Traveling Europe – Alone
“Comfort is the enemy of progress.” -P.T. Barnum
As most of you know, my goal for 2018 was to get out of my comfort zone. I also started this blog as a way to document new adventures and really because it’s not something I ever thought I would do. To continue on that theme, when I found out I was actually going to get to go to the Netherlands for work, I decided to take some extra time and travel around while I could. None of my coworkers wanted to stay any extra time, so I was going to be traveling alone. It was a little intimidating to be traveling in a foreign country, where you don’t now the language, and to be alone, but you know what…I DID it, and I’m going to tell you all about it. Editing this post, I realized I needed to break it up into a couple posts, because it was just too long.
As I sit on the train from Breda to Brussels I think my blood pressure is still elevated. Let me start at the beginning.
Sunday (April 22nd) I flew from the U.S. to Amsterdam for work. There were 6 of us total, and I really didn’t have to worry about transportation or anything. We hung out in Amsterdam on Sunday for about four hours, and then we bought train tickets to Tilburg, where we were staying for work. The amazing thing about Amsterdam was the number of bicycles everywhere! I mean they are just stacked up against each other so tightly I’m not sure how anyone gets to a bicycle. However, the one thing I noticed was that NO ONE was wearing a helmet. Not one single person in Amsterdam had a helmet on. This seems so incredibly crazy to me!
Everything was mostly set up for us (hotels, meeting with client, etc.). Our hotel was directly beside the church in town, and my bedroom window faced the church. I heard bells all the time, it was a love/hate relationship. I loved exploring in the evenings, and getting off the beaten path. Here are a few pictures of Tilburg.
On Thursday afternoon, my coworkers headed back to Amsterdam to catch their flight out on Friday morning (April 27th). I had already planned on sticking around, so I remained in my same hotel one more night in Tilburg. I did thoroughly enjoy my time in Tilburg. I never once felt unsafe in the city and took many walks each evening on my own. For some reason I loved this giant Lego man in this store window and these flags that I can only interpret as artwork that kids created themselves!
Friday, April 27th, in Holland is Koningsdag (King’s Day), or the day they celebrate the King’s Birthday. It’s a big deal here and honestly, I preferred to be in Tilburg, where I felt like I already knew the city, than alone in Amsterdam for such a large occasion and with so many people around. I wasn’t sure I would enjoy it, and I thought it would be too overwhelming.
There was definitely a party in Tilburg Thursday night. The music didn’t stop until the wee hours of the morning, and I am pretty sure that the people in the hotel room beside me didn’t come back until 5:00 am, and woke me up. I packed up my belongings to head to the train station and when I walked out of the hotel there was trash everywhere. I guess they all had fun last night. When I got to the train station at 7:15 am I discovered that my train was 10 minutes behind schedule. I had a 5 minute connection for my second train, and a 10 minute connection for my train from Brussels to Koln, my final destination for the day. I don’t know exactly what happened because the train was later listed as 15 minutes behind schedule, but we didn’t make the other stops that we were supposed to make, so I somehow made it to Breda with a couple of minutes to spare and hop on my train to Brussels Midi. As I sat on the train to Midi I really hoped I would make my train to Koln. If I didn’t I wasn’t sure if they would reschedule me or how it would work. I also already scheduled to meet with the host of the AirBNB where I was staying. It wasn’t a huge deal, but the train is really the only thing I had planned on my trip, so I at least wanted that to work out! The trip to Brussels was about an hour and half, and as we went our arrival time kept getting later and later into Brussels.
Yeah…I didn’t make it, but that’s ok. Transfer was NOT possible ;-). Things don’t always go as planned. Luckily there was an ICE train leaving an hour later, which got me in only one hour later, and I still had time to grab some lunch and meet my Airbnb host on time. Yay! It can be a little nerve-wracking. This is especially true when you are in a country that speaks a language different from the one you know. Lucky for us, English is somehow the language that binds us all together. On international trains they always say the stops and information in the language of the country that you left, the country you are going to, and typically English. However, I have been on a train from Budapest to Prague, and never understood a word of what was said, because they didn’t speak English. Just show them your ticket when someone comes around to scan them. The interesting thing about train travel is that you just hop on a train. Literally. There is no one there scanning your ticket before you get on, so you better know where you are going and on which train. Best of luck!
When I go to other countries it always makes me feel inadequate. In the U.S. we sometimes get this idea that we are the center of the universe, but everyone in Europe speaks multiple languages. I always leave with inspiration to learn another language. I took five years of Spanish in high school and then two years in college, but I don’t think I could speak it well today. I know enough to survive, but not enough to thrive. I purchased Rosetta Stone with the intent of learning Italian and I would still really like to do that. Does anyone speak another language?
Even though I took the train by myself, in Cologne (Koln) I was officially on my own, and so my adventures began…