The French engineering firm Alstom have launched the prototype of their new high-speed AGV train at their rail test centre in La Rochelle. The train, when operational, will be able to travel at 360 km/h, covering a distance of 1000km in just three hours. It will also have more seating than existing TGV trains, with space savings coming from the removal of motor carriages at the ends of the trains – instead, the trains will have distributed motors underneath each carriage.

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Since December 7th, the French rail corporation SNCF has been trialling wifi internet access on its TGZ Est services (Paris to Strasbourg), and if successful, this will be extended to all SNCF trains (with estimates of all TGV lines having access by 2010).

I can’t imagine too many backpackers would want to carry their laptop with them (I know that I hate dragging mine around with me), but as small devices like PDAs and mobile phones with wifi access become more common, this could reduce the need for travellers to seek out dodgy internet cafes to find accomodation and communicate with home cheaply.

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As part of our series of online language courses, this week, we’re looking at French.

Spoken by anywhere from 100 million to 500 million people (estimates vary) worldwide, knowledge of French is invaluable to a traveler. In Europe, it is spoken in France (obviously), as well as Luxembourg, and parts of Belgium and Switzerland. It is also spoken in Canada, parts of Central and South America, huge swathes of Africa, and parts of the South Pacific.

  • BBC Languages – Learn French: some excellent audio-visual material, with a focus on conversational French. There’s little grammar instruction, although a later course provides some quiz material on it.
  • Jacques Leons’ French Language Course: a heavily grammar-based course, with a bit of audio. Makes a good complement for the above BBC course.
  • Wikibooks’ French Course: extensive lessons, with a good range of vocabulary presented. Also has a separate guide detailing grammar.
  • The French Tutorial: Another heavily grammar based course, this tutorial is very extensive, but suffers from having every individual section on a separate web page, making it rather cumbersome to use.

Next week: Spanish

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Sympathy must go to any travellers currently in France or planning to be there in the next day or so, as a strike by rail workers has currently crippled most of the French system.

This has left several lines of the Paris metro not running, and it’s estimated that only 90 out of 700 TGV services were still in service. One interesting side-effect of this was the newfound popularity of Paris’s free bicycle scheme, in the wake of the strike.

Be warned, however that if you plan to try to avoid the strikes by somehow escaping to Germany, rail workers there are planning to strike on Thursday, also. I would recommend heading for Belgium or Spain, instead…

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With Le Tour well underway, it seems an appropriate time to look at what various travel writers have been up to in France…

Fairfax New Zealand looks at some of the many military attractions in Paris, while across the Tasman, The Australian takes a cruise down the Rhone river.

Heading to the northern hemisphere, The Independent in UK gives us the Complete Guide to Languedoc Roussillon, a writer the The Observer clearly didn’t enjoy her trip to Paris too much, and The Times gives us a walking holiday in Gascony.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the LA Times investigates the new Quai Branly Museum in Paris, and tells of a new campaign to make Parisiens a little bit more friendly. As if they weren’t delightful enough already.

Finally, the Toronto Star has a great guide to renting an apartment, from the newly polite French…

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We’re all familiar with the Louvre, but it’s not the only museum that Paris has. Get away from the crowds and go visit some of Paris’s lesser known museums.

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It’s the city where cinema began, it was the heart of the French Resistance during World War II, and it was the capital of Roman Gaul. Where is it? The Independent visits Lyon.

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Next Sunday (June 10th, 2007) marks the opening of the new eastern TGV high speed railway line, that will provide fast rail connections from Paris and Strasbourg to Basel, Zurich, Frankfurt and Stuttgart. As The Guardian explains, this is likely to open up much of southern Germany and eastern Switzerland to rail tourism.

The services to Germany will be operated by a new company named Alleo, as reported by Marcel Marchon of trainblog.com, whilst services to Switzerland will be run by TGV Lyria.

In The Know Traveller reports that prices from Paris to Basel, one way, will be a hefty US$128.

Meanwhile, The Independent provides the Complete Guide to Switzerland in style.

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