If she can avoid it, Saphia never travels by airplane.
Saphia researches the climate crisis for a living – so that’s partly why, although not entirely. She also just hates flying, period.
“My job sort of demands I have an ethical stance on flying,” Saphia tells CNN Travel. “But I never enjoyed it.”
So when, in March 2012, aged 26, Londoner Saphia decided to head to Valencia, Spain to attend a music festival with a friend, she immediately mapped out the trip by rail.
First up, Saphia booked a seat on the Eurostar, the high speed train that connects the UK to continental Europe via a tunnel running under the English Channel. From there, Saphia was set to travel through France by rail, towards her destination in Spain.
On a warm spring Thursday evening, Saphia finished up work and headed to London’s opulent St Pancras Station to catch the Eurostar. She tracked down her carriage and was one of the first to board the sleek blue train, hauling her backpack onto the overhead storage space, and then getting comfortable.
“It was an absolutely packed out train,” Saphia recalls. “On Eurostar, you always have reserved seats where you have to sit, and I remember looking out of the window at the other people boarding.”
Amid the crowds, there was one passenger in particular who caught her eye. A guy, also holding a backpack, who looked a similar age to Saphia.
“He’s attractive,” Saphia thought to herself. And then this stranger proceeded to step onto the train, into Saphia’s carriage and slip into the seat next to her.
Saphia couldn’t quite believe it. She kept her composure, smiling a hello at the guy. He smiled back.
Saphia’s Eurostar seatmate was a twentysomething Frenchman called Sylvain (Saphia and Sylvain have requested their last names not be included in this article, for privacy reasons). Sylvain had been working for the past year in London, but that Thursday night in 2012, Sylvain was heading back to France to celebrate his Master’s graduation – and possibly for good.
“It was basically one year after the final day of uni,” Sylvain tells CNN Travel. “My contract in the UK, in London, was coming to an end. And I was looking for a new opportunity at that time to work somewhere else. The idea of going back to France was starting to pop into my head.”
Sylvain noticed Saphia as soon as he sat down next to her. He wanted to strike up a conversation, but didn’t know how – he found it awkward enough chatting to women in his native French. In English, he was even less confident.
As the train wove in and out of tunnels, away from London and toward the coast, Saphia kept snatching glances at Sylvain.
“For about the first half an hour, I’m sort of looking sideways, trying to catch his eye a little bit,” she recalls.
Then, a little while into the journey, Sylvain decided to get a drink from the bar. As he got up, Sylvain introduced himself, and asked Saphia if she wanted to grab a drink too.
Saphia smiled, agreed, and the two walked together through the train, towards the cafe carriage. Once there, Sylvain opted for beer, while Saphia asked for a cup of tea – which Sylvain joked was “so British.” Then they sat down in the restaurant car, opposite each other.
“We had a drink and, and chatted,” recalls Saphia. “We talked about the Olympics, which was coming up in London later that year. And we talked about our lives.”
A train connection
As Sylvain drank his beer and Saphia sipped her tea, the two discussed London and how buzzy and exciting everything felt in the lead up to the 2012 Summer Olympics. They starting joking about what their respective Olympic sports would be.
Then they talked about their respective jobs, interests, where they were from – Saphia explained she grew up in Hull, a port city in the north of England, while Sylvain talked about his childhood in a village in the Nièvre region of Burgundy in France, known for its great wine.
Right away, there was a palpable connection between Saphia and Sylvain. They both felt it. At one point, Saphia fired off a quick text to her sister:
“Have met hot French man on train. Will see what happens.”
As the train sped through the English countryside and into the darkness of the Channel Tunnel, Saphia and Sylvain moved on to discussing their shared a love of traveling – Sylvain had recently returned from a stint in Vietnam, Saphia was planning to backpack around Europe for a few weeks post-festival.
The conversation between Saphia and Sylvain felt easy, fun, exciting. When the occasional language barrier or misunderstanding cropped up, they generally laughed it off. At one point, Saphia mentioned an interest in art, and in response, Sylvain tried to sound knowledgeable and suitably artistic, but was acutely aware he didn’t really know what he was talking about.
