Day 1 - Utrecht-Paris (31/3)
supplemented with some of Jiekai's pictures in lieu of mine, which have been lost for eternity due to his cockitude
Random train view
Despite shelling out a hideous sum of money for our Eurail passes, Jiekai and I were chagrined, to say the least, to find that our Eurail passes were not valid for the high-speed Thalys trains from Amsterdam to Paris. So since he is a cheapskate bastard and refused to shell out another 11 Euros, instead of a 4hr 10mins ride we had to endure a 6hr 26min Odyssey (including waiting time) between Rotterdam Centraal and Paris Nord by way of Brussels Zuid, Quevy and Aulnoye Aymeries - a total of 3 connections, not including the train to Rotterdam. Interestingly enough, once you take away the 1hr 24mins of waiting time, the so-called high speed Thalys train is not that much faster than the cross-country jaunt we endured (only 52mins faster, in fact). Given that the godforsaken cross-country trains make stops along the way, I conclude that Thalys trains are high speed not because they travel faster than normal trains but because they make no stops. In short, they're just trying to cheat the money of poor students like us and should be very ashamed of themselves and go without supper.
While reading Jiekai's Eurail guide (which the person in Amsterdam who'd sold me the Eurail pass had neglected to give me!), I discovered another irritating thing about Eurail - the various things they can catch you for. You need to validate the Eurail pass before using it, but it can only be validated at a Eurail office. If you validate it yourself you can be fined. Conversely, you need to write the dates of travel (for Selectpasses) yourself. If you wait till the conductor comes, you can, surprise surprise, also be fined for it. I imagine that many have been confused by these confusing requirements and have gotten fined. Coupled with the Thalys affair (as documented above), I think Eurail should really wake up its idea (primarily by offering lower pass prices, and also by not discriminating against non-European residents) in this era of competition from low cost airlines.
Random train view
Random train view
Brussels Midi-Zuid is a horrible train station. There're no seats in the station proper, and on the train platforms the only seats are inside enclosed rooms which smell of smoke and piss and whose floors are visibly yellowish and sticky. It almost made me want to piss there as well.
Piss-covered waiting room
The toilet in the station itself was very interesting. From the outside, it wasn't apparent that a €0.30 fee was levied for its use since the fee collection desk was cunningly hidden behind a wall (Belgian public toilets are probably like Dutch ones - none are free). I speculate that the plan is to lure travellers with heavy bladders who will run joyously inside, only to be asked to pay the €0.30 fee. Unable to control themselves any longer, they will grudgingly hand over the money.
There was also a sign at the toilet entrance: "We ask you to respect the labor of the sanitary personnel". Apparently patrons get so pissed off about having to pay €0.30 to use the toilet that they treat the toilet carelessly (either that or they refuse to pay and go piss in the smoking rooms on the platform). They probably feel they have to get their money's "worth"; I would ask the sanitary personnel to respect the payment of the €0.30 fee instead, and to come provide their labor on the train platforms as well.
We ventured outside the train station for a short while, but what we saw of Brussels was unspeakably ugly, and the smell of piss was in the air - I hereby dub Brussels the City of Piss - it's no wonder it's most famous for the Manneken Pis (someone on the train in Germany was telling me there're only 2 things to see in Brussels - the Tintin Museum and the Manneken Pis. And to think that I'm actually going back there on Sunday!) I hope no Belgians read this blog. But then the only Belgian you have to fear is the Muscles from Brussels.
Me in Brussels
It's damn strange seeing signs in both Dutch and French (oddly enough, I understood more of the French version of one oddly-familiar sign proclaiming Belgium's diversity than the Dutch one). They must incur very high costs for this bilingualism. I get the feeling that French is the predominant language, though, as the South of the country has no Dutch signs, and the announcer in the train station spoke her Dutch in a French way and with a French accent.
Rainbow
Interestingly, on Dutch, Belgian and French trains, the tracks can be seen from the hole at the bottom of the toilet bowl (no wonder so much flora grows on train tracks). This is the reason, of course, why they ask that you not use the WC when the train is at the station. The good Germans, on the other hand, have proper sanitary facilities in their train toilets.
Aulnoye Aymeries
At Quevy (a border station), there wasn't even a proper railway building. There was a building, alright, but it was abandoned, and the railway representative was sitting in a booth by the side of the main building. I guess the EU passport-free zone has not benefitted everyone.
