First things first, yesterday, I went to another country to get my camera fixed. That's right-another country. I took the train from Antwerpen to the aptly named Bergen Op Zoom, Netherlands, where there is a Canon Service Facility, one of very few. As a matter of fact, when my camera broke last year, from home in Florida I shipped it to a facility in Virginia. Let me start off by saying that I tried to contact the facility the day before using their website's live chat option. The conversation went something like this:
Facility: Op zerdegrum de drop?
Me: Hello, can someone communicate in English?
Facility: Yes!
Me: Great, my camera is broken-and gives an error of lens cannot communicate with camera-can you help me?
And after that, for probably about 10 minutes, I heard nothing-I just turned my computer off-so maybe yes was the only English word they knew
So I decided to go there yesterday morning, which involved taking a train from Antwerpen station, changing trains about 40 minutes up the line, and then from the Bergen Op Zoom station, taking a taxi for about a 10 minute drive.
When I got to the facility, I learned that the part wasn't in stock-they would have to order it, and it would take 10 days to fix the camera. This wasn't an acceptable answer, because (a) I am in new places every day and love to take pictures, (b) I have no idea where I would be in ten days. And the camera wasn't under warantee so I am sure it would be expensive-so I ended up taking a cab back to the train station, getting on the train, switching back to the train home, and buying a new camera-which was certainly more then I wanted to spend considring this is a long trip, but necessary, considering the chance of me taking a trip like this again is slim-to-none, and photography is what I enjoy. I was able to trade in my camera for a minimal amoiunt of money, which was fine, because I would have cost me money to ship the old one, repair the old one, etc, and I didn't have enough space in my luggage to carry another. But still annoying, as I could have bought the camera the day before, and saved the approx. $45 Euros in transportaion out there and back. The only good thing about the trip was (a) Pretty scenary of windmills, cows, etc (b) A nice talk with the cab driver going back about American cars, and how they are desired in the Netherlands (c) A Nice talk with a woman on the train I noticed reading a Carl Hiassan book translated into Dutch (Hiassen is a writer with the Miami Herald and writes many Florida-based novels).
The new camera is great-it has wifi, and a greater screen revolution. Also instruction manuals in 4 languages. (Italian, French, German, and Dutch). So I had to figure out most of it on my own, which was ok because it was similar to my old camera.
In the afternoon, I took a walk to the main center of Antwarp, which included many historical buildings, and wandered around town a little bit.
Later on, I went to a pasta resturant for dinner (the pasta was only $4.70 euros)-after having a good meal, I stopped somewhere else for an ice cream, and later discovered I didn't have my credit card. I wandered around all over the place, back to the ice cream parlor, where the man at the counter assured me I left nothing behind. I decided I might be back at the pasta restuarant, so I desperately went looking for the restaurant (I knew it was somewhere within a 4 block radius of the rail station-where my hostel is located). I finally found it. The restuarant was closing up, the doors we're locked, the folks working there we're cleaning up. But from the window, I could actually see my credit card in the card reader next to the register. I banged on the doors desprately, and they let me in and get my card. I went to bed relatively early, thinking that was enough excitement for one day.
