Today I was ready to head up to the Netherlands with my friend because tomorrow we are heading to TwitchCon Amsterdam, but the trip didn’t go as smoothly as I had hoped. Everything that could go wrong happened.
After I packed everything I decided to check the public transport to check which trains I needed to take and when. The plan was to take a the train towards Hasselt from Antwerpen Centraal, then my friend would pick me up and drive us both up to her boyfriend’s place in the Netherlands. Well it didn’t turn out quite that way.
To start us off the bus was tram was delayed with around 5 min which caused me to miss my train towards Hasselt. I would have taken the other one if they didn’t only go once every hour. So I had to find a solution, because my friend could not wait 1h. I figured that I’ll get myself to the Netherlands and then they could just pick me up there. It started with having to wait 1h for the right train so that I could take it one stop further.
When I arrived to Antwerpen Berchem I got really confused because online it said that the train would arrive on track 7, but it had operantly arrived on number 8 which wasn’t a big deal because they were right next to each other. Now came the second problem which was that I wasn’t 100% sure that the train on track 8 was mine and it was about to leave. When I tried to talk to the conductor he just shook his head and waved at me to go away. So I was left quite confused, but one thing was for sure and that was that I had missed my main train into the Netherlands. It was time for me to wait yet another hour for the next one!
When I finally got on the train I thought the worst was over. I ended up falling asleep out of exhaustion, and of course when I finally woke up we were just about to leave Breda train station and I didn’t manage to get off. I started panicking because I didn’t know where I was heading next, so I checked the map and it seemed like I was heading to Rotterdam. My next step now was to figure out the best way to get to my location given my new route.
I googled it and figured that the easiest way was to get off on Rotterdam Central and take a train back to Breda and then swap again to the correct one aka the one I was suppose to get one. So I had to wait another 30 min in Rotterdam, but when I got back to Breda I finally managed to get on the right train and from here it was just sit back, relax and don’t fall a sleep xD. My friends met me at the Zutphen and the nightmare was finally over.
I was suppose to only spend 2h30min with public transport and it ended up taking 6h30 min in total with all the waiting, swapping and just the train ride. At some point was almost at the blink of giving up and just head home. I even just wanted to lie down and cry at some point. I do really hope that the trip home goes without ANY hiccups, cause I do not wish to experience this again.
One good thing was that I got to see more of the Netherlands than planned and I got to experience a two deck train for the first time xD
I spent the rest of evening just getting something to eat, hang out with my friends and just relax. I am still very excited for TwitchCon tomorrow and be meeting some cool people. It’s my first time there so I’ll be taking pictures and there will be a post about it tomorrow when I get home.
The Anna behind Yannani 