We are officially solid believers of good karma. Here is an anecdote of how spending 3€ saved us 120€.
At first sight of the Eiffel in the distance, we began taking photos at a bridge. We were approached by two women with clipboards trying to get us to sign something. It looked like a petition but they pointed to the English translation and we saw that it was something about supporting the deaf.
Tammy began to sign it, so I followed suit. As I was filling it out, I saw that we were required to give a donation. Ugh. I reached in my money belt to pull out a euro, but all I had was a 2 euro coin. I gave it to the woman and she pointed to the “minimum 10€” sentence hidden on the side. I shook my head and started to walk away. The other woman accepted Tammy’s single euro coin without fuss, and upon seeing that I was now going to give her a fat goose egg, she panicked and accepted my money.
I was annoyed at the whole situation and regretted being so nice. Tammy said that it was good karma.
Ohhh she was right. When we went to reserve our tickets for the overnight train from Paris to Barcelona, we were fortunate enough to have the only English speaker available to us. He was so helpful. With our Eurail pass, we get big discounts on train tickets. Fit example, without our passes this ticket to Barcelona would have cost approx 299€. With our passes it would only cost roughly 75. This was still pretty steep for us.
THEN our friendly English-speaking attendant looked up a couple things for us and found a way for us to reserve our seats for only 18€ instead. Oui sil vous plait!! The only major difference in trains was that we will have to make a transfer at the Spanish border and we will lose about an hour or two of time.
So oui, this was good € karma in action!!
