Amsterdam on a cool, grey day that alternates between miserable downpours and patchy blue skies. Awaiting a train, killing time, propped up in a bar drinking coffees served by a woman that thinks much blue eye shadow works wonders for this day. To one side a couple of Irish guys, fresh from the neighborhood of red neon, are far into the beer and the table behind me is full of locals making like Harley Davidson billboards. My feet slide like pucks on the sand-strewn floor as I depart into a rising tide of puddle splashing bicycle riders and the world’s youth coming to and from the hostels.
The Brussels train slides quietly into the Central Station. The bright orange seat that I am going to warm as far as Antwerp is the brightest thing in sight. Although the station is nothing short of packed with pushing, shoving, and mostly scruffy people there is a dearth of color from men and women alike. A dreary day, one of a long string I am sure, might warrant some more gaiety in the wardrobe surely! This miserable grey day is matched in color by palls of cigarette smoke and the ever present grit and sand of a city underfoot. This is a rather bleak place in early November. The train leaves on the minute as advertised and I am still astonished that despite the people present, from both in country and from on the tourist trail, literally from all over the planet, this is such a colorless place. Women are in dowdy coats and boots while men wear the ubiquitous black leather jacket. Maybe, just maybe, everyone is too busy making things run efficiently to be bothered with wardrobe and grooming.
The Central Station glides off into the background, giving way to the river and bustling scenes of barges and the port. Car ferries, Rhine river barges, sailing vessels and small work boats ply lifeless, grey waters. Beautiful and fascinating Dutch architecture from a distant past when shutters and graceful gables were in vogue peeks out from between the soulless buildings from the sixties and onwards. Each more recent decade apparently spawns worse and worse architecture that manages to be dated and tatty looking more and more quickly. Prince Charles’s complaining about the Brits could easily be transposed here. How come the planners of Dutch habitat cannot make homes as elegant, functional and timeless as do the current engineers their bridges? The city recedes into short lived suburbs and then the airport at Schipol appears and disappears. Poplar lined rural roads and neat, wintry fields appear and the train has speed enough now that the raindrops sound like hail upon the windows. Service on the train is impeccable and humorous. The coffee is good and the sandwiches are inexpensive and tasty.
Tidy farms and glasshouses soaking in the dull light speed by. Freshly ploughed fields gleam weakly in the rain as the last of the leaves spiral down from the trees, forced off by cold winds. The train is library quiet and a wonderful vantage point from which one can see the masts of sailboats apparently in the middle of pastures. Wet sheep asleep under trees and cyclists in minimal rain gear with heads bowed into the inclemency. There are fat geese in backyards and graffiti on an otherwise neat railroad environment. New concrete boxes are being erected for people in one field and in the next moment a glorious windmill with thatched roof recalls an age when grace and elegance interfaced with industry far better. Den Haag is a stop along the way and from the windows and as the whistle blows our almost immediate departure the view is of high-rise after high- rise. Brick and concrete boxes, pyramids and circles, all with windows guarded from prying eye with lace. A few beech and oak trees cling fast to leaves as weeping willows curtsy to gravity and raindrops.
Rotterdam Central appears. More concrete boxes, more dullness, more leather jackets. Yellow sign boards on station platforms, yellow locomotives in sidings and at platforms. A blue suitcase and a pair of red boots along with lime green inserts on a backpack give relief. A huge building with an orange N hovers over the station. Tower cranes are at work and old copper tops mix amongst the modern glass of downtown. All quickly vanish as a long tunnel takes over. An exit back into the light is greeted with the half built edifice of a mosque. The train is suddenly even more like a flying carpet as it traverses the lowlands between The Netherlands and Belgium! The ‘taggers’ have been hard at work south of Rotterdam and hardly a visible concrete surface is unadorned. Duck covered ponds, fields full with winter vegetables and rank after rank of greenhouses fill the train windows briefly as the rain gives way to broken skies. Little garden plots of local gardeners butt up against the tracks and off in the distance, as we cross what must surely be the Rhine River, I think I spy the world famous port and industries of this huge city. In Dordrecht, the station’s railings and the few surrounding trees are propped up by bicycles. Whose is whose I have no clue.
