The beginning…
The trip began with a nine hour flight on North-Worst Airlines. Toons and I met up at the airport with the appropriate amount of time to check in for the flight, exchange some money at the airport and stop in at one of the many pubs to be found at Memphis International Airport.
Our flight to Amsterdam was uneventful, although I barely fit in the seat that I was assigned back in coach. The hardest part of the trip was the flight. Nine hours on an airplane in an uncomfortable seat with only three hours of darkness total is hard to take. Flying out of Memphis to Amsterdam you lose seven hours travelling east in the summer. Jet lagged at landing to say the least.
Okay, so we arrive in The Netherlands with plenty of time to spare to catch the train to Maastricht where we are to join up with the rest of our business group and then travel to Brunssum where we are to stay for the week. Confused by the train schedule, I almost started an international incident when I asked an attendant if this was the train to Utricht, the place we were to change trains. The attendant informed me that this was not the train I wanted and then asked me what time my train was suppose to leave the station? I told her 12:00 noon and she looked at me angrily and informed that it was not 12:00PM yet and turned around and walked off. This clued me in real fast that you don’t ask questions as to the time a train is to run. The trains run on time in Holland and Germany!
So, the train showed up on time and we began our trip. We met our connection in Utricht and began our journey to Maastricht. The train made an intermediate stop during our trip to Maastricht. The conductor came on the interphone and made an announcement in Dutch and started to countdown. Then the train continued its journey with Toons and I on it. We were suppose to arrive in Maastricht at 14:32 and I had learned to follow my watch and look for the station signs. Guess what, we didn’t arrive in Maastrict, we ended up in Heerlein, which is about 30 kilometers from where we wanted to be. You see, when the conductor made his announcement and started counting, he was identifying that the train was splitting in half with one half going to Maastricht and the other going to Heerlein. Luckily for us there was another train that arrived five minutes after we got off in Heerlein that was bound for Maastricht. This added about an hour total to our time traveling on the train to Maastricht.
To make a long story short, study the train schedule when traveling in Europe and don’t trust that you understand anything that is going on around you…
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