Lille and SNCF
I've been dabbling with the idea of attending a conference in Lille in two weeks, but I'm on the fence because the flight and train would have to come out of my own pocket (~$1800) since I'll be in between jobs. On top of that, we're facing a couple potential domestic complications and since Christian will be in Mexico during that time, I'd have to be the one dealing with these domestic issues.
In the process, I had to venture onto France's train website, SNCF, for the first time in at least two years. Since I was in the US, it redirected me to the English website and as I was entering everything, I noticed dates weren't working out like I had planned. I finally realized that the freaking site had a rather major typo: on the calendar where you select dates it had both Saturday and Sunday abbreviated as "Sa". The calendar followed the European format of ending the weeks with Sunday, but I didn't realize this since I would look at the final column and see "Sa" as the header and naturally be convinced that it must be Saturday. Suddenly a lightbulb went off in my head: this explains why 3 years ago I booked train tickets to Marseille and got the departure wrong by a day and got stuck with nonexchangeable tickets that I had to sell on the secondhand market. So I wasn't being an idiot back then, but had actually gotten fooled by that poorly placed typographical error! I wonder how many other foreigners have been burned over the years by this bit of French incompetence?
Well, I emailed them in French explaining just how bad of a typo this is. I received two acknowledgements and now two days later it's fixed. All is right in the world.
In the process, I had to venture onto France's train website, SNCF, for the first time in at least two years. Since I was in the US, it redirected me to the English website and as I was entering everything, I noticed dates weren't working out like I had planned. I finally realized that the freaking site had a rather major typo: on the calendar where you select dates it had both Saturday and Sunday abbreviated as "Sa". The calendar followed the European format of ending the weeks with Sunday, but I didn't realize this since I would look at the final column and see "Sa" as the header and naturally be convinced that it must be Saturday. Suddenly a lightbulb went off in my head: this explains why 3 years ago I booked train tickets to Marseille and got the departure wrong by a day and got stuck with nonexchangeable tickets that I had to sell on the secondhand market. So I wasn't being an idiot back then, but had actually gotten fooled by that poorly placed typographical error! I wonder how many other foreigners have been burned over the years by this bit of French incompetence?
Well, I emailed them in French explaining just how bad of a typo this is. I received two acknowledgements and now two days later it's fixed. All is right in the world.