Wednesday, October 12th, 2011
So, it's official. Never going to Liege again, because I ALWAYS have the worst luck when trying to get there, even though, other than Verviers I guess, it's the best city near me!
Started out the day normally, getting ready, going to school and such. had four hours in a row of French, then an etude at the end of the day. But even with the etude and half day, I think that Wednesdays are officially my least favorite day of the week... Four hours of French all in a row is too much for me, and what's worse is that I have my hardest class last. Lucikly the teachers don't really expect me to do anything, but I still like to try and follow along most of the time. But on Wednesdays, my brain is shot after my first three classes and I usually just end up trying to fo my workbook, but not really succeeding.
I rode the bus to the center of the town, feeling lazy and not exactly wanting to do the 20 minute walk in the cold. I got lunch, looked in some shops (I know the entire stock of H&M, and when they get new clothes in... Thank goodness I am frugal and don't actually buy anything ever!), and then I decided that I really just felt like going home. But then, as I was waiting for the bus, Katie walked past me and convinced me to come with her to Liege. So we went to the train station, met up with Eliza and Riley, and got on the train using our go passes (a paper that you can write any destination in Belgium and only have to pay 5 euros for it, one way...). I was about to get off at the Liege, Guillemens stop when Riley stopped me and told me that the train with a final destination as Brussels, which was what we were on, stops at all of the Liege stops just like the train with its final destination as Liege. Although I had riden the trai nto Brussels before and thought this was not the case, I decided to listen to her because she can speak practically fluent French and always seems to know the right things to do with public transportation and such. But I defnitely shouldn't have gone against my gut instinct... We were just chatting away in our seats when I saw the little sign at the end of the... umm the little individual parts of the train? The car? I cannot remember for the life of me... Learning French is taking away my English! Anyhow, I looked to the end of whats-its-name and saw the sign change and say "Next stop: Louvan." Now, I had no idea where Louvan even was, but I knew it wasn't Liege and I brought it up. All four of us practically ran to the door, franctically pressing the open door button, but by that time the doors had shut for good and a minute later the train was pulling away. With us on it....
The first problem was that we had no idea where we were going. And the second problem was that on our go passes we had written the destination as Liege.... When the conductor came around, we gave hime our tickets as if nothing was wrong, and he was very confused as to why we hadn't just written Louvan or Brussels as our final destination. But then riley tried explaining everything to him, he realized that we spoke English, and he thankfully starting speaking to us in perfect English. He was VERY nice about everything, explaing to us that a Brussels train NEVER stopped at Liege Palais (that's what I thought, Riley...). He then printed out this nice little ticket thingy for us so we wouldn't have to buy anymore tickets to get back to Liege. And then, he looked up the train schedule for us and told us the platform and the time the next train would be leaving for Liege. This whole process took like 15 minutes, but he was super nice and helpful and had fun talking to us the whole time, asking us why we were in Belgium and how we came to make such a mistake and such. It's people like him that just warm your heart, them being so nice to you and everything. Just in general Belgians are pretty nice to foreigners, but he was really helpful and saved me from having a mini panic attack right there on the train.
We got to the next stop, Louvan (at least, I know it was something like that...) and got off. We knew what to do thanks to the nice conductor, but we still had like 30 minutes to wait until the next train that was going to Liege was going to come. Turns out that this city is also in the Dutch speaking area, so not only can we not understand the instructions on the sign, Liege also has a different name in Dutch and we ralized how lucky we were to have that specific conductor, because without him none of us would have know that, so we wouldn't have even been able to look at the sign to reconfirm the platform and time the train arrived.
We had wasted about an hour thanks to our own stupidness when the train finally arrived. And then we got to ride another 30 minutes to get back to Liege Guillmens. And of course it was still not at the Palais stop...
-___- Since we had had our fill of trains, we decided to walk to the palais main shopping area. Thankfully, unlike me, at least Riley knew her way there so we weren't wandering aimlessly throughout the town... But by the time we finally got there, we had time to say hi to everyone and that was about it. No window shopping, no anything. Good thing I had eaten lunch beforehand!!!
Still not wanting to chance the trains, we walked backed to Liege Guillmens as it was the main train station in Liege and we had checked the times for the trains to Verviers before we had left. We also got a late start on leaving, so we got to run half of the way to the train station with our purses and school stuff as well. And it was defnitely over a mile. Not fun, not fun at all. At least, even in my horrible physical shape, I was still better than others who don't really play sports, so I don't think I was as tired as other people. And when we got up to the train station, we got to watch our train pull away... Luckily, our bad luck had ended there (at least for a moment) and there was another train in like 10 minutes.
We were soooo happy once we finally were on the train, knowing exactly where we were going. And, the nice conductor hadn't even stamped our go passes so we were very happy because that meant we could use the same line, thus not having to pay any extra money, to get back! But it turns out that conductors actually do that kind of thing a lot, and that it actually does matter what city is first and wht one is listed second. I thought it was interchangeable, because I had seen someone do it before, and that it wouldn't be a big deal. But then the conductor came up, starting speaking to us in mad sounding French, and I realized that what I figured was ok clearly was not... He realized after a bit that we spoke English, but unfortunately his was not the best and he was not understanding me at all. Then all of a sudden, Katie whips out the little ticket that the other conductor gave us and said "We're American, we're lost.", thus confusing him even more because that ticket had no relevance at all to the trip we were currently taking... He seemed very frustrated with us, and went somewhere, I think to consult with another worker? He came back like a minute later, obviously not very happy, and he just started giving us a lecture all over again. And then he just randomly got up and left, still not stamping our tickets saying that we had used it. I was very confused at this point, and felt bad for having caused another mess, and very glad that the angry little conductor who was very confusing just went away. And of course, this is the point that Riley, the only fluent French speaking person with us, decided to finally return from the bathroom.
So needless to say, it was a very tough day for me. At least I got a ride home from someone in Riley's host family, so I didn't have to worry about taking the bus home. But it was still an epic failure of a day regarding public transportation, and although I learned some valuable lessons about train rides to Liege, I don't think I will be making this trip again anytime soon. And I have also realized that I'm living proof that the (cute, confused, innocent teenaged girl who doesn't speak very good French) American card really does help to get you out of some sticky situations.
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