Hugo Jonker

Pheweeh! That took forever!! Well, partially my fault – I had decided to take a train that you’ll have to wait for a bit longer, and it arrives 9 minutes later. Upside from that is that it’s direct from Liege to Luxembourg – which saves you 15 minutes of doing nothing, waiting for a train in Namur.

I found new and interesting ways to bore yourself to death for 6 hours. Zelda Minish Cap is a life-saver here, spent quite a bit of time on it. Reading papers for work has benefits, but becomes harder and harder with the steady rhythm of the train, the darkness outside… indeed. Sleeping would’ve been nice, but somehow I never manage – even when the two people talking across from me have left.

Well, that’s basically how I spent my Valentine’s day – traveling. Funny to see lots of people with big bouquets of flowers, or a single rose. It incredibly shouts “valentine!” :)
(I cheat a bit here. Valentine to me has always felt like a hype, pushed by shops to sell stuff. Plus I’ve rarely been in love on Valentine’s day, which facilitates ignoring the whole concept.)

So any tips if you’re coming to visit me? Of course:

• eurolines.nl has the cheap buses, if you book in advance enough. Travel duration from Eindhoven is not that bad compared to the train, but they almost never go (mon 11:15, fri 11:15; return: mon, wed, fri, roughly same hours I believe). You can get as low as 12 euros for the return ticket, but it’ll cost you two whole working days…
• By car is by far the best option. A three hour smooth drive, and you’re here. Parking is payed, everywhere in the city. I don’t know if they have transferia are somesuch.
  Melanie had a tip: there are probably people looking for carpoolers, this happens quite frequently. I don’t know, but it’s definitely worth checking out (if you don’t have your own car)!
• Train: if you have the discount card, get the railplus card too! Only 15 euro’s, and first return ticket you buy will be 20 euro’s cheaper!
• No matter how you go, take some food and drink. If by public transportation: plenty of food / drink! :)
• Reading has its limits, it doesn’t work that well if you are tired. Still, bring something to keep you occupied. A good book is of course a prime choice, but a DS or a GBA also works :)

I’ll be in Lux this weekend, so if any of you feel like dropping by, drop me a note!

PS: Forgot to mention this earlier, but they checked my passport (with the somewhat older picture), saw I came from the Netherlands and then wanted to see all my bags and my coat :)
Hilarious! At first I was kind of worried about the alcohol I had brought (I was moving a large part of my stash to .lu, it could be to much, I dunno…). But of course they were not interested in that! It took me a while before I figured they were looking for drugs :)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 14th, 2007 at 21:00 and is filed under travelling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.