For the TVG from Paris to Avignon I was able a few months ago to go into voyages-sncf.com and look how much PREM tickets would be for my trip. Now, I go through the whole same process but unless I put FRANCE as the country I will pick up it takes me to the RailEurope website where the tickets are 3X as much. If I put in FRANCE, then it gives me great prices but everyting comes up in French. How can I get it to remain in English so I can read it properly. I'm really frustrated.

Learn French!

Don't put a place in for pickup if you don't mean it! Of course they are going to send you to Raileurope if you say you want to pick them up in US or Canada, because SNCF doesn't have offices there so you do have to get them through raileurope.

They changed the website and don't give you the choice of it in English if you say pickup in France. You can get the webpage though, if you start out on the front page, select the Train tab and then change the URL language (it will say FR in it somewhere in the middle for French, change that to UK for English). I just did it so I know that works. YOu have to be careful to not alter that URL in other ways.

Learn French, now that's cute. I could understand most of it but I feel more comfortable in English. If I put Great Britain in there It should come out in English.

Follow Christina's advice. Click on the Train tab at the top of the www.voyages-sncf.com home page. Click in the body of the URL on the page that comes up and change LANG=FR to LANG=UK. Hit the Enter key and you'll be able to leave France as the default pick up country but everything will stay in English, and if Prem's are available you'll be able to print them at home.

Hi S,

You can use http://www.freetranslation.com/
to help you translate.

If you want the cheap tickets, you will have to work through the French site.

Do you have a specific problem?

How do you change the URL language. I went into properties but it wouldn't let me change it.

After you put in your dates, and cities, on the next page, in the URL address line; change the FR to UK.

If that still doesn't work for you, try going to www.tgv-europe.com; and change the country to Great Britain. You should be able to book the same trains/fares in English.

I'll give more details. On the voyages-sncf.com home page click on the "Train" tab at the top of the page. It's between "Accueil" and "Hotel". After a new page comes up, click anywhere in the body of the long URL at the top of the page. In that long URL find LANG=FR and change it to LANG=UK. Don't change anything else. Hit the Enter key and you'll get a booking page in English.

By &quot;top of the page&quot; is meant the Address blank in your browser, <u>above</u> the top of the displayed page.

I just change the URL by going to the bar in the browser window and literally typing over it and changing it. I change URLs all the time that way. Sometimes you have to be careful as you lose parts of it that way, though. Safer is to just &quot;select it&quot; and copy it and change it like you would any text. I copy URLs and past them into the browser window all the time.

I tried to make a link for you, by copying it and changing it and then using tinyurl but it doesn't work.

The problem is that the section is in the &quot;dynamic&quot; section of the website so you can't save the link exactly. I've had those problems before, you have to be on the website already for it to work, it isn't a URL you can exactly save, unless I don't know how to do it.

Unfortunately it seems sites like the French and Italian ones are making it hard for foreigners to take advantage of the deep discounted fares that some locals i think feel should be restricted to residents of say France or Italy. I know in Italy i've read that the cheaper subsidized fares may be restricted to residents in the future - or possibly will be.

A feeling has that foreigners should pay full price for tickets and not reap the greatly subsidized cheaper fares.

In SNCF's case, since they largely own Raileurope, it's natural that they would want to steer Americans there. Would be dumb business sense not to IMO

Yea! that worked changint the language to UK. Thank you.

Just one more question, when I make the reservations would it be easier to just pick up the tickets at the station in France, just wondering how difficult the process will be to pick out the seats and actually print the tickets. Has anyone printed their own tickets?

If you succeed in booking Prem's, do not choose cancellation insurance and go ahead and print your own tickets. It's easy to do. Let the computer assign your seats for you.

I printed mine at home and it was a breeze. The system assigned the seats automatically.