Our very first train strike!

Well that was fun....

Yesterday we left Baden-Baden in Germany (Roman baths! So amazing!) after a quick one night stopover for Annecy, France. Using the Deutcsh-Bahn website we mapped our route all the way, but we were pretty confused by why we couldn't take a train from Geneva, Switzerland to Annecy (despite there being a train station in both locations). The website was pretty much telling us, "you can't get there from here..." So we found a bus that would take us the rest of the way. It wasn't until we had missed one of our five connections that a woman told us that the French were striking. Not just the trains, as we had heard rumor of, but buses and airplanes as well. She could get us to Geneva, but from there she couldn't gaurantee us anything.

Once in Geneva we were supposed to walk to a bus station, take a bus to another part of town, walk to a tram stop, and take a tram to the bus station that our bus to Annecy would (maybe, hopefully??) be waiting for us. And we needed to complete these tasks within 32 minutes. We said "screw it, we'll take a taxi." In a moment of panic we ran to an ATM, realizing that we didn't have any swiss francs on us, and also had no idea if the Swiss Franc was even on par with the dollar and Euro. Luckily, it was. We found a taxi driver, showed him the station that we needed to get to together with a 50 franc bill and topped it off with a look of hopeless desperation. He nodded for us to get in.

The bus station was closed and vacant when we arrived, with memos posted on the door that were saying SOMETHING about the buses to Annecy. After a frustrating 20 minutes or so (and no sign of the bus) we finally found someone who was also going our way, but the bus was going to be about 40 minuets later because of the strike. Phew. So, we are happily in France, being hosted by a couple very warm college students who live just a few blocks from the train station and main part of town.