The Train Game
In an interesting twist on late trains, my Hamburg departure was actually 15 minutes late (so far it’s always been the arrivals that are late). Thankfully, a friendly German filled me in on what was happening, which was especially helpful because the electronic sign on my platform which had been announcing that my train would leave from there simply switched to announce a different train, which would have been rather unnerving without my new friend there to translate the message from the loudspeaker. Anyway, this all caused me to miss my next train, which I was pretty sure I could not afford to miss and still make it to Amsterdam that day. Turns out there was still one more train coming an hour later that would get me there in time. Which it did. In the end, I took 7 trains from Stockholm to Bergen #2, with virtually no time waiting in between, from 6am one day to 1am the following day.
From ‘burg to Bergen
The train on Hamburg was standing room only. My first class pass was useless there. I had to set my bags on a stack of empty bottles and lean against a window in the dining car. Good news: the Germans took it all in stride and were quite friendly. I enjoyed a decent conversation with a cool dude for the duration of the 2-hour ride. He used his phone to look up train schedules for me, showing me that I could still make it to Amsterdam that night even though I was late (see above). We’re now facebook friends, too :)
One one of my next trains, approaching the Germany/Netherlands border, I noticed something unusual. The passengers were decidedly less sophisticated looking (and behaving) than those from all my previous trains. The neighborhoods we passed through (farms and small towns) also looked rather rundown, even scary. It reminded me of deepest, darkest rural hillbilly country in America. I could easily picture weird stuff going on in those shanties, like the dude who kept his daughter and their children in his basement for years. It made me sad.
The moment I crossed the border into the Netherlands, things picked up completely. Almost night and day. Suddenly, houses were neat and tidy, farms much better kept, weeds kept at bay. On a much smaller scale and in a rural rather than urban fashion, it reminded me of being in El Paso, Texas, looking across the river to the slums of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. It’s amazing how a border, which is an imaginary line drawn by men, can make such a difference.
Deeper into the Netherlands, and after passing through a few towns, I found myself impressed with how tidy and pretty of a land it is. The Dutch seem to take real pride of ownership. Darkness fell and obscured the landscape, so that’s all I can say about that.
Finally, my uncle Ton met me at Amsterdam Centraal Station, from where we grabbed the last possible train out to Bergen. He then drove me to my hostel, where I enjoyed my tiny and hard little bed immensely.
Hurdles
Getting into Holland was arduous; getting out of Holland actually proved to be a real difficulty. The next day, the guy whose Nice apartment I had booked contacted me to tell me that I needed to be there by 8pm at the latest. That’s fine, the French high speed train could get me there by 7:30. But could I actually book said train? Online, no: the website wouldn’t allow me to use my pass to book the train. Calling the train service to book a seat (at over 50 cents a minute) led to the line cutting out after I finally got a person on the other end. No matter, we drove to the train terminal to book me a seat in person. The lady there said I had to use the phone service. I asked if she could at least look up how many vacant seats were available (remember, I was getting pressure from apartment guy and I needed to know if I was going to make it in time). She retorted in the negative, and seemed upset that I had asked, saying, “You might as well go to the baker and ask him!”. So I got on the phone again, paying them my 50 cents a minute to slowly ask me if I wanted to fill out a customer service survey after I had spoken to a representative. The answer from the phone office: we can’t do that, you must go to the station. I asked the same question as I had asked at the station: how many seats were available to Nice, or perhaps even just to Paris? The answer: none. Swell. I cancelled my reservation in Nice.
Not knowing where I would be the next few days, nor how I would get there, was actually quite liberating. With no looming deadlines, I felt free to enjoy myself. Which I did.
Three Dutch Uncles
My day with Ton was very full and very interesting. My hostel (more a boarding house than a hostel, really) provided breakfast (which consisted of ham, cheese, bread, Nutella, jam, and coffee), but I only stuck around long enough to make myself a dry ham and cheese sandwich because every seat in the place was taken and filled with a loud-talking 60-or-older Dutch person, and I felt like they were all staring at me, the only one in the room not part of their group.
Funny note on breakfast: the next day, armed with the knowledge of what to expect, I decided to get in and out quickly. I grabbed a slice of raisin bread and put some Nutella on it, then hastily made myself a sandwich with small slices of dark brown bread (which I assumed were whole-grain and fiber-rich) to take with me for lunch. At lunchtime, my sandwich was especially delicious and unique-tasting. It turns out my slices of pumpernickel were actually ginger spice bread. Frankly, with the right combination of ham, turkey, and muenster cheese, gingerbread makes an awesome sandwich! The other mistake I made (adding buttermilk – I think that’s what it was – to my coffee) was a great deal less serendipitous and I cannot recommend repeating it.