“I was trying to get myself into our discussion, which was way outside of my comfort zone,” he says.
For much of the two-and-a-half-hour train journey, Saphia assumed Sylvain lived in France, and it wasn’t until the train was almost in Paris that the two strangers realized they actually lived really close to each other, in the same north London neighborhood.
“We were practically neighbors,” says Saphia. “So we had a long conversation, thinking we’ll never see each other again because we live in different countries, but we actually lived around the corner.”
When the Eurostar pulled up in Paris’ Gare du Nord, Sylvain and Saphia returned to their seats, grabbed their bags and disembarked the train together. They lingered on the platform, and Sylvain asked Saphia if she’d like to join him at a wine bar nearby, where he was meeting his college friends.
Saphia declined, explaining she had a ticket booked on an overnight train. Part of her wanted to abandon the booked train and head out into the night with the man from the Eurostar – but while she didn’t give into this impulse, Saphia did tell Sylvain she’d like to see him again.
Saphia liked that Sylvain seemed “quite outgoing, quite adventurous, sociable.”
Sylvain says he was also struck by Saphia’s “adventurous” side.
“To just be on your own, backpacking with some friends across Europe, that was cool,” he says. “It’s very hard to capture somebody’s personality just in a short journey like that, but I wanted to see her again. We just really hit it off. Obviously something was happening.”
The two said their goodbyes (“I think we had a kiss on both cheeks in the French way,” recalls Saphia) and promised to look one another up on social media.
“I gave him my full name so he could find me on Facebook,” says Saphia.
Then they walked in opposite directions through the busy Parisian station. And as Saphia headed towards the Paris Metro, she found herself thinking: “This is such a romantic origin story that it has to work out.”
Later, sitting in her seat on the night train from Paris, Saphia didn’t sleep. Instead, she gazed out the window, reliving her meeting with Sylvain in her head.
She remembered Sylvain talking about his picturesque hometown, and she realized the train was heading through Burgundy.
“I spent the night looking out, every time we stopped at a station, to see if we stopped there, all night long.”
When the train did pull up at the tiny village in Nièvre, Saphia felt a smile spread across her face. She wished she could text Sylvain and tell him.
Meanwhile, Sylvain was also basking in the afterglow of the unexpected train connection, but he was convinced Saphia would meet someone else on her travels, or back in London, before they had the chance to reunite.
“Obviously she’s brilliant, she’s attractive and sparkly,” he says.
In the wine bar with his college friends, Sylvain mentioned that he’d met an amazing girl on the Eurostar. Sylvain’s friends spent the evening teasing Sylvain about the idea that this “Hollywood story” could have any future.
But despite their gentle ribbing, and his own doubt, Sylvain still had a glimmer of hope.
“I wanted to believe in the story,” he says. “I just thought, there is a chance out of 100, it will work.”
Back and forth across the Channel
Although it was 2012 and smartphones were becoming commonplace, Saphia remained committed to what she describes as a “Nokia brick phone.” The only way she could connect to the internet on her travels was via cobweb-ridden old computers in the back rooms of hostels.
After the music festival, during a stopover in Barcelona, Saphia managed to log onto Facebook via one such hostel computer. She had a notification – a friend request, and a friendly message, from Sylvain. He’d sent it two weeks earlier, right after they’d met.
Saphia typed out a reply, explaining that she didn’t have internet access on the road, but promising to message Sylvain once she was back in London.
Then a few weeks later, when Saphia was back home, she and Sylvain reconnected properly. This time, they exchanged phone numbers and arranged to go on an official first date, to a restaurant on Upper Street, a road lined with bars and restaurants in London’s Islington district.
Their easy Eurostar rapport returned, and they were both excited to see each other again.
“We were both nervous at first, but we hit it off very quickly,” recalls Saphia.
On their second date, Saphia and Sylvain went to Stratford, in the east of the UK capital, to see the London Olympic stadium being built, which Saphia calls “very exciting.”
