Getting of in Geneve (journey)

As soon as we got off in Geneve, we hurried to book our seat reservation tickets. We supposed that an evening scheduled TGV from Geneve to Paris might be full, so we found that it is a good idea to book it right away in the morning. I wanted to show off with my French knowledge and offered myself to take care of that. Firstly, I started with a broad smile and one-million-time-repeated greeting Bonjour Madamme and continued that we want to purchase reservation tickets for the pervious mentioned TGV. She blubbered out something in French I did not understand at all. I tried to make an impression that I understood, so I smiled and said „merci beuacoup“. She looked peculiarly at me and repeated the same nonsense – and I did not understand a word even on the second time. So, I asked in French how much I should pay for that and then suddenly she changed into English to explain that there were no seats left on that train. You can easily imagine how my fake smile froze up immediately. As she explained, there were some seats available, but in fact, there were no seats for our Europass left which are limited for each train. I spluttered something like what a nonsense, discrimination, etc. We were not allowed to take a train even if there were still some places free. We did pay for the ticket, so what is the problem? Unfortunately, I was not able to persuade her and all we could do was to go away and reconsider the situation. I was completely pissed off and Lila looked desperate, but what I really like is that even in that misery we were able to find a constructive solution. It was clear as a crystal that we cannot see Paris for 6h and by taking local trains we would get there just in time to take another trains to Amsterdam. Instead of taking TGV, we were damned to use monumentally slow local trains and travel for ages! What the heck, I was so looking forward to taking a TGV. Needless to say, I was also looking forward to visiting Paris, because I had studied French for last 4 weeks in order to improve my skills for my Erasmus exchange stay in Edinburgh – and this visit could help me to gain some confidence. We were about to make a big decision: either to go to Paris right away and not to see Geneve, or stay here and not to visit Paris. Lila has already been to Paris, so we decided to look around in a city that neither of us had visited before. We came back to make another reservations, but we were just to find out that nothing would be so easy as it had seemed. Another train from Paris to Amsterdam was booked as well. We knew that we have to stick to our schedule, otherwise we could easily miss our ferry from Stockhol to Helsinki that had already been payed. In a frantic hope I asked the cashier to find an alternative way for us from Geneve to Amsterdam. She dashed off a solution; however, we had to change our train for 6 times and the trip was estimated for 16h. WTF, that looked completely insane! Not even during my trip in Canada I had to change trains for 6 times and that was a journey across the whole American continent! Unfortunately, we had no other choice. We put up with the situation and booked all other trains in our trip as well – we did not want to have any other unpleasant surprise. Therefore, if there were anyone considering a Eurotrip with the Interrail ticket reading this blog, I strongly urge you to book your seats many days in advance. I would not have dreamed of booking train places so long in advance; we were quite sure that several hours should be enough. If only someone would have warned us about that... The employees at the stations should know the situation well, I cannot catch on that they did not tell us anything. Well, what could I expect - the lady at the counter looked like she was printing that kind of ticket for the first time. Next time, we will know....