Re: XPT - First or Economy?? and other expereince world wide.......

[pcc@ocean.com.au (Brown Family)]

On Thu, 27 Apr 2000 13:46:06 GMT, James C. <james_ccj@my-deja.com>
wrote:

>> She ruined all my Pepe Le Pew images of the French too.
>>
>> C'est la vie.
>>
>> Les Brown
>> Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose.
>Never go without shower for that long but just wondering if you can
>afford to take 1st class why can't you afford to take shower:-)???
>
Please believe me when I tell you that we don't habitually shower just
once a week. There was just a distinct lack of opportunity to do so
until we got back to our flat in London because we were on the move
the whole time. The first class ticket was the Eurail Pass that we
bought in Melbourne before we left. Anyway, a bit of pong never hurt
anyone. (:-))

>But another thing all of you didn't mention is whenever I travel by
>economic class, I found out passengers are more chatty, down to earth
>to you and couple of times I was offered with their lunch/sandwich! All
>those bad expereince don't happen all the time. Usually when I travel
>around the state(Victoria) I take economic class most of the time and
>rarely met anything like that...actaully I never had any bad expereince
>other then some of the teens talk lauder then they should, or kids play
>around with automative door....but I really shouldn't compare with NSW
>because most of the train journey time in Vic are relatively short.
>
When we were travelling in Yugoslavia on the train that was the
"Orient Express" after it was shortened to Athens, 1st class again.
Well, some soldiers and young cadets got into our compartment around
near Zagreb. The ticket collector let them know in no uncertain terms
that they should be travelling 2nd class and would they please move.
The soldier in charge of these cadets let the ticket inspector know in
equally no uncertain terms that since they were soldiers of an
egalitatarian and communist country he should make them. Soldiers=1,
Ticket Inspector=0. My wife speaks Czech which is related to Yugoslav
which is how I knew what was being said.

Apart from that, no-one wanted to talk much to us. Maybe it was the
smell, maybe it was a desire to be left alone, which brings me to
another story:

On a train from Nice to Rome we were in a compartment (1st class and
yes, we had showered that morning) which we shared with a couple
conversing quietly to themselves in French. My French isn't
particularly brilliant but, I was able to express myself in a fairly
basic way. I wasn't paying much attention to what the other couple
were saying but when the French ticket inspector came around to check
our tickets I showed him my Eurail Pass and told him in French that my
wife had the same ticket as moi. The couple then changed their
conversational language to Italian which flattered me enormously, why?
Because a) they thought I knew French, b) I must have got the French
syntax right, c) my accent must have been better than I thought.
Conclusion: The French regard English speakers as idiots who only know
their own language and nothing else. 

What has been bugging me ever since was; what were they talking about?

Les Brown
Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose.