Tag Archives: trains

Glasgow on a Saturday/Sunday

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I left Edinburgh on the 10.30 train to Glasgow. While standing on the platform, I had an informative discussion with a guy about the appropriate price for crisps. It seems the 80p they were charging in the vending machine was “a travesty.” A small bag of crisps should cost 50p or less. He also thought that a Coke was too expensive in the machine. When I told him that everywhere I went in Paris a coke was €2, he just shook his head. “The French,” he shrugged.

The train was a mob scene. I was glad I was early, because I found a seat. People who came after me weren’t so lucky. It was standing room only for the duration of the trip. Nobody seemed to mind. Some younger guys had brought beers along, and sat on the floor in the aisle, drinking and teasing one of their friends. It wasn’t until the journey was half over that I noticed that most of the people on the train with me were men.

It’s only about 50 minutes on the train from Edinburgh to Glasgow. The Queen Street station was twice as busy as Waverley had been an hour previously. I followed the signs to the subway entrance and was met by a bunch of police officers directing people where to go. I got in line to buy a ticket, and the guys behind me started singing songs and chanting things about the Glasgow Rangers. There were two boys standing in front of me with their dad. Finally, I couldn’t resist asking one of them, “who are the Glasgow Rangers?”

The kid looked at me like I was the stupidest woman he’d ever met. “They’re a football team, aren’t they?” His dad smiled and asked where I was from. “You’re obviously not from here,” he laughed.

A moment later, the police yanked the chanting guys behind me out of line. They’d been passing around a bottle of whiskey, a behavior I was told was “bang out of line.” I couldn’t believe it. I’d been in the presence of real Scottish soccer hooligans, and I hadn’t even known it.

I had to walk to the hotel. The subway didn’t go as far south as I needed to go, and the buses were running on a special schedule. I didn’t mind. It was a sunny day and the hotel was only supposed to be 2.2 miles. Unfortunately, the iPad walking directions were crap. It took me much longer than it should have. When I arrived, they let me check in early.

The best part: I had my own room!

I went across the street to Queens Park and enjoyed the sun for a while. Then I got some dinner and went back to the hotel. I fell asleep ridiculously early, happy that I didn’t have to climb anything to get into bed.

Sunday was pretty quiet. I went in search of somewhere to print out my bus ticket to Liverpool, but couldn’t find any place that was open. I took some pictures around the city center, browsed though some bookshops and spent most of the afternoon in the park across the street from my hotel, reading. It was great. I fell asleep early again, watching the BBC news report on the killings in Oslo and the death of Amy Winehouse.

All about Amsterdam

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I fell into my bunk bed at the hostel when I arrived in Amsterdam on July 10. I’d taken the 3:30 a.m. train out of Bollnas to be sure I wouldn’t miss my flight from Stockholm. No worries there. I was so early for my connecting train from Uppsala that I had to wait at the station for three hours. There were no problems from Stockholm to Riga, but my flight from Riga to Amsterdam was delayed. I didn’t make it to the hostel until nearly 9:30 p.m.

Monday morning I felt much better. I bought a ticket to the Van Gogh museum from the front desk at the hostel, which turned out to be a very smart plan. After breakfast, I walked through Vondel Park to the Museumplein. At twenty to ten, the line for the Van Gogh museum was down the block. Since I already had my ticket, I was able to get in a much shorter line and breeze through the entrance when the museum opened at ten.

It didn’t take long for the museum to be a mob scene. There was a couple from Michigan that basically followed me through the entire place in order to stand right in front of me every time I stopped to look at a sketch or a painting. The guy was a giant, at least 6′ 3″, so there was just no getting around him. In spite of them, however, I had a great time. I saw a bunch of Van Gogh’s work that I’d never seen before.

By 12:30 p.m., it was so crowded that people could barely move, so I left and sat outside in the park, watching people hover around this gigantic sculpture that says “I Amsterdam.” It looks like broken English when I write it down, but it actually ties in with Amsterdam’s marketing campaign, the slogan for which is “I am Amsterdam.” I’ll amend this post with a picture when I get back to the States so this makes sense. Meanwhile, just close your eyes and imagine every time you’ve seen gigantic letters somewhere. Kids crawl all over them, school groups mob them for pictures, etc. That’s what I was watching go on.

After lunch, I walked back to the central station, because I don’t have a fancy European bank card, so they wouldn’t let me book my train ticket to Paris online. In fact, when I got to the station, they made me pay in cash because the hi-speed rail company doesn’t take anything other than European bank cards anywhere. They also charged me a 20 Euro “convenience fee” because I had to talk to an actual person and give them cash. Very convenient for me, to be sure.

I spent the rest of the day walking and watching people. When I got back to the hostel, I spoke with an awesome woman named Anna from Brazil. She’s traveling through Europe with her six year old daughter, Louisa. They were some of my roommates for the night. Anna works as a travel agent back home. She was incredibly friendly and easy to talk to. Louisa was super cute and reminded me of when I was a kid. She kept telling her mom that she shouldn’t have to go to bed because it wasn’t dark out. Poor thing. That argument never works.