Tatiana Geiselmann, edited by Ophélie Artaud 11:20 a.m., August 12, 2022

If the weekend will be busy on the side of the SNCF, some travelers may have the chance to meet Olivier, a controller like no other.

Because in addition to his work, he offers magic tricks to keep passengers busy throughout their journey.

Europe 1 went to meet him.

The weekend will be busy in terms of departures and returns.

And the trains will also be affected by this influx.

Trains where you may make surprising encounters, like this magician controller met by Europe 1. Olivier Hermann has been a controller at the SNCF since 1987 and so that the journey of passengers passes more quickly, he regularly offers them Magic trick.

Make travelers happy

"It was a colleague from Lille who showed me my first lap," he recalls.

"The job comes first. We do our business first and then it's more to relax the atmosphere in the off moments. Or, when there are very upset children, we stop for 30 seconds and we calm them with a magic trick and suddenly, the people in the car are all happy", smiles the controller.

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The magician knows several tricks, some more complicated than others.

"At the beginning, I had a wallet that caught fire. On the other hand, my boss was very scared, so I carried over to the card tricks."

Game in hand, it offers a small game. Just choose a card and then shoot a nut in a bag.

"You will choose a nut. Any one", explains Olivier.

If there are no nuts inside, the Queen of Hearts card drawn just before is there.

And when asked if he can give away the secret of his magic trick, the controller kindly refuses.

"No, I wouldn't say it, I don't have the right to say it. For magicians, it's forbidden," he jokes.

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Then sounded the famous jingle of the SNCF, with an advertisement which recommends to the travelers to “be careful not to forget your business”.

A sentence that makes Olivier smile: "that's a magic trick that we would like to do, to make all the abandoned packages disappear because it would avoid a lot of disturbances in the trains which we would do well without."

If he does not know this trick yet, "maybe one day we will find a magician who will do it. I think he will quickly be hired by the SNCF, that will help a lot of things", laughs the controller.