Every year, comités d’entreprise in France give their members gifts.
I’m not entirely sure what comité d’entreprise translates to in English as I’ve only ever experienced them in France, but the first Interwebs dictionary I looked at seems to think it’s employee representative committee. Last year, mine gave me 50€ of chèques vacances – something else I’ve only experienced in France.
The SNCF has a variety of railcards which offer various discounts for various types of traveller. When I was working in Paris, I used to travel home nearly every weekend, so had what was then the Cartes Escapades which gave me about 25% off any journeys involving a weekend.
I saved a fortune traveling from Paris Austerlitz – nice station, shame they demolished the restaurant – to La Coquille – awesome little rural station which needs to survive and has a helpful man to talk to rather than a machine – via Limoges – really pretty station with comfy Intercités trains to Paris that are slower, but nicer, than TGVs. I even got myself to Grand Voyageur status in the loyalty scheme with maaaany thousands of points, which sadly all expired when I stopped going up and down to Paris on a weekly basis.
The card is now called the Carte Avantage Weekend and costs 49€, which seems a much better way of spending 50€ of holiday cheques than just doing one journey. It gives me a 30% reduction on train journeys including at least a Friday, Saturday or Sunday night, or make an entire return journey on a Saturday or Sunday, though my “day out” options are limited slightly by the fact that my nearest stations all of them require a 45-minute drive, except one if I can go from work.
Reductions also apply to someone travelling with me, which is pretty awesome if you’re a small Peruvian finger-puppet.
I haven’t worked out where to go yet, but I might use it to fulfil my Interrail promise to myself that I’ll visit Strasbourg and Lille – we only went through them during the Interrail extravaganza – with slightly less luggage and a lot more time. Christmas markets are coming up – I do love a good Christmas market – and as the card is valid for a year I have plenty of opportunities for watching the world go by while I work out where I’m going next year.
