We pulled into a station on our way to Lyon, and sat, and sat, and sat. I noticed people getting off the train and standing on the platform. After some inquiries, I discovered that a train had derailed on the track ahead of us and we were being held at the station. The conductor indicated that we would still catch our next train because we had 1 h 20 mins between trains.
After sitting for an hour, I began to get nervous. Finally we pulled into Lyon, hopped off the train quickly, found our next platform and managed to board the next train in good time. Shortly into the ride, the students came and found me and said the conductor needed to speak to me (he only spoke French). He communicated to us that the train would not be traveling all the way to Geneva and that we would need to get off at the final stop which was Bourg en Bresse and would need to go to the ticket counter for new connections. All of this was communicated in French and I understood enough to be ok, but if he told me the reason for the train not going through to Geneva, I missed it.
When we passed through one station, we did notice a bunch of heavily armed security personnel. We have no idea why they were carrying machine guns, but we also saw this kind of arming at the Barcelona station.
When we reached Bourg en Bresse, he came back through with a smile for me and made sure I knew I had to go to the ticket counter, then as we got off the train, he followed us into the small station, spoke to the ticket counter lady, and invited us forward (cutting in front of others in line) to get us rebooked. I was very surprised and pleased by his special care of the group. I don't know if this was his general character, or was merited in part because I spoke French with him, but either way it made a challenging trip more palatable.
Bourg en Bresse - no cafes open in the vicinity of the train station at 3 in the afternoon, had to settle for sandwiches from the station vendor.
Amberieu station
The ticket lady also spoked only French, but helpfully wrote all her instructions down. She did not reprint new tickets for us, but wrote by hand that there was a problem from Lyon and our old tickets were good to Geneve still. Then she stamped them with lots of official date and station stamps. Then she gave me the set of connections through Amberieu, a very small station with just 3 platforms. We stepped off our train, walked to the other side of the platform and waited for the next train.
We finally made it to Geneva after zig zagging across southern France. All of the transit people we interacted with throughout the day were quite helpful and pleasant, making it a decent but long journey.
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