People's Exhibit A
As befits an important railway junction linking Paris to Lyon and Marseille, and serving such major towns as Basel, Lausanne and Zurich, Dijon station has recently undergone extensive renovation and expansion. It is now a brightly lit and spacious concourse, complete with restaurants, chic cafés and comfortable and abundant seating.
What a pity, then, that the toilet facilities have been designed to "cater" for a turnover of about 10 passengers a year and that the planners have not seen fit to provide lifts or moving staircases to transport travellers to and from the platforms, thereby rendering them out of bounds to a large and growing proportion of the population.
It is of course possible that the idea is to get rid of swathes of said proportion as we drop dead on our way up the steep stairs. Those of us who do make it onto the platform are then likely to be overcome by a fainting fit and to fall onto the railway track in front of an oncoming TGV.
People's Exhibit B
On the strenth of Season 1, I cannot speak too highly of Un Village français, "a French television drama series that centres on the people of Villeneuve, a fictional subprefecture, in the Jura, in German–occupied France during the Second World War."
The series is beautifully acted and filmed with plenty of drama, suspense and intrigue. It fully deserves to reach a wide audience outside France, and it is in fact available from amazon.co.uk and amazon.com. The only trouble is that the subtitles, when they exist at all, are in French only. What a shame.
As befits an important railway junction linking Paris to Lyon and Marseille, and serving such major towns as Basel, Lausanne and Zurich, Dijon station has recently undergone extensive renovation and expansion. It is now a brightly lit and spacious concourse, complete with restaurants, chic cafés and comfortable and abundant seating.
What a pity, then, that the toilet facilities have been designed to "cater" for a turnover of about 10 passengers a year and that the planners have not seen fit to provide lifts or moving staircases to transport travellers to and from the platforms, thereby rendering them out of bounds to a large and growing proportion of the population.
It is of course possible that the idea is to get rid of swathes of said proportion as we drop dead on our way up the steep stairs. Those of us who do make it onto the platform are then likely to be overcome by a fainting fit and to fall onto the railway track in front of an oncoming TGV.
People's Exhibit B
On the strenth of Season 1, I cannot speak too highly of Un Village français, "a French television drama series that centres on the people of Villeneuve, a fictional subprefecture, in the Jura, in German–occupied France during the Second World War."
The series is beautifully acted and filmed with plenty of drama, suspense and intrigue. It fully deserves to reach a wide audience outside France, and it is in fact available from amazon.co.uk and amazon.com. The only trouble is that the subtitles, when they exist at all, are in French only. What a shame.
You'd think - or perhaps you wouldn't - that Amazon could afford the translated subtitles, and then I for one might forgive the lack of tax-paying.
ReplyDeleteExhibit A made me laugh a lot - until I remembered I might be one of those travellers. Isn't there an EU law about easy access for everyone of all levels of mobility? Or perhaps our govt. just told us there was.