Where was Bruce Willis? [the backstage]
Should I post? Shouldn’t I?
Gosh, I’ve been struggling for few days already, but Joe made up my mind with his intervention. I should.
Please, don’t read what is gonna be in these lines like I’m complaining about my adoptive country. I know it could have happened everywhere, but this can’t be an excuse. This time it happened here, in NL.
I lived exactly what Joe lived the 30th of December 2005, but from the other side.
I was coming back from Slovakia, together with Miss Z. In Netherlands did snow, but just few centimeters were on the ground, and nothing was falling from the sky at the moment. We landed in Schiphol at 16,40, we took our luggages and jumped on the train to Delft. Nobody was alarmed or concerned. Nowhere we could have been informed of what was going to happen.
There’s a main train line in NL, connecting Amsterdam-Schiphol airport-Den Haag-Delft-Rotterdam-Dordrecht. We took a connection in Den Haag, the train was in time. Again, it was around 17,30, there were no announcements whatsoever.
The train stops few hundred meters from Delft station.
‘We have a red light’ first announcement.
‘There’s a train broken in front of us, and since there’s only one track per direction, we can’t pass’ second announcement.
‘We have to come back to Den Haag’ conclusion.
The whole thing takes about 30 mins… still, it can happen.
It starts to snow.
In Den Haag the officers of NS (National Railways) are completely clueless, and keep on answering to the feeling-lost passengers: ‘ik weet niet!’ (=I don’t know!). After bouncing us from one platform to another, we eventually board on the train that will bring us home. Which stops again in the same spot as the previous one. Few hundred meters before Delft station.
Now it’s really late. Me and Miss Z. are stuck in an overcrowded train, standing, our luggages in hand, but Joe is arriving from France at 19 in Rotterdam. We’ll never make it to go home, leave the suitcases and go back to Rotterdam. So we decide to continue, pick him up and come back all together.
Our train waits for his turn to pass the single free track available, stops in Delft (sigh!) and keep on running free towards Rotterdam Centraal. This last part of the trip usually takes about 12 mins, but that night our train accumulates 46 mins. of delay. Why? In Rotterdam nothing moves anymore: nothing arrives and nothing leaves. Everything’s stuck. 46 mins. to approach a platform, then we needed to leave the wagons jumping a fence and trowing our suitcases to the NS officers on the other side (helpful, but keep on repeating ‘ik weet niet’…).
Now, let’s just wait for Joe and call it over, we’re really tired!
But Joe’s Thalys (high speed train) from Paris is not arriving. Calling Joe doesn’t help: he’s in the middle of nowhere (it will turn out to be Dordrecht) and his crew replies: ‘je ne sais pas’ (=ik weet niet)!
Let’s investigate at the International Ticket office in the station, where we find out that not only they can’t tell WHEN Joe’s train will get in, but not even IF it will get in at all, since it could be redirect to Utrecht (another big station at about 1,5 hr. by train from Rotterdam, that means, still, unreachable).
What? and why? Because of the adverse wheater conditions (20 cm. of snow, actually it was possible to see the ground under it…) the whole Dutch railways are stuck. Nothing moves on rails or by bus in the entire Netherlands.
Uff, let’s wait. Other people are in a worse situation, they needed to leave with international trains that have been cancelled… moreover we’re waiting in this ticket office, warm and seating. Others are lying on the main (and open) hall of the station, since in Rotterdam there’s no waiting room…
Just time to relax, while my eyes fall on a panel on the door: this office will close at 20,30. It’s now 20,25. In 5 minutes (punctuality is a Dutch proud), 10 police agents block the entrances, and invite us to leave.
‘The office has to close, take a warm coffee and find an hotel for the night. There will be no trains until tomorrow in the afternoon’, is the friendly message they convey. Scenes of science-fiction. No blankets to warm us up, no free food or coffee, especially no help to coordinate such a mass of people waiting (the TV will say 2000 persons). The answer instead is: ‘it’s snowing, it happens!’, together with ‘Ik weet niet’.
Ok, now it’s too much. Yes, it can snow, and reasonably the sky can also fall on our heads (cfr. Asterix), but you can’t just send us to hell! Me and Miss Z. are frozen+tired+hangry, and we live 15 mins. from here. We’re not going to pay an hotel room, we’ll take a taxi. Then, we’ll see for our friend.
Outside, scenes in Armageddon style, with people assalting the few taxi’s available, which, clearly, decide if, where and for how much to bring you. There’s also some police agent, patrolling the snow lying all around, instead of organizing this bunch of desperate with collection points for different destinations, or checking on taxi’s abuse… I expressly ask one of them for help, I’m still carring around 2 suitcases and a backpack, I speak english and I’m &@#*! lost: ‘Get a taxi? if you’re lucky! ask them the price first, to see if you have enough’… I feel soooo much safer now, and I decide to jump on one of these cars. Fair enough, for 35 euros we’re home.
The roads are perfectly clean, and we can go to pick up Joe at the station when he arrives in Rotterdam, almost at 1 in the morning… The rest is history, in the movie Joe already told about.
The site of NS and the teletext were suggesting to the nation to not to travel if not necessary (?!?) from 16 hrs. on. We’ve never heard any advice or announcement, as all the NS employes I suppose. Such a special event found also other thousands of ignorants around all the country, which have been stuck, hijacked, ripped off, for several hrs. The police and the NS officers were so concerned about cleaning up the station from all these homeless (such a bunch of people under one roof will surely cause problems) that they managed to make things more difficults. Some of us were scared. Some were resigned.
Besides that, we keep on paying taxes and tickets in one of the most organized and advanced nations in Europe, which consider the traffic jams in Naples a legacy from a 3rd world country.
January 4th, 2006 at 9:34 pm
I already express what I think of all of what happened…
Still, Maybe that, a few months later, we will think of it by a loud laugh… i hope so…