The reason this story came about is due to my own inability to make decisions and to plan anything further in advance than 72 hours. Also due to the aforemention qualities I posses I also nearly spent a night on a bench in Hyde Park. You'd think i'd learn...
So I had arrived in England the previous week and had spent some time with family friends and got to see bit of the countryside and a fleeting glimpse of Stone Henge. Due to my spectacular organisational skills and also the fact that I can't commit to booking a hostel for an entire week in advance "just incase I don't like it", I ended up almost homeless and over 1000km away from where I wanted to be.
It happened to be easter weekend and I could not find a hostel to stay in for under 70 pound, just to do the math that works out at around $160 for the night. This infuriated me for many different reasons, but mostly due to my own lack of forethought, and also not realising it was easter. So I decided that I was leaving London as it was too expensive, the weather was shit, and the people were rude and arrogant.
This was a marvellous plan except for the fact that every single flight back to Europe was going to cost me around $200 which I found ridiculous because I got to London for about $30. So thats when things began to unravel...
I decided to take the bus to Dover (about 2.5hours), and then the ferry from Dover to Calais and then the train from Calais to Lille, and then Lille to Brussels. All was fine, I arrived at Calais and got my ticket and sat down to eat something, it wasn't until everyone started getting up and leaving the cafe that I looked at the time and I thought oh no problem I have another hour and 10 minutes before the train goes. However in hastiness to leave the UK I forgot about the time difference of one hour, and as it turned out I actually had 10 minutes to get to the train. All I can say thank christ I remembered! So I hopped onto the train to Lille and was on my way. Once I arrived at Lille I had a 45 minute way for my connecting train to Brussels. That was fine except for the fact that the train station was outdoors and it was snowing. Departure time was nearing so I made my way down to the platform that I was told the train was going from, and of course the train didn't go from that platform, it went from a different one, but somehow I managed to figure that out aswell and got on the train. So off I set with high hopes and dreams of belgium hot chocolates.
When I arrived in Brussels it wasn't all lollipops and hot chocolates as my deluded brain had led me to believe. It was more like a freezing, filthy station overrun with homeless people. Anyway I had written down different hostels names and numbers to contact when I got to Brussels. So I found a public phone and called them all, and of course not a single one of them answered their phone. I tried again, and again, and again. After smashing the phone onto the receiver a few times I calmed myself down and tried to figure out my next move. After walking around the train station aimlessly for half an hour trying to find a beacon of shining light, my saviour, I gave up and went to try and talk to the travel office and see if they had info about hostels etc., but of course not they only dealt with train tickets. They did mention however that there was an ibis across the road which I could check out, I had already seen an advertisement for the Ibis and it was well out of my price range. So as I left the travel office, totally disheartened and ready to curl up in a corner of the freezing station my saviour came to me in the form of an overnight train to Berlin, and my friend just happened to live near Berlin, and this was my ultimate destination at the end of this crazy overland adventure, I just thought I would stop and see some of the sights along the way. I nearly sprinted back to the ticket office before it closed and proudly announced that I needed a ticket on the only international, overnight train running that evening, to Berlin please! and it was a done deal. Ticket in hand I marched triumphantly back out into the freezing station to wait the four hours until my train left.
I found a waiting room, which of course wasn't heated, but it was enclosed and had seats. The only downside was the homeless man pissing in the corner, but hey you gotta take the good with the bad. This was fine until 10pm sharp when the security men came in and told everyone to get out because the waiting area was closing. Perfect!
I walked around the station which had become full of homeless people aimlessly wandering around. There were about 20 or so seats which were all occupied, and the further you ventured away from this area the less people there were. So I found a nice piece of floor space and made myself comofortable until sometime after midnight when the train left. In that time people were being spat on, abused and yelled at, and people trying to rip tourists off and just cause general mayhem. Definitely a night i'll never forget!
Anyway the train arrived and I spent a luxurious eight hours in a heated carriage, and then arrived in Berlin the next morning, only 24 or so hours after I left my original destination. Just gotta love the way things work out when you try to wing it!
I have since learnt my lesson and conquered my phobia of committment and have booked all hostels, flights and transfers in advance. I swear i'm a changed person!
