This article finishes the InterRail series and follows Interrail – Germany (again).

Already on our way back home, at 09:23 AM we left Munich to Mannheim where we would change trains to finally get to Paris. The trip was really fast and calm in the German high-speed trains and we arrived at Paris Est at around 5 PM and a new adventure begun…

Given the Catholic holidays thing that the German assistant had told us back in Munich’s train station, we still didn’t know if we would have a place in the night train to Irún which meant we’d have to spend the night in Paris without any room booked. More importantly, would there be any free seats or beds the next days? How difficult would it be for us to get to Spain!?

Bad news…

In that same Paris Est train station, we asked if there were any seats left in “our” train and got the bad news, the train was full! Still, with the typical hope we got in Portuguese hearts, we decided to go the Paris Austerlitz train station where our train would departure from and ask there… should we get different results…

We hurried to the subway to get to Paris Austerlitz train station and, once there, quickly headed to the ticket sales line. Since we needed delicate information and couldn’t risk it getting lost in our rusty French, we waited in the line for the only assistant, out or 4 that had the English flag above his window; and waited, and waited… and waited. Turns out the sales assistant and the girl he was assisting were flirting like characters out of a French romance… and they took their time so, meanwhile, I had to tell everybody in the line behind me “Je necessite l’Anglais…” when they asked me why I wouldn’t take my turn. Helena got tired of and tried her luck asking about the train to another sales assistant in French but the assistant was so rude Helena didn’t really understood if we had a place in the train or not.

On our way home!

Finally we saw another assistant, a bit far away, waving at us, asking us to go there. He didn’t have the little English flag on but we went and he told us, in perfect English, that though he spoke good English, he needed to be working for a while in the company and pass some exams before he got the “right” to have the flag on his window… The bureaucratic nonsense of big companies. Anyway, his name was Pierre and he saved our day! He looked for the train’s details in his computer and told us with great surprise: “Who told you the train was full!? There are plenty of beds available and if you want I can also book the tickets from Irún to Coruña from here, do you want me to do it?” YES WE DO!

At around 11 PM we got on the train and were all happy to be alone (and not with people partying or drinking or whatever like we had seen in other compartments) in the 6 bunker bed compartment until two German girls came in and I couldn’t complain either, even Helena told me in a low voice “Oh.. how lucky you are!”. Yes, everything was going just fine when another passenger came in, a French guy on his 40s, drunk and smelling like one. He came in, closed the window shade hitting Helena’s feet hard, then seated in his bed and took out a little knife… and with the knife he took about 30 seconds to rip the plastic bag where his pillow was in. What the..!?
Anyway, we were on the train and though he was drunk and snored, it could have been worse.

We arrived at Irún at around 7:30 AM, went to the sales assistant and he told us they had been expecting us in the station because the trains to Coruña were full but they knew two people had reserved their tickets in Paris and needed the tickets. Thank you again Pierre!

After another boring 11 hour trip, we finally got home, at the beautiful city of Coruña.

This article finishes the series of articles about our InterRail trip in the summer of 2010. It took me almost a year to write these articles but I could remember a good part of it with the help of tickets, maps, postcards, etc. Helena kept and also with the photos we took.
I hope I shared the enthusiasm of traveling around Europe by train and that readers who haven’t been on an InterRail consider to do so now.

Until the next trip!

That’s right, Igalia is sponsoring me to attend LinuxTag so tomorrow I’m flying to the wonderful city of Berlin.

I am also giving a presentation about OCRFeeder in there and I’m looking forward to seeing how it turns out because much of the feedback I got about OCRFeeder is from German users.
Another Igalian, Diego, is also presenting NavalPlan in there so if you need a project planning and resource management software be sure to attend his talk.

We’re usually also friendly people so if you wanna grab a beer and currywurst let us know!

This article is part of the InterRail series and follows Interrail (Part 4) – Germany.

