04.22.13 – 16.17 Euro Time – Monday – Eurostar Train to London

My only goal for today was to get from Tilburg to London. This meant up at nine to shower, finish packing and roll out of the Mercure – another fond farewell – walk down the street to the train station, catch the 10.24 train bound for Utrecht Centraal, change at Den Bosch, keep on to Amsterdam Centraal, catch a Thaly’s train to Brussels and then get on the Eurostar to London. I’m not there yet, but it seems I’ve been successful in this barring disaster from here on out. For what it’s worth, I’m way less concerned about twisted metal impalement than I am about sky-explody-fireball, which is part of why I’m taking the train in the first place.

The other reason is that my past experience with the Eurostar was nothing but pleasant, and so comparing that to any flight I’ve ever taken in my life – I wouldn’t go as far as to call even the best of them “pleasant” – it was an easy enough choice to make. I’m pretty sure the route I took from Tilburg to the Eurostar wasn’t the most efficient, but familiar names help. I’ve never been much for cartography.

While on that train, I met Joe Hall from British instrumental post-metallers Wiht, totally by random, and had a good chat as he was on his way back to Leeds. Aside from having seen them at Desertfest last year, we also had the same watch (Casio F-91W — accept no substitutes), so there was much to discuss. We walked to the Eurostar terminal at Brussels Midi together, but where his UK passport got immediately stamped and he was sent on his way, I was detained by the officer for a pretty extensive line of questioning. Where are you going, what are you doing there, how long, where are you staying, do you have friends, who are your friends, what do you do for a living, what do your friends do for a living, I don’t believe you, I think you want to come and stay in the UK, I think you’re lying to me, when are you leaving, show me your flight confirmation (which I didn’t have – huge help that was), and so on. Finally I got my, “I’m gonna let you go,” which was marvelous because I hadn’t realized I’d been detained. He told me in which direction to fuck off and I made it to the train a couple minutes before departure. Hall, who was being polite and waited for as long as he could, had split. He’s somewhere on the train, presumably. Nice to meet you, man. Hope you got home safe.

In London, I’ll meet Chris from Trippy Wicked at the Kings Cross St. Pancras station and go to see Elder in Camden tonight at The Black Heart, which is also one of the Desertfest venues for this weekend. That’ll be good. I’m still kind of keyed up after talking to the customs agent – my inner smartass came out at first and I had to work really hard not to be a complete prick, which of course would have gotten me nowhere except stuck in Belgium for an indeterminate amount of time. Hardly a fate worse than death, but not where I’m trying to be at the moment. I put on some Kyuss and then Mars Red Sky’s new EP (it’s France and I couldn’t resist) to get my head right, slow my breathing. I was really glad I had my old passport to show the guy I’d actually been to the UK twice before, though on some level it’s nice to know that despite being old, married, fat and balding, I can still look dangerous to somebody. If I had a fucking nickel for every, “I’m gonna let you go,” I’ve heard when there’s no reason for me to have been stopped in the first place. Yeah homie, search my baggage. Do it. Prepare to be bored.

Rolling through France on the train and it’s beautiful, so no complaints. Everything up to this point has worked out. I have no reason to think it will not continue to work out from here.

 

Tags: Euroventure 2013, London, St Albans, UK

This entry was posted on Monday, April 22nd, 2013 at 9:55 pm and is filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.