(Note: I'm going to start with writing about Maastricht, since this is my actual exchange. My travels in London will be in a separate post written after).
I woke up in London around 6:00 to get ready for my train journey to Maastricht. Even though the train didn't leave until 8:04, I received an e-mail the night before stating that French Border Police had increased their inspections and so we needed to arrive 45 minutes early to allow time to customs. So, at around half past six, I set out through the early morning streets of London, two suitcases and a laptop bag in hand. London is lovely in the early morning, so I didn't mind the walk so much. 20 Minutes later I was in St. Pancras Station.
French customs, the whole reason I woke up at 6:00AM, took approximately 30 seconds.
Travelling with Canadian luggage tags during this trip proved interesting. While waiting in line for the washroom at St. Pancras station someone, noticing my luggage tags and East Coast Lifestyle hoody, struck up a conversation along the lines of
"You're Canadian?"
"Yup!"
"East Coast?"
"Yup, Halifax!"
"Me too!"
After a short wait at St. Pancras, we boarded and were soon off for Brussels, via Lille-Europe. The train was quite nice, though a little warm, and the journey quite smooth. Tunnels took us out of London and into the English countryside. It couldn't have been more than 40 minutes later that we, quite unceremoniously, entered the Chunnel, emerging in France around 10 or 20 minutes later. The French countryside was quite different than the English (although not immediately), namely due to the presence of actual forests, rather than just clumps of trees. Cute little French villages stood off in the distance as we made our way to Lille to drop off some passengers. After that, we continued on, with small Belgian villages now dotting the countryside.
One thing I found very notable on the train was that announcements were trilingual: English, French, and Dutch/Flemish, the order of languages rotating depending on what country we were in. The notable part was that none of the three languages was pre-recorded, all were spoken by the same staff member. As a Canadian with an interest in language rights in my own country, I was pretty impressed by this (take note, Air Canada!)
Arriving in Brussels is actually quite anticlimactic- one simply gets off the train, and looks over a long list of timetables to find their destination. I was trying to time my arrival in Maastricht for when I had arranged pick through the International Students' Network (ISN),and so didn't take the first train, but rather went outside to look for food. A few restaurants dotted the outside of the train station, but nothing on the menu boards caught my fancy, and so I found my way back to the platform literally just in time to get on a train.
Getting on the train, I managed to strike up a conversation with the gentleman I sat across from, just by asking if he knew whether this was a second class car (since that's what my ticket was for). Once again, the Canadian luggage tags proved interesting, with him asking about where I was going, and before I knew it we were in a fascinating conversation about languages, culture, and history, in which I learned quite a bit about Belgium (and him Canada).
The friendliness of Belgian people really stood out to me on this hour-and-a-half-or-so train ride. A lady sitting across let me put my suitcase over with her and wished me luck on my journey. On arriving at Liège another lady stopped me to say she had been listening to our conversation, found it interesting, and asked me all about my trip to Maastricht. Perhaps this was just one of those fluke situations where people start chatting on a train, and for all I know I may ride all over Belgium on the train without talking to another soul, but the brief chats I had showed me a really friendly and interesting country that I'm anxious to return to (without having to drag suitcases).
In Liège my wait for the train to Maastricht wasn't too long, and before I knew it the Canadian luggage tags struck again, with the other exchange student from McGill spotting me and joining me on the ride to Maas. One thing I noticed, after entering my fourth country for the day, was how unceremonious crossing from one country to another on the train is: there's not even an announcement, just the fact that at the next station signs were in Dutch rather than French. Crossing between provinces, even sometimes counties, is made a bigger deal of back home.
Arrived in Maastricht, I parted ways with my fellow exchanger, who already had set himself up in the city and had a bike waiting. I wandered through the station looking for the pick-up, and eventually waited outside. There, I spotted another exchange student, and yet another spotted us, and soon we were a group of three totally unable to find out pick-up. Which, after about 20 minutes, we discovered was on the side of the building rather than the front....
No comments:
Post a Comment