Wednesday morning I had to get up bright and early, or
should I say not yet bright and early so I could take the train up to Amsterdam
to meet Nathan and Ken Feigion who are coming to stay with us for a couple
weeks. I had to get up around 6:30 at the latest to make sure I got on the
7:17AM train.
I think I got to sleep the night before just after midnight,
so I was tired, and getting up that early and having to rush was not good on my
stomach. I rushed out of the apartment just after 7 and walked quickly to the
train. Luckily I had bought my ticket the day before so I was able to hop on
the train.
The train was already pretty full as lots of people commute
to work in other cities via the train so I had to walk through one car and into
another before I really found open seats. As the train was going I noticed on
the wall in front of me was a number one. I wondered to myself if that meant I
was sitting in a first class seat instead of second class that my ticket was
for.
When the train stopped in Utrect a ton of people got off and
so I moved to a seat facing the forward direction. Looking that way I saw that
there was a 2 on the far wall on the other side of a glass door, and the seats
on the other side were a little closer together. I realized at that time that I
was in first class. There were still a lot of people in the train and some
people were even standing in the 2nd class area, so there were no
seats that I could move too. Since there were still open seats where I was
sitting and no one had come to check tickets yet I waited until the next stop
and then I moved up into the 2nd class area.
After arriving at the airport I had to figure out which
arrival gate to go to. I saw that the guys should be at arrivals #2 which was
on the far side to where I was. When I walked over there the guys were waiting
outside for me already. I didn’t realize that they hadn’t checked any bags, but
luckily they hadn’t been waiting very long.
We went to the ticket booth and bought train tickets for the
guys. We had around a half hour wait till the next direct train went down to
Eindhoven. We went down to the train platform to wait for our train. When it
popped up on the sign it said platform #2, so when the train pulled up we
prepared to board. As I didn’t see a destination sign on the side of the train
I asked a train person standing on the platform if that train went to
Eindhoven, she said it did so on we went.
As the train got underway we started chatting about the
trip, things they would like to see or places to go. The train conductor lady
came around to stamp our tickets. When she saw them she said “You got on the
wrong train.” I told her that I had even asked a train person and they told me
it was the correct train. Apparently their train was delayed so it was at the
platform that said Eindhoven, she said she had announced it, but I wouldn’t
really understand her Dutch, especially since I had a hard enough time
understanding her English.
She was very nice though and was able to look up on some
electronic device which trains we needed to take to get to Eindhoven.
She told us to get off on the next stop which was Amersfoort
which is East of Amsterdam about a ½ hour instead of South. She told us we had
to go downstairs and over to platform #2 to catch the next train to Utrect. She
said we would need to ask the train conductor if it was okay to ride the train
with the ticket we had. She said when we got to Utrect we would have 6 minutes
to go from platform #1 to platform #12 to get on a train to Eindhoven. She said
if we missed that train the next train would be in a half hour and would
require us to transfer 4 more times; that wasn’t an option.
When we got off at Amersfoort the train we wanted to get on
was stopped already. I wasn’t sure where to find the conductor so I went to the
front of the train. I had to get on the train and I knocked on the door up
front, I told the guy what happened and he said he was actually just the driver
but that he didn’t have an issue with it, and said to tell the conductor that
if they had and issue with it.
When we arrived in Utrect we got lucky. Instead of the
platforms being one long line far apart they were more in a square or U shape
so it was much closer. That train went directly to Eindhoven so we could just
enjoy the rest of the ride. I’m just glad I don’t have to regularly ride the
trains.
