Travel and arrival day, Thursday. The final leg of our recent fall trip took us to Leiden, perhaps Stan’s favorite city in Europe. We were coming from Paris, and had tickets on the Thalys. The plan was to go directly to Rotterdam, then take a local train from Rotterdam to Leiden. We would be arriving in R-dam by about 3:00, and figured we’d be walking into our hotel by 4:00 or so.
Or not. We took the metro from our hotel to Gare du Nord, and arrived early, figuring we’d find a sandwich and some wine to take on the train, then sit in the waiting area and have a cup of coffee while waiting for our train. The sandwich and wine part worked, but we could not find a single place to sit while we waited the hour or so for our departure. This became more of an issue after we noticed that that our train, which had been marked as “on time” the whole time we had been there, was now marked 30 minutes late. Stan by then had found us a place to sit, where I could stare at the departures board. Oh no, now it’s showing 1 hour late. No, an hour and a half. Oh, wait, it’s been cancelled??? At that point, I downloaded the Thalys app on my phone, and according to the app, our train was on time, and due to leave within about 5 or 6 minutes. What? A garbled announcement came over the loudspeaker; I caught something about “Amsterdam Centraal on platform X,” and most of the people who had been sitting around us jumped up and grabbed their bags, running toward the platform.
So we followed them. Sure enough, our train was at the platform. But the car with our reserved seats wasn’t. Quite a few of us gathered around the only Thalys employee we could see, who said “Get on the train. You won’t have seats, but get on the train.” Well, we did. A conductor who saw us told us to go to the bar car, stand and wait. So we did. It turns out that someone had committed suicide on the train line past Brussels, so only enough cars were on the train to accommodate those people who had tickets to Brussels. The conductor tried to soothe us: “Don’t worry; we’ll take care of you.”
And they did. We left Paris about an hour late, but about 30 minutes out of Brussels came the announcement that those people who were going on to Rotterdam or Amsterdam should get off in Brussels, and another train would be arranged for us. Well, we had to get off in Brussels; the train we were on obviously wasn’t going any farther. Another announcement just before we arrived said we were to stay on the same platform, but keep walking toward the station, and our train would be there. And it was.
Another conductor greeted us, and when I asked what seats we should take, she said “Whatever seat is shown on your ticket.” So we climbed into a completely empty car, and found our seats. Little by little people trickled in, filling about half the seats. We recognized most of them; most of us had all been crammed into the bar car together. But the train didn’t leave the station. It turned out that they were waiting for another train that had left from Paris after ours did, with the people who hadn’t heard that the train wasn’t cancelled after all, or who didn’t believe it. That other train did pull in, and the rest of the seats in our car filled immediately. I must say that this second group of people was not as well behaved as we had been. There was a lot of grumbling, and some nasty language. (In English.)
But finally, our train pulled out of the station, and we arrived in Rotterdam safe and sound, but stressed and almost 2 hours late. We did, however, figure out how to get a ticket to Leiden from there, and caught a train (in spite of the clerk in the station having given us the wrong information.)