TGV upon Seine!

You must be fed up with my posts on the TGV but I could not really miss what they did with it today... They're so proud of it that they put it on a barge and took it through Paris on the Seine for 2 hours! Around 5:30 they ended up docking the barge near the Eiffel Tower for all the tourists to see it - it'll stay there at least another 2 weeks or so. I took a photo of it but I don't like it, so instead I used one of the postcards they gave the passers by.

French bullet train to break a new record

I will express a bit of a national pride today... The French bullet train, also known as TGV (for Train à Grande Vitesse) will try to break a new world record today (Tuesday). Officially Alstom - the company that makes it - announced that they will try to reach 540 Km/h (336 mph) but in everybody's mind the real goal is to reach 600 Km/h (373 mph) which is faster than many small planes. Of course this does not mean the train will run at this speed eventually (it would be far too expensive) but that it is the fastest in the world. It's important of the image of the company especially if they want to sell it abroad.

Inside the TGV

This morning I had to go out of Paris to attend a seminar in Tours (west center of France) and I went by train, more exactly by TGV (bullet train). Before the departure I took this photo, at the station (Gare Montparnasse). I then noticed how they painted straight lines on the train to emphasize the feeling of speed when it moves... And that was precisely the purpose of my seminar: how to make objects look/sound/feel like what consumers want them to be (solid, reliable, good...). Fascinating!