Just wanted to relay a very positive experience we had last Sunday. My husband and I went to the Gare de Lyon to go to Fontainebleau. There are frequent trains to this destination, so we just went to the train station and figured we'd buy tickets on the spot. We didn't have enough coins to use the machines, so looked for the Ile de France ticket windows -- all closed. So we got in a long line for tickets withinFrance and International, assuming that with the Ile de France windows all closed, these other ticket sellers were taking on these sales as well. When our turn finally came, the ticket agent said he couldn't sell us tickets, and said we should go to the lower level. We did as he said, and there were no ticket windows that we could see. After more searching, we approached a SNCF security guy and explained our problem. First he took us over to where we had waited in line and talked to one of the ticket agents, and came back to us and said they couldn't sell us tickets there. He then walked us over, then over to a cafe, where he asked them to give us coins for our paper money, then walked us over to a ticket machine and operated the machine for the tickets, putting the coins in -- when we discoverd that the combination of coins we'd just gotten and what we'd had on hand, was not enough to purchase the tickets, he pulled out his wallet and paid the rest (we were just under one euro short, as the tickets were a bit more than we thought). He was so kind and friendly. He was kind of like a French GI Joe marching us through the train station. We of course thanked him very effusively and were going to go and get him the money he'd contributed, but he didn't want anything more than that we think well of the French and have a good, positive experience, particularly in view of the current situation (which of course we did).

I WISH I THOUGHT the same thing would happen in a comparably-sized city here in the US.

And of course, you could almost certainly have ridden the train free of charge, but thank you for paying anyway.

Having had a number of interactions with SNCF personnel over the past few weeks, I just want to second MNsnowflake's comment. In fact, virtually everybody we encountered in France, even the supposedly "cold" Parisiens, was extremely helpful. Would that Americans were as nice!

We found just about everyone we encountered to be friendly and helpful, but this gentlemen just really went out of his way for us -- as we walked along with him, he was approached about every few minutes by people with questions, and he handled everyone's requests with great professionalism.

Kerouac, I guess we're just too straight-arrowed to hop on without paying. Or to chicken about getting caught. Probably both.

What a great story, thanks for sharing!