Dutch Train Stations...

A mysterious "blockage" in Rotterdam leads me on a mystical hourney around the train stations of Holland.

Upon arriving at Amsterdam Central Station this morning, I hear a garbled annoucement which mentions passengers travelling to Paris. Hoping to travel to Paris that day I stopped at a ticket booth to ask for some clarification of the situation. Sadly, I had chosen to speak with an idiot who informed me that I could still reach Paris directly from this station.

So I went to wait by the monitors for my train to be announced, bought myself a sandwich and generally relaxed trying to pass the time as best I could. All the while over trying to ignore the announcements over the intercom which were telling me that "because of a blockage at Rotterdam. Passengers wishing to travel to Bruxelles and Paris must depart from Utrecht". Eventually I cracked and went to an information stand.

Thoroughly dissinterested the teller at the stand garbled a couple of station names at me and told me to go up and get the train on platform 2 to Den Boesch, then change to Rotterdam, where I would be able to get a train to Paris. On the platform, none of the names displayed were Den Bosch, but eventually I asked a uniformed man where to go and he told me to take the next train to Utrecht. Myself and several lost Belgians borded the train and off we went for the first leg of our journey.

When we reached Utrecht we were told to stay on the train to Den Boesch. At which stage we would have to change trains to Rosenthal. After several hours I reached Rosenthall. There was no train directly to Paris from here. In fact the closest thing was Brussels. Having no time to ask I boarded the train to Brussels, which was packed and I stood for the slow journey to Brussels South Station.

At Brussels I hopped on the TGV and I was back at Gare to Nord in just over an hour in my first class carriage (I'd gone for First Class since I figured it was such a long journey). A four hour journey in first class, had turned into a 6 and half hour journey across the train station of the Benelux nations and the delay also meant that my arrival back in Paris matched rush-hour on the RER exactly. What fun!

I'm off to write a complaint!

Swings and Roundabouts...

...more like snakes and bloody ladders.

In case you were all worried, I eventually met up with the organisers last night and had a very pleasent meal.

The pleasent atmosphere continued on to the next day at the tournament. I narrowly dropped one match in my seeding poule in the tournament and was quite pleased with how I was fencing. I was seeded 4th going into the DE and I had a buy through the round of 32. In the last 16 I was to face a random German...

This is when the pleasent feeling suddenly disipatted as I spectacularly self-destructed on the piste. My loss was nothing to do with my opponent, he might not as well have been there. I, having decided that I was surely in the next round already, seemed not to be there at all either (in fact it might has well have been an empty piste). A disappointing 9th place in a tournament I could have made at least semis.

Anyway it's only really a loss if you don't learn something from it...

Note to self: Sort head out.

The Other Amsterdam

No, not the one with the drugs and the red light district. The one which is a random anonymous hotel on the edge of town. The one which is about as exciting as the Sandyford Industrial Estate.

I'm waiting for a phone-call from the organisers of the competition to see where dinner is this evening. Having no map, no idea of where the trams are and no idea of the restaurant, I'm not confident. The alternative is dinner alone in the Holiday Inn, so I may well be ringing people during my meal just to seem like less of a sad bastard.

To make things worse I've had no food to speak of, except a hotdog, since I left Paris at 8am. At this stage, I really want to stuff in to food in the hotel restaurant but I'm holding out on the off chance that the organisers (who I probably couldn't recognise if I do find the restaurant) follow-up and call me to let me know where food is. What a dilemma...

My stomach is eating itself...