The rules of train travel in Holland

In little Norwegian mountain station Myrdal upon boarding train to Oslo
we saw a woman with two little girls who was looking at us with her eyes
wide open. And we looked back at her with our eyes wide open as well...
I think to explain the pecularity of this encounter I need to go few
weeks back and post some notes that I skipped...

Before arriving to Amsterdam I sent a message to my Dutch aquaintance
asking for tips and suggestions. Here is what he said:

'Let's just say that i hope you'll enjoy my country, although I
hope you'll not just do Amsterdam... I can recommend you places in the
south
like Maastricht and Breda (my study town), or Utrecht is beautiful as
well.
Than you could be trekking on the Veluwe close to Apeldoorn, or sailing
up
north in Friesland which is certainly great and this province has such
an
interesting culture (and its own language!). So much to do apart from
visiting (also beautiful, don't get me wrong) Amsterdam and its
coffeeshops.'

I was just about to reply that our limited time doesn't allow us to see
any of the counties in-depth and we are only zooming through the main
attractions... but then we saw much more Holland than we ever planned
to.

Rule of train travel in Holland #1:

In Holland two cars that leave from the same platform at the same
time will not necessarily arrive to the same destination.


Rule #2

If Dutch conductor checks your ticket and sees that you are going to the
wrong place - he won't tell you.


When 2 hours after departure our train failed to arrive to the scheduled
transfer station, I became very alarmed. However it was impossible to
find out neither where we are nor where are we going.

Rule #3

Once conductor checks your ticket he hops off at the next stop. There
is no map or schedule posted inside the train. Some stations do not
have name signs. The surrounding scenery is flat and unremarkably
similar - I think non-Dutch people won't be able to find any
differences.


Luckily, after racing through all cars I found one conductor off duty,
who told me that instead of traveling NW to Hamburg, we actually spent 2
hours going South. So now we had to get off at the next stop, catch the
train to Utrecht and there catch another train to Hamburg. That's what
we did. This time we paid more attention to every little detail and
indeed for the first few stops the train went as expected and I let my
guards down... for a while, until 2 hours later I realized that we are
again moving in somewhat wrong direction. This time however we weren't
alone in our predicament, there was another woman from USA, with two
little girls who was traveling by the same train to Keln. So we were
going NW to Hamburg, she was going SW to Keln, and train took the
neutral course to the West, giving us an opportunity to see even more of
Dutch countryside. Finally we arrived to some final 'end of the tracks'
destination and luckily the ticket office was still open. There we
learned that a) we still can get to Hamburg
b) our tickets need to be reissued
c) not only our tickets are reissued for free, but we'll get about 16
euros back... Is it a bonus for accumulated mileage?

Rule #4


Holland is a small country, if you randomly ride around in trains for a
day ot two, eventually you'll get to your destination.


Once again the woman with two kids boarded the train to Keln and we
boarded train to Hamburg and went to our separate ways... again in the
same car. Miraculously, with few more transfers we all arrived to our
respective destinations without further adventures. Or so we thought,
before we met this woman again on a train in Norway. Is she still lost
on her way to Keln? Or the world is even smaller than we thought?