed up to kick me out of that seat as well, at which point I went in search of the conductor. This took much longer than it should have, but I eventually found him towards the front of the train and explained the situation as I had done several times before, in french. He took my ticket without saying anything and looked at it a bit puzzled. He scanned it, waited a second, then pointed back the way I had come saying “Car 8” in English. I thanked him and made my way back through the train. The remainder of the train ride was uneventful as I felt confident that I was in full compliance with train riding etiquette. I’m still not sure why the departure times were different on our two tickets, but the conductor didn’t say I was was on the wrong train, and I seem to remember the train leaving right on time according to my ticket, so at this point I am assuming that I had not made a mistake. And on the train ride back to Nice, I went to the conductor straight away to make sure I was in the right seat in the right car and on the right train.