Green fields and soccer clubs. Herons, patiently one legged in canals. Freeways and transmission lines traverse the landscape. A blue ocean going vessel floats above a plowed field and between orange roof tiled farmhouses. The tractor is slipping and sliding, lopsided, its mucky way down a dead straight furrow, and K Line containers on trucks are interspersed with Nippon Express and Maersk amongst others in an alphabet of world commerce while a distant huge flame burns off refinery gases into what has again become a solid grey pall. The trains felt motions are all lateral as it takes corners and passes across points at substantive speed. We are moving seriously now. Much faster than anything in the US, bar an airliner, will ever convey a person across country. Train travel really is a wonderful and efficient transportation choice.
A man walking a dog along a dike, Frisian cows beneath lollipop trees. The purple of a cabbage field and crows hunkered down on pantile roofs. A field of leeks as patient for their harvest as the cars and bikes awaiting our passing at the blurring crossing barriers. Conversation in the carriage is subdued and in at least five languages. A couple of English guys have cheated on their ticket price and the conductor is giving no quarter. Eastern Europeans are holding court down the way, while opposite, three US teens are hammering away on PS2s and overusing the ‘dude’ word. A few others are wearing earphones and staring blankly at the patterns made by rain coursing down the windows at this latest stop that is Rosendaal with its sidings full of car transporters and freight cars loaded with recycling material. A purple scooter waits at a crossing alongside four girls in white parkas with fur-trimmed hoods.
Stepping off the train in Antwerp, I find a slightly less inclement day and a city with a differing architecture and cleanliness than the one just departed. A grand and interesting place on first impression yet with an element of austerity, or perhaps cautious conservatism, as befits the diamond capital of the world. I am here to see my own “floral diamonds,” those bouquets carefully constructed and shipped throughout Europe on our behalf and under our International Ordering feature. Of interest here is that though Belgian owned and operated some of the educational component of the owners here comes from Chapel Hill, NC. The blue Saab (not quite tar heel blue) I step into helps continue to convey my first impressions of Antwerp perfectly.
I am delighted by what I see of the floral product that ships for Flowerbud to its European recipients. Due to courier companies within Europe having committed to deliver packages standing upright, the level of floral artistry is far beyond that which we are able to attain in the US where FedEx mandates that all packages are “tossable” thus requiring more of a flat pack modus operandi. I am a keen spectator as some of the day’s orders are assembled and packed and cannot help but wish our US operations could ship such items should customers desire this level of artistry. There is some frou frou here that might go well in some quarters. The gourmet gift baskets for Flowerbud Europe are assembled in Brussels, a city which is out of reach on this particular visit. I am assured that they are to the same exacting standard as our flowers…and I don’t for one minute doubt it.
Clean streets lined with the beautiful storefronts of all the big names lead us, in my case to a bowl of chicken soup. It seems a perfect lunch for a winter’s day in a foreign city, chatting amicably with a worldly wise Bennie and watching the street cars go clanking by beneath the wires, all the time reflecting on all that one can learn and see in any given day. The conversation and exchange of ideas of necessity is removed from the comfort of this hostelry and into the jostle of traffic that culminates in my reemergence onto a railway platform.
The Thalys high speed train en route from Paris to Amsterdam stops briefly but rejects the Antwerp peasantry such as myself who, without an assigned seat must make do with the “milk train” back to Amsterdam. Once again snug in my orange colored capsule I can observe an entire world within. This evening there is not a seat to spare and it took sharp elbows to ensure one. Once on the move the carriage is initially filled with subdued talk only to be broken by the delighted laughter of a young child from the Ivory Coast, his mother is singing to him in French. Once again the colors of the people are dour, the one exception being a young blond woman with a startling black and white hounds tooth coat that when removed reveals an ever more startling short skirt above black tight clad legs and boots. Almost the entire carriage takes note.
