The Lost Soul

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The best way to meet extraordinary characters must be when traveling by train. Rarely do you encounter as many lost souls, in transit to wherever they think they need to go. Most people reach their destinations without any significant difficulties, but it puzzles me how this category of “extraordinary characters” are not stuck in transit for all eternity. Belgium is probably not populated by a higher ratio of “special characters” than any other country, but it is here this particular event takes place.

Antwerp station in itself is a bottleneck for the transport between Amsterdam and Brussels, being a non-throughgoing station, where trains have to enter, and then back out again, losing a significant amount of time. No excuse for the guy who gets on here and sits down next to me however to misjudge the planning of his trip this poorly. He asks if the conductor passed already. He asks in Dutch. I ask if he speaks English. No, Dutch it is. I tell him that the conductor did not yet pass, and ask him where he’s from. “I’m from here” he states. Ok, fair enough.

Then he asks the most peculiar of things: “Where are we?”. “Antwerp, Belgium” I answer, without converting the obvious thought “where the hell did you think we are…?” into spoken words. Now, even the most seasoned traveler could become disoriented and lose track of the current location. But, not even the most inexperienced first-time tourist would claim to be a local and then ask a fellow traveler for the whereabouts. Granted, there could be some linguistic difficulties involved, but in this particular instance the case was clear: this dude was completely and utterly clueless! On top of everything he had a connecting train to Germany in Brussels. “Any chance that we’ll make it on time?” he asks. “Well, doesn’t look good, we’re slightly delayed”. No need to get the guy’s hopes up, a quick exchange of looks and we both know that he’s screwed, German trains aren’t exactly known for waiting around the tracks for latecomers…

Still, I wish him a good luck, happy to have had my first real conversation in Dutch ever. “Succes” is Dutch for good luck. This guy needs it…

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