Fuck Eurail for real this time
Ok, so I have previously complained about Eurail. But it’s gotten worse: today I tried to take a train, and I discovered that the mobile pass had been removed from my device. Alright, that’s within their rights. But there doesn’t seem to be any reason that it should have been removed: I’m well within the expiration, and I haven’t used up my remaining travel days. It just…disappeared. For a bit of context, the pass is checked on the train by the conductor, who validates it by scanning a code with their machine. In short, my machine generates a number encoded in a black and white image, and their machine uses a camera to recover the number and validate the pass. The code is generated for each trip: I have to say “yes, I’m taking this particular train,” (not literally outloud, but it’s not as exciting to talk about swiping and tapping on a touch screen), and the machine generates a code valid for that particular trip.
This, of course, requires an internet connection. Which is one issue: the wireless internet in French train stations is massively unreliable: you have to connect your machine to their network, then they take you to a webpage asking for your email address, consent to their terms of service, and consent to be marketed to. When you submit the form it should say “connected!”, but nine times out of ten (I mean that literally and not as a metaphor for “a lot”) it throws an error. So you have to try several times, and then it’ll randomly work. Until it disconnects you and you have to go through the process again.
So I went to add a trip to my pass in the application today, and it turns out that there is no pass. “Right,” thought I, “I know the pass number, I can add it back to the application.” No such luck. An unhelpful error that might as well have read “oopsie!” alerted me that it didn’t work. So I tried to submit a customer service request, also through the application, and there was a slightly distinct but nevertheless unhelpful error: “that didn’t work.” Of course, the errors all end with “try again; if it still doesn’t work, contact customer service.” Which is very helpful when then process that didn’t work was precisely the process of contacting customer service.
So I bought a ticket to Boulogne-sur-mer (that should have been included in the pass but cost me €24). Before leaving, I decided to check whether there was in fact a room at the hostel there. I checked last night and there was availability, but I couldn’t book online since it was less than 24 hours before the time I would check in; I sent them an email in my best formal French (“veuillez m’avertir si une chambre est disponible…”) and heard nothing back. In a moment of panic (I began to hyperventilate like I haven’t since I was eleven years old), I decided not to risk it: I’d rather try my luck in the Lille hostel another night or two than end up stranded in Boulogne-sur-mer. Maybe not the smartest decision, but the decision I took.
Now, when I was walking to the station I felt the psychogeographic currents (why is it that it sounds intelligent when the Situationists write it in French, but in English it sounds like some time-cube bullshit? Maybe this is the secret of the CCRU…) pulling me away from the station. I said “I am the helmsman” (hello Norbert) and dragged myself there. I think the currents were trying to tell me something.
Anyhow, fuck Eurail: this is the problem with all this “application as infrastructure” bullshit. Infrastructure is difficult because its reliability has to be very close to 100%. And web apps, in my experience, work no more often that 80 or 85% of the time. So if you’re trying to replace some antiquated but ultimately reliable system with a more convenient but less reliable system, I will personally…do what, exactly? I guess “not use the system” is the easiest thing — I was going to do some “sysadmin from hell” bullshit, but that only works if someone’s silly enough to let you be their sysadmin.
Update: it turns out that the solution is to update the app. Digging through the forums, it seems as though this keeps happening, and they keep having to patch the app to fix it. I feel vindicated in my point that “apps aren’t infrastructure.”
At least Lille is cute and the food’s not bad. I was hanging out in this food-hall last night (honestly “food-hall” is exactly what it was: imagine a food court, but with real food), and I had occupied one seat at an eight-top, because that’s what was available. This group of seven kids gathered in Lille for a birthday asked if they could sit; I said “bien sûr” and got up to leave; they invited me to stay. We hung out for quite a while, as the rest of the group got in on the train. Frankly, it did me good to speak French with some age peers: I got along pretty well, and understood most of what they were saying. There were a few times when I struggled to express myself correctly, partially because I was trying to use extraordinarily (in the precise sense of out-of-the-ordinary) recherché constructions; I blame reading 19th century authors. Some of the more complicated modal and subjunctive constructions I still have to think about how to formulate; I end up using them mainly because I know that they’re possible and I don’t know the more current idiom for the same expression. Often there’s a simpler/more oral way to say what would be expressed more precisely or complexly in writing. But I got to talk to them.
There was really only one moment where I struggled to express myself: these kids were engineers, and I spoke to one who was an intern designing electrical systems for train stations. I wanted to ask whether she was putting in the power lines or the signal lines, that is, the lines to power the equipment or the lines the equipment uses to communicate. I can hardly explain it in English, so French was hopeless. Luckily, I’ve been watching electronics youtube in French, so I was able to ask whether she was working on “high voltage” lines, which got the point across. She was installing the power supplies for the equipment in the station, but not the very high power lines that power the trains themselves. She mentioned how, after doing this work, her vision of the world is changed: every lightbulb you see, for example, has to have a power cable feeding it from somewhere, and that line has to be routed and fed. I got a little sense of what it was like from the way she looked at the led strips hanging from the ceiling of the room: hundreds of little lights, all eating electricity.
In short, the antics continue. I solidified a new rule for travelling: don’t try to book last minute on a Saturday — this is the same thing that happened to me that time in Rome. Ah well. The trip continues, as does the ruckus. Don’t panic, my man. I’m trying, but it’s not easy. One of my rules for working with the computer is “when you get frustrated, walk away.” The stakes feel much lower with the computer, so it’s easier to put it down. But when it’s “where will I sleep tonight,” it’s harder to maintain a polite detachment. I guess this is the kind of constant stress experienced by people who don’t have the economic privileges I do: where will they sleep? where will their next meal come from? It can’t be good for a body to live under such conditions of doubt and uncertainty. I guess that’s what distinguishes my experience from theirs: I can pay for a bed in the hostel, if there’s one available; I can buy lunch or something to drink. I know that there’s not really any danger for me. I suppose that not panicking is a privilege, one that I should take advantage of, since I have it.