The lowlands are gliding by outside and evidenced only by the glow of lights here and there, much blurred by speed and rain. This is a wonderful sensation, being ensconced in a warm lit cocoon with a voracious appetite for miles, a meager thirst for fuel, the camaraderie of opposing seats in some parts of the carriage. And oh what seats, even on this level of train there is nothing so comfortable or roomy on any aircraft I fly aboard. I would defy you to find a homespun Belgian or Hollander in this carriage tonight. There are Turks and Poles. Romanians and many North Africans. Belgium, I think, is even more multicultural than Holland. My host was pointing out that in his Brussels condominium there are seven languages spoken in seven units. The most numerous occupants of the railway carriage by far are young women in the head attire of the Moslem faith and for whatever reason this group displays a lack of courtesy to fellow travelers. No one seems willing to voice a note of censure when at times it might have suited. It is interesting to be “participating” in a world and its economy rather than sitting apart and aloof from it. From my own sheltered vantage point in Oregon I would seem to be censored as to the realities of what is a headlong acceleration too one world. In my readings, conversations and travels I am somewhat aware of these accelerative forces but not more so than these few days ping ponging around Western Europe. There is no doubt as to the forces at play.
Thoughts and focus safely back in the carriage, there is a feeling of ease and comfort in a train that is foreign to an airplane. It is hard to overstate. Perhaps the odd rumble of the trucks over points and crossings, the slight sway reminds one of being connected to the earth while effortlessly traveling. They will make great workplaces when all have power outlets for computers and are wirelessly connected to the world out there beyond my gaze that is returned by the dark, wet window. I watch people whispering quietly into cell phones, and even more can be seen texting with their phones. I can see the play of expressions across their faces as the fingertip conversation ebbs and flows through the ether.
What an image…this carriage (one of a dozen) hurtling down rain slick rails, across a dark wet landscape and with many hundreds of words escaping its skin bound for friends, lovers and peers around the planet. Speeding through Essen without thought of halt strings of text break free and head for Marrakesh, Krakow, Islamabad. Birmingham and the Cameroon. Maybe, just maybe this one world is a magical place if we can embrace it for the wonders it brings.
At some point of musing I run an exercise in the validation of train travel versus flying on distances such as this. Amsterdam to Antwerp is pretty much the same distance as Portland to Seattle. The former, running from city center to city center takes just two hours, a train departs every hour around the clock and costs the equivelant of $60 round trip. The train from Portland to Seattle will cost me about the same but there the similarities end. It may run four times a day and take approximately twice as long while its schedule is known to be more off by hours than on. To fly that same route, the scenario almost forced by Amtrak, it will cost me approximately $350 in air fare and roughly another $75 in charges incurred in transportation too and from airports far flung from city centers. Center to center is likely to take a good four hours but I have a choice of thirty two flights. Hardly a fair fight as the euro railsystem wins going away. While my thoughts are not in vogue I see the common sense in relinquishing my car, my frequent flier miles and the chance of catching athletes foot and donating toiletries all at the behest of the TSA on trips like this.
As the brakes are applied to coast the train into Amsterdam Central Station I take a last look outside and think of all this morning’s cows, ducks, sheep…still out there wet but now unseen. The leaves continue to tumble from the trees and there are people still head down and peddling back to little concrete boxes through wind and rain. The lace in the windows now illuminated and serving as a foreground to all the houseplants…or are those pot plants in Amsterdam?
Hey Bud-
You are a writer. That is a nice travel log.
I just finished cleaning out the gutters on the schoolhouse witha 60′ manlft and you are floasting around Western Europe though I’m not a one worlder. When I go to Paris l like it to be French not Polish.
Keep writing.
Ciao, Carlos