Final Brussels Thoughts...Going back to Amsterdam

(wrote this earlier while on the train...obviously didn't blog from the train, though that would have been quite handy)



I'm sitting on yet another train, relieved to be going back to Amsterdam. I don't know how kids in there late teens or twenties backpack through Europe for months on end, sleeping in crappy hotels or hostels, dealing with funky smells in rooms and unidentifiable organisms growing from showers...but I digress.

I can't say my experience in Belgium were the best. There were some high points, but what I found in Antwerp and Brussels did not leave me doing the happy dance. If you've been keeping up with my blog-not sure why you would-then you've read some of the ups and downs. Let me say that, like Antwerp, Brussels and I only got on so well together. First, my arrival had me in the middle of a dirty and sleezy red light district. Then there was the fact that everything in Brussels closes on Mondays. Of course the drunk guy at the hotel harrassing me I could have lived without. Ahh yes, and the married guy working at the reception desk who wanted to take me out at 11pm when he got off work...but that is neither here nor there. The thing that really did it for mewas the experiece at the train station this morning which brought me to frustrated tears.

Because I decided to leave Brussels a day early, my ticket had the incorrect date. I checked at Brussels Central Station and again at the Noord station when I arrived there to leave this morning. Both people I spoke with told me to speak with the specific train manager before I boarded the train. And so, I waited for my train. When the train approached I gathered my things together, stood on the platform, waited for the doors to open so that I could speak with the train manager during the brief stop the train makes. The manager is the guy in the funny red hat who gets off blowing his whistle all the day long. So the whistle blower, as I'll call him, is supposed to get off the train and walk down the platform to make sure people get on who need to and if anyone has questions. My whistle blower must have been a lazy ass, because he didn't walk the platform. And so I'm waving and yelling for him. You know what he does? He shuts the freaking doors! Perhaps he didn't see or hear me, but I highly doubt that. And so, me, looking like an ass surely, try to open the doors to no avail. I was so frustrated and pissed off! My dear readers...feel free to chuckle at my misfortune. (sticking tongue out at you right now)

I went, fighting back tears, to the ticket agent and told him what happened. I decided to pay 5EUR to change my ticket so that I would not have to deal with this issue again. It's beyond me why neither of the agents suggested this before my minor crisis. And so, back up to platform 11 I headed to wait for the next train which was to arrive in one hour. One nice thing about Europe is that the trains come as often as busses do in L.A.

Just so everyone is reassured, I'm much happier now. I put on some happy music while on the train. And then I took goofy pictures of myself which made me smile at myself. Isn't that what life is about? Smiling at our misfortunes and growing from there.