I would write at length about my time with my uncles, because we did, saw, and talked about a lot, but I imagine it’s more interesting to me because we’re family. Briefly then, Ton arranged for me to meet with my sculptor/artist uncle Gerard and my “man of leisure” uncle Kees, only not at the same time, due to their schedules. I was very pleased that each uncle made an effort to visit with me even though I arrived with only a few days’ notice. Ton and I drove around a ton of countryside, across some dikes, through some cute towns, and more. I saw two of Gerard’s sculptures, which were on public outdoor display (where cities had commissioned him to make them), which was a pretty cool thing. I ate a lovely dinner at a nice marina on a lake, then walked around a seaside fishing village. Good times.
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| Lunch with Ton and Gerard. They didn't know I had whipped out my camera, hence the real-life action shot haha. |
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| Ton and Kees at the local library. The books in the display have all been hand-bound by Ton. The display honors a late local mystic, and are generally on magnetism and the occult. |
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| Coolest 3D book cover I've seen lately, dunno about you |
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| Holland. As flat as predicted. |
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| Dinner. Almost all protein and fat. Dr. Atkins would approve. |
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| Canal at the marina where we ate |
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| One of Gerard's sculptures in Urk |
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| Another one. How cool is that? This is part of a sad memorial honoring the local fishermen who lost their lives at sea :( |
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| I find this amusing. What a clever way to increase square footage of your house without impinging on the pedestrian walkway. |
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| Sunset as seen from a gigantic dyke. |
By the way, Bergen is a really cute town. We had no time to walk it, but it was really, really cute. Only 15,000 population but filled with cute shops, twisty streets, artsy café’s, and the like. It’s actually a destination, and it deserves to be. Check it out sometime!
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| Pretty sure this is Bergen, but if so, it's not even the quaint and cute part, that's how quaint and cute the town is. |
Leaving Las Vegas (ish)
The next morning, Ton dropped me off at the train station and wished me well. An hour later, I was finally at Amerstdam Centraal Station, the place where a person really can procure tickets! After only 20 minutes’ wait in the “Service and Tickets” line, I met a grumpy lady who turned me away, saying that for international information I needed to go to the other end of the station. I would have liked it if they had only included the single word “Domestic” in the “Service and Tickets” sign. Sigh.
Almost an hour and a half later, I got to the front of the international line and found a friendly and helpful man who helped me to work out a destination and how to get there. I told him I just needed to get out of town, and any of several destinations I listed would be fine. He perked up when I mentioned Nice and that I wouldn’t mind taking a night train; fewer than 10 minutes and $80 later, I had an 8:30pm appointment with the night train to Zurich, followed by three more day trains, final destination Nice.
This left me with about 7 hours to explore Amsterdam, which was an unexpected bonus. I went to drop off my heavy pack at a locker in the station, but there was some security issue, and only Dutch people were allowed to use the lockers. So I did my snail impression in Amsterdam, carrying my “home” on my back and going rather slowly---only leaving a less noticeable trail.
Amsterdam, at least the part reachable by a heavily-laden tourist venturing on foot from the train station, is actually kinda gross. I wasn’t expecting much from a city known for drugs and prostitution (I saw both), but I was still surprised by how dirty it was and how smutty it felt. The city was filled, just filled, with sidewalk cafés, yet few of them seemed welcoming. I was actually happy to retreat to the train station after only about 3 hours in town. Well, and to be fair, the station permitted me, as a first class traveler, to wait in their first class lounge, where there was free internet, free drinks, clean restrooms (with no need to pay!), and cozy, quiet seating. That just rocked so much.
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| The aforementioned classy lounge |
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| So much potential to be a cool city, but so much grime bringing it down . . . |
Miscellaneous Notes on Nederlanders
- they don’t stop for anybody. Not pedestrians, not bicycles, not even other cars. One must keep on one’s toes or have them run over.
- they still ride bikes like nobody’s business. They are everywhere. They even have separate bike lanes on all the major streets. Not just a token painted line, either, they get their own lanes with treed or cobblestoned dividers sometimes.
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| The rumors are true: the Dutch still love their bikes. |
- they have canals everywhere. In the country, they have drawbridges above or tunnels going beneath them. In the city, they have sightseeing boats driving swiftly up and down them.
- they are tall. I know I said Norwegians are tall, but this is different. In Norway, the people are all sturdily built but come in many different heights (with the tall ones coming really tall). In Holland, they have more slender builds, but everybody is tall, only not often exceptionally tall. It’s like the average height for both men and women in Holland is 3 inches taller than in America, but the range of heights is much smaller. They’re all tall, but they’re almost all equally tall. This is rather fascinating to behold.
