NS can kus my butt!!

My trip home start off pretty uneventful, I got a ride to the station so that saved me a 20 minute bus ride.  Then getting to the station I stopped off at AH (Albert Heijn) so that I can pick up bacon, milk, and some other small things since it’s Thursday and we had our usual… pannenkoeken (pancakes).  Dutch pancakes are a little different then what most North Americans are use to.  In this picture (taken at a restaurant),  I had Brie cheese on my pancake.  But back to the story….

I do my shopping and I head over to the station and take a peek to see which spoor (platform) my train is leaving from and what train I’m going to catch.  Ok… quick NS lesson about the trains…. Intercity means that it goes to the the major cities but skips the small towns along the way, stoptrein means that it hits all the little towns along the way.  So I see that my Intercity to Schothorst is at spoor 11 and is due to leave at 18.01… that gives me 10 minutes to get to my spoor…perfect!   I make it to the platform with 5 minutes to spare (trust me – rush hour at Utrecht Station is like the 401 in Ontario).   All of a sudden I hear the PA system go off and I’m informed the train will be 10 minutes late.  Ok… no biggie… I’m use to that.  BUT…. BUT!!!  Not 5 minutes later I hear another announcement and the 10 minutes have now turned to 20!  GRRRRRRR!!!   And there’s no point trying to catch a different train on another platform, they are all delayed.    

Finally my train shows up and I board, only to have to cram in because now there are twice the amount of people because of the delay.   As we chug and I mean literally chug… I could have walked faster… towards Schothorst I sit back and try to read.   Finally we hit Amersfoort station and wait while everyone rushes like pigs to a feeding trough to get off the train, so that we can continue to the last stop and I can finally go home.   But why would it be THAT easy??  Suddenly another announcement, this time ON the train….this train is going to ROTTERDAM!!  That would be the OTHER end of the Netherlands.  UGH!!  You have to be kidding me, so as we grab our stuff as fast as we can to get off before it leaves,  this time the mad rush includes me and being short in the land of tall I had a couple of elbows and bags jab into me.   Then I have to follow the mass up the stairs and over to another spoor to get the right train home.

At last my train arrived and I made it to my station…. only 2 hours AFTER I got out of work.  But of course my luck didn’t end there… it has to be raining when I stepped out of the station… of course… rain…. cold rain…. cold hurts your face as you bike into it rain….. rain…..