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Euroventure: Onward to London (or Not)

2:44PM: Train en route to Brussels: I went to Schiphol this morning to see if I could find someone from British Airways, and found when I arrived that there was no one to talk to. No counters open, nobody around, no helpful fake smiles. That, like Icelandic volcanoes, wasn’t exactly my worst case scenario, but it was certainly bummer enough.

I stood on line for the hi-speed rail and got into a conversation with a middle-aged husband and wife who were trying to get to I don’t remember where, when a young man said through an overmodulating boombox loudspeaker that all the international trains were booked through Wednesday. I no longer had it in my head to get to Paris since I was told by The Patient Mrs. that British Airways doesn’t fly out of there yet, not till May 3, apparently, but I decided to head for London instead, where at least I wouldn’t have to feel like a dick for not speaking the language (purely an internal thing; no one of Dutch descent has ever given me crap for being ignorant).

A young man tapped me on the shoulder while I was chatting and asked me if I wanted to go to London. Coincidentally, in the book I’m reading now, a late-20s African freedom fighter has just made illegal passage into the UK, so the whole thing smacked on a level that Ricky – at least that’s what he said his name was – couldn’t understand. He offered me a train ticket that he couldn’t use for 50 Euros, and with literally nothing to lose beyond the money, which I’d have gladly spent even more poorly if given the chance, I took it. So here I am.

The ticket is a computer printout. He said he lived in The Netherlands but worked in London and made this trip all the time, had booked his spot well in advance, but that work had told him not to bother coming back for the time being. He even gave me a pen with his company’s name on it: S.T.W. BV Duiven. I didn’t ask what he did – nice pen, though – and I’m still not sure how his story made sense, but it was potential passage and he was only charging face value, so I took the ticket. I don’t know if it’s a real ticket or a fake one, but it’s all I’ve got and I figure if they ever come around to check it and find it’s a fake or it’s no good for whatever reason, I get off at the next stop, pay whatever fine I need to pay and, short the embarrassment, am ultimately no better or worse off than I was when I boarded: Still stuck. Fortunately I’m used to making an ass of myself, so that’s not really a problem.

So off I go, unless curtailed, to Brussels and then change trains for London. If it works, if it doesn’t work, I don’t care. Provided I don’t get pulled out of line at customs because my name doesn’t match the name on the train boarding pass, I should be fine. But yeah, that’s weighing on me a bit.

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