Two years ago, a friend and I travelled to France for a vacation. We had taken a train from the Hannover Central Station and were heading to Gare du Nord in Paris — a trip that takes about eight hours with two connections. In Europe, when people buy a train ticket online, they have the option to select a seat for the duration of their trip, at an extra cost of about R40.
I entrusted my friend with handling the bookings, and off to Paris we went. The first leg of the trip went smoothly, but at the second connection, we encountered a challenge. A European family came in and demanded that we move our seats as they had booked the ones we were seated in.
Naturally, I was enraged, and my immediate instinct was to call them out for racism. It was a tense stand-off that required the intervention of the train staff. After back-and-forth accusations, the train staff requested that we all produce our tickets for confirmation, stating apologetically that there could have been a double-booking error made by the ticket issuer.
Read Full Article on Herald Live
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After our tickets were inspected, the error was identified: my friend had booked the correct train and the exact seats that we were seated in. However, the date of the booking was incorrect — it was for that day, but in a year’s time. Basically, we, not the European family, had been in the wrong.
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