There was this area of arable land along the way where 2 fields lay. One was a luscious shade of green, and had verdant grass growing on it. The other was fallow and brown. The boundary between the two was striking, for one turned into the other without any transition zone.
On the train to Paris, I saw spring growth on the trees, but it was quite freaky, since the growth was uneven - imagine trees barren as if it were winter, but green cotton balls stuck in between some branches at various points (I've a picture from Schönbrunn in Vienna illustrating this).
French buildings are aesthetically more pleasing than Dutch ones (the sample size for Belgium was too small). It might be the coats of paint, the arches or some je ne sais quoi.
Sausage shop at Paris Nord train station. The French obsession with food is clear.
The cars on the Paris subway are very ugly, looking simply like square boxes. The placement of seats on them is also inefficient - the seats are placed so that you sit facing the direction of travel, or the opposite of it. That would not be bad in and of itself, but this leaves almost no space for people to stand in between the seats, which is a big problem come rush hour. The metro also has freight trains for some reason. Uhh.
Cock picture Jiekai took of my main course (the one I took was better - you could actually see the stuff on the plate, but it has been lost for all eternity due to his cockitude). It's duck panfried in a sweet and very tasty sauce, with a deep-fried ball of stuck-together potato strips. Probably the best meal I had all trip.
This restaurant was just opposite our youth hostel. Jiekai claimed we did the touristy thing and walked into the first restaurant we saw, but then as I observed, it was almost full, everyone inside was a local, and anyway the food was excellent. If all French food were this good, I'd be inclined to learn French and move to France (the horror).
Addendum: This was Le Jardin d'Ivy
Street in the Latin Quarter where our "Young and Happy" Youth Hostel was located
I felt like I was in a movie set, especially when a car drove by and a dog barked. I got the feeling that if I kicked the wall it'd fall down. Jiekai said that it's the sort of scene you associate with Paris at night, and that it was lucky we stayed in a hostel in the Latin Quarter instead of some swanky hotel.
Street in the Latin Quarter where our hostel was located
Lousy shot in the Latin Quarter. Mine was better, but it has been lost for all eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude
Lousy shot in the Latin Quarter. Mine was better, but it has been lost for all eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude
Words of wisdom from Jiekai: "The whole world wants to be Frenchified, but nobody likes the French".
On the long train ride, Jiekai was expounding his theory of chocolate ranking, in order of increasing quality:
1) China gold coins
2) Malaysian chocolate like Apollo
3) Smarties/Van Houten (the latter is high class Malaysian chocolate, though you can still taste the palm oil, or rather the lack of proper milk solids)
4) Malaysian Nestle and Malaysian Cadbury's
5) Mars, Hershey's, Dove, International Cadbury's, International Nestle (he dubs this level "International Standard")
6) Marks and Spencer, Guylian 'Belgian' chocolates, Merci
7) High quality, expensive stuff
Jeans are much better for this climate than the cotton pants I was wearing previously. I wonder if they'll be too hot in Summer.
Jiekai: "If we ever see a Delifrance in France, I'll pay for one restaurant meal... A bistro meal of up to 20 euros". I wonder if there're Pizza Huts in Italy, given that there was a Starbucks in Vienna (unfortunately we didn't see any Delifrances in Paris).
People like to complain that English is a very hard language to learn. I'd characterise it, rather, as being easy to learn but hard to master (due to grammatical exceptions and the like). Other languages might be easy to master, but if they're hard to learn, that doesn't matter - often it suffices to make oneself understood in and to understand another language, even if one speaks it imperfectly.
I'd always wondered if anyone has tried the toilet "ticket please" trick to save on ticket fares and what would happen if anyone tried. On the way back to Utrecht I found out (to be covered in a future post).
After some time, you realise the graffiti actually livens up and gives character to train tracks (and other such dreary constructions). Without graffiti, the tracks would be very boring, and many (or most, depending on where you are) graffiti artists evidently take pride in their work. Removing bad and ugly graffiti, but leaving good graffiti in place might be a nearly-gratis way of decorating boring constructions.
As we went along, the rooms got cheaper, better and larger. Paris is really expensive.
Cock Files:
- Despite possessing the Eurail guide, Jiekai didn't read it. Luckily I did and found out, before the conductor came, that you needed to fill in the dates of travel manually for the SelectPass, or we might've gotten fined.
- Describing the Latin Quarter at night as being "very Parisian"