Today (24/6), I’ve traveled through England, France, Beligum and the Netherlands. I’ve received three different text messages welcoming me to the new country and informing me of the prices of calling, receiving calls and texting. The prices are exactly the same, but, I guess being welcomed to the new country once I cross the border is nice.
The landscapes are surprisingly similar too. In Belgum, the fields were occationally bordered by poppy and cornflowers, which made me think of the wheat and rye fields around my late gradmother’s old house. Here in the Netherlands, it’s still very flat, but there are also many houses and more trees.
I’m on the train from Maastricht to Amsterdam, and I’ve learned one interrail lesson since I last wrote. When I arrived in Liège-Guilleme, where I was supposed to change trains, the train to Maastricht in the intinerary that the nice woman at the ticket office in Stockholm had printed out to me in the end of May, was not up on the Departures board. After asking a man in the travel centre, who would only answer in French, informed me that the next train to Maastricht wouldn’t leave until ten minutes later than the train in my intinerary. With only 15 minutes bewteen trains in Maastricht according to the intinerary, this later train would be cutting it a little bit short. Changing trains at an unknown train station in five minutes is just not reasonable.
Well, then the actual, existing train was delayed due to some platform thing (the announcements in the train were only made in French and Dutch, of course), and eventually I arrived in Maastricht 15 minutes after my Amsterdam train had left. Luckily, the Intercity trains between Maastricht and Amsterdam seem to run every half hour on weekday evenings, so I could just hop on the next one instead.
But, what if I hadn’t been that lucky? What if the train I’m supposed to connect with only leaves once a day (like some of the trains I’ve planned to take down in Central Europe)? Old train schedules are not trustworthy, at least not if they are for regional trains. From now on, I will check my departures and train connections the night before, to make sure they all run. And also, have more than 15 minutes between trains! Some of these European train stations are simply HUGE.
Amsterdam train station.
Katja Malmborg 