Sylvain and Saphia started meeting up regularly, enjoying meals out and long evenings chatting about their lives. It was exciting, but throughout this period, Sylvain wasn’t sure if he would stay in London or end up moving to Paris. Meeting Saphia was another reason to stay in the UK, but Sylvain knew the fates might not align to let that happen – he had to go where the work was, and he was taking job interviews in both countries.
Sylvain explained the situation to Saphia, and the two of them decided to take things slowly, both conscious that Sylvain moving to France could spell the end of their burgeoning connection.
But when, in September 2012, Sylvain got a job in Paris and relocated there, he and Saphia decided to commit to long distance.
“We didn’t want to go our separate ways,” explains Sylvain.
And so began what Sylvain calls “the second leg of our story where Eurostar became a central point of our relationship.”
The two regularly traveled by the train across the Channel to visit one another.
“We were traveling back and forth, every week, every two weeks, taking it in turns,” says Saphia.
This state of play lasted two years. Sometimes it was romantic, even glamorous, to hop onto the train where they’d met and reunite at St. Pancras or Gare du Nord.
But most of the time, it was just difficult being apart. And all that travel was “expensive and exhausting,” as Saphia puts it.
“You can imagine, long distance for two years is heavy on a couple,” says Sylvain.
Finally, after two years of train station goodbyes, Sylvain got a job back in London.
“It was really a big relief,” he says.
The night he found out the job was his, Sylvain went out celebrating with his friends in Paris.
Over drinks, he told them he was planning to propose to Saphia. He’d wanted to for a while, but the confirmation they were finally going to be in the same country made Sylvain certain this was the right moment.
A St Pancras proposal
When Sylvain started considering the proposal, a plan came to him almost fully formed – it was obvious how the evening should play out.
So one evening after work, while Saphia was cooking dinner in their north London apartment, Sylvain bounced enthusiastically through the door and suggested they head out for the evening.
“I was in the middle of cooking spaghetti bolognese when Sylvain said, ‘Let’s go out for a drink,’” recalls Saphia. “I said, ‘No, because I’m cooking.’”
Sylvain was insistent – not only that they should head out, but that they should go into central London, rather than walking down the street to their local pub.
“That was all very strange and I was a bit miffed because I didn’t plan to go out that evening,” recalls Saphia.
Sylvain and Saphia ended up at St Pancras Station, on the second floor, near where the Eurostar trains depart and arrive. They walked towards the station’s towering, romantic bronze statue of a couple embracing, officially called “The Meeting Place,” but often known as “The Lovers.”
“That was where he got down on one knee,” says Saphia, “Next to the big statue,”
It was, Saphia laughs, “a bit cheesy.”
“But it was basically where we’d met – where the Eurostar trains all line up on the platform. It was fitting.”
For Sylvain, St Pancras and the renowned statue, was “the natural place” for the proposal.
After Saphia said yes, she and Sylvain went to the then newly opened London skyscraper The Shard for celebratory drinks overlooking the city’s glittering skyline. Then the couple headed back to St Pancras to spend a night in the historic red-bricked Renaissance Hotel, which neighbors the station.
Sylvain and Saphia laughed as they ran up the hotel steps, where the Spice Girls filmed the music video for “Wannabe.” The next day at breakfast, they ate what Saphia calls “the best full English I’ve ever had.”
Sylvain says he saw the engagement as an “accomplishment” after the sometimes grueling long distance period.
“We were ready to start living our life as a young couple in London,” he says.
Wedding celebrations
Saphia and Sylvain enjoyed two wedding celebrations in the summer of 2016. The first took place in Hull, in the north of England, where Saphia grew up.
“The registry office is actually in the library, but it’s in the French history room of the library,” says Saphia.
This French-link felt appropriate – although turned out to be mildly awkward when, on the actual wedding day, the library happened to be hosting an exhibition on the Battle of Waterloo.
