We live in a World where we don’t need to learn a language to get what we want from a foreign service. We live in a world with Google translate. Worth it for French booking agents in this case. Aside from the hilarious possibilities this affords during sporting events such as #Euro2012 (see @kathviner‘s tweets in Swedish ), we can now translate pages of booking websites. This means that if France has a fab new site called capitainetrain.com I can see it in all it’s glory in English (I did German at school).
It’s still in Beta, so you have to be invited, but once you’re in it’s wonderful. You can even use it to book the Eurostar from London to Paris. And the site can hold the fare for you! (See my post about holding fares). No English site that I have found can do that. The only way to hold fares is to book via a travel agent such as International Rail.
Capitainetrain is beautifully simple. It also notes your age when you log in, so you don’t even need to select a youth fare if you are a youth.
Going to have fun with this one.
Sophie Collard on Google+
It’s a shame English sites don’t often have a translate option. I was amazed by how simple it was to navigate the Madrid metro website and also one for booking trains in Holland. We native English speakers really do have it easy!
I must travel to both places to have a go myself 🙂