Train from Amsterdam to Paris
Traveling through the Netherlands, Belgium and France
I’m writing this today on the train from Amsterdam to Paris. More precisely, I’m on the leg from Brussels to Charles de Gaul Airport where I will spend two nights so I can attend the last day of the Paris Air Show. When I go to Paris, it isn’t the touristy part of Paris with the Louver, the Eifel Tower, or the many cafes with mouth-watering breads. This is the airport, and then I take a train and a bus to another airport, to look at airplanes and things that go in and on airplanes.
The train I’m on right now is going about 185 MPH or 290 KPH. Let’s go with the KPH because it sounds bigger and can confuse my fellow Americans. Today has been a bit strange. I started in a hotel that is shaped like a series of triangles stacked on top of each other horizontally. It is something reminiscent of those wooden blocks I played with as a toddler (or so the photos show – I can’t remember anything other than liking blocks). I then took a train to the airport in Amsterdam to get on a train to Brussels and now I’m on a train from Brussels (not the airport this time) to the airport in Paris. I could have skipped the middle part and taken an airplane, but it would have taken longer, involved more stops through security, checking a bag and it would have had decidedly less chocolate.
The big reason to take a train with a stop in Brussels is for the chocolate. I like the dark stuff, but the milk chocolate from Belgium is something else entirely. 30 euros later (they had a sale on chocolate) and several pounds heavier, I had my haul.
I really enjoy France, but somehow I’ve never had much fun with the French. The last time I was in Europe I flew home from Zurich. We had to fly around French airspace because of a strike by the air traffic controllers. This would be exceptional, except it’s not. I think it’s called Tuesday. My other challenge with France is that I don’t speak French. My Spanish is a bit stronger but has largely been forgotten since high school. This means the announcements on the train sound to me like someone gurgling with mouthwash.
A young woman just poked me on my shoulder, speaking to me in French and wanting me to give up my seat. This is my assigned seat and I appear to be in the correct coach and on the correct train. She wouldn’t show me her ticket, so I sat back down in my seat. She indicated she didn’t speak any English in the way I’ve observed most French people do: saying something that sounds like a tongue being swallowed by a goose, looking upset and not speaking in English. The last part may be the most important. In any event, she’s gone now. I hope she found her seat that isn’t mine.
I’m now watching the countryside go by very quickly. 185 MPH is nothing when flying, but on a train watching trees and light poles race by the speed is more noticeable. The countryside here is beautiful in June – or likely anytime of year. The rolling hills remind me of home in Oregon, and my legs are itching to go for a great bike ride. This is one of the simple pleasures of travel, seeing things that are absolutely gorgeous and that fit perfectly right where they are. The church steeples that dot the landscape and the houses that look nearly identical with brown pitched roofs and white sides.
This is roughly the route that Churchill envisioned for Operation Market Garden (I told you I was a history nerd).
I can tell that we are out of the Netherlands and Belgium now that the graffiti is decidedly less focused on weed and now much less readable. I’m also seeing airplanes now, so we must be getting close to the train station and my hotel.
Postscript
As soon as I left my seat when the train was approaching the station, the woman who thought she had my seat promptly leapt out of her jump seat and took my seat, still warm and with the train still moving.