“So we invited all these French people over and they sat in this room with all this memorabilia about how the British defeated the French at Waterloo,” says Saphia, laughing.
A few weeks later, Saphia and Sylvain continued the celebrations in Sylvain’s hometown in Burgundy, France. They threw “a massive party in a great big barn in the countryside,” recalls Saphia.
“People came actually from all over the world, from everywhere, to party with us,” she says. “It was three days in the end, that party.”
It was a hot summer’s weekend, so the wedding guests stayed out all night “dancing in the field and partying outside.”
“Everybody had a fantastic time,” recalls Sylvain.
The countryside location was “really magical,” adds Saphia. There was no light pollution, just stretches of rolling fields, illuminated only by starlight.
“At night, you can see the Milky Way in the sky,” says Saphia. “It’s really beautiful, really beautiful surroundings.”
The couple honeymooned in Venice, and then spent the next few years embracing their shared love of travel via European city breaks, as well as making the most of life in London.
It wasn’t all smooth sailing. In 2016 – around the time Sylvain and Saphia got married – the UK voted for Brexit, deciding to leave the European Union.
As a French-English couple who were proud of their European identity, and who’d made the most of the EU’s freedom of movement, the Brexit vote “really sent shockwaves,” as Saphia puts it.
The couple questioned whether to stay in the UK. Meanwhile, Sylvain applied for British citizenship and Saphia secured French citizenship.
In the end, the couple’s jobs – plus their circle of international, like-minded friends – kept Saphia and Sylvain in the UK.
In 2019, they welcomed their first child. And after spending the UK’s first Covid lockdown in a small London apartment with a toddler, the couple relocated to Saphia’s hometown of Hull, where they still live today.
At the end of last year, Saphia and Sylvain welcomed a second child. Their children are dual nationals and their oldest, who is now five, speaks fluent English and French.
“It’s nice to see him switching from one to the other. And now we have a baby, four months old, he is teaching his baby brother to speak,” says Saphia.
Traveling together
For Saphia and Sylvain, traveling remains a shared passion – they’re excited to travel more with their children in the future.
Sylvain says they both enjoy “discovering new countries, new cultures, new regions,” although they “both have different ways to discover the same countries.”
“You like the beaches and the parties and the people,” Saphia says to Sylvain. “I like the city life, the culture and architecture.”
Plus, while Sylvain travels by airplane, Saphia’s still committed to traveling by train wherever possible. She’s been on the odd flight with Sylvain over the past 12 years but jokes that his hand has never recovered from her squeezing it so tightly during take off and landing.
While Saphia and Sylvain no longer have St Pancras Station on their doorstep, the couple still spend a lot of time traveling to France by train.
“Every time we go back to see Sylvain’s family, we travel by Eurostar, and we take our kids and it’s a nice memory,” says Saphia.
Sometimes, when they board a busy Paris-bound train with their young family, the couple find themselves thinking about how their Eurostar meeting “was absolutely random.”
They could have been traveling on different days, on different trains, in different carriages – or simply not been seated next to each other.
“When you think about it, it seems like a chance out of a billion,” says Sylvain.
Saphia still thinks “it’s quite romantic to meet that way.” She also enjoys the symbolism, “the French and English connection – the Entente Cordiale between the two countries, that’s how the tunnel got built in the first place. It’s a nice symbol.”
Sylvain appreciates the romance too, but says when he looks back on their 12 years together, he’s proudest of their perseverance.
“Of course, how we met was incredible,” he says. “But what impresses me the most, I think, was the first two years of our relationship, when we were long distance – we really wanted to make it happen.”
Saphia also laughs whenever she recalls her text to her sister. She suggests her younger self probably wouldn’t be surprised that the “hot French man” she met on the train became the love of her life.
“I think if you’d gone back and told me then: ‘This is the person you’re going to marry’ – I think I would have said, ‘OK, I’m up for that,’” says Saphia.
“I was in an adventurous frame of mind. Anything felt possible. And I think I maybe had an inkling in the back of my mind from the beginning that it was going to work out somehow.”