On August 10th we were waiting for the train to Prague from Berlin’s Haupbahnhof when, about 10 minutes before it arrived, we heard a warning in German and all the people waiting with us left the place. We wondered if it was possible that the train station folks would warn about a last minute change of platforms for an international train only in German… and that’s what happened. Fortunately someone confirmed it for us and we hurried for the new platform.

The train to Prague was really crowded, not crowded like those trains shown in videos of India but crowded like everybody standing in the aisle, outside the train compartments. Most of the passengers were young people like us, nobody moved for like 5 or 10 minutes and that’s too much if you’re feeling somebody’s breath on your face…
The thing is that in Germany you’re not forced to reserve a seat like it is in France, for example, and Prague is a very attractive place for young people. Still, everyone remained calm except for a German passenger, probably on his 40s, that started violently pushing everybody and screaming “I have reservation! I have reservation!”, like we were leaving the planet after the apocalypse, until he entered his compartment…
Finally we got out of that passenger car and entered the next one which was more humanly squeezable and found ourselves a seat.

It was about 5 PM when we got off the train in Prague. We exchanged some euros for Czech Korunas at the first currency exchange we found at the train station. After that, we passed by many other currency exchanges that would offer a better deal so if you go to Prague’s central train station, be sure you are patient and compare different currency exchanges before you buy your Korunas.
Outside the train station there was a park but we got a bit of a bad impression as it was full of drunk people and junkies lying in the benches.

(the photo is a bit blurred but this is inside the train station)

We were staying at Hotel Vitkov. This hotel was suggested by Tomeu Vizoso, a nice guy and great hacker who has been involved in interesting projects such as Sugar and PyGI. Tomeu had been kind enough to leave a comment to the blog post, where I announced I would be Interrailing through Europe, inviting me for a drink in Prague and I took the chance to ask him about hotels.
This 3 star hotel was a bit far from the center, 20 minutes by tram, but it was nice and very cheap: a double room for 31 € per night, with breakfast and all.

Getting to the hotel by tram was another little adventure because, even though we knew the tram number to get there, the ticket machines had several kinds of tickets and had a too vague English description in tiny letters. Since it only accepted coins, I went to a cafe to exchange the bills and had to ask someone in the tram to warn us when we passed by the hotel. Everybody was really nice and spoke good English.

“Ah, that’s because this is the worst street of Prague.”

When we finally got to the hotel, we made arrangements with Tomeu to go have dinner nearby. We went out following Google Maps’ indications and this was the second adventure. It was already night, the street was kind of dark we couldn’t see a soul outside apart from a group of drunk men walking down the street and a barechested old man screaming something at us from the other side of the street while clapping his hands. We felt like the guys from EuroTrip when they arrive at Bratislava and hurried to find the restaurant already thinking Tomeu was crazy.

We arrived a bit early at Restaurant Merenda so we sat, waiting for Tomeu to arrive. The waiter brought us the menus (that also were translated to English) but asked us what we wanted in Czech. I answer, in English, that we were waiting for our friend who was arriving very soon. He didn’t understand and just asked: “Two beers?”; “Not yet, we are waiting for a friend…”, I also pointed to my watch and to the empty third chair; “hmmm… one beer? two beers?” he replied, now getting more angrier; “Two beers, please!” I finally figured out.
When Tomeu arrived he explained us, and we would experiment it once again later, that the dynamics of someone serving you in there were different. He said that “it is like if the waiters are the school teachers and we are the pupils, they are a bit authoritarian and we need to respect them”. Indeed.
Anyway, Tomeu’s girlfriend joined us later and we had a nice, Portuguese spoken, dinner (they lived in Portugal for some years). Oh, and my goulash and beers were damned good!

After that, we went for a coffee in another place and I asked them about the scary street. He said something funny “Ah, that’s because this is the worst street of Prague.”, oh that explains it, thank you very much! “Is it as unsafe as it looks?” I asked and he replied it is not and that he didn’t know anyone who got mugged in there or anything but when he wanted confirmation from his girlfriend, she said “I’ve heard of some people who got robbed here, yes.”. After we said goodbye, with my spidey sense on full-alert, we walked back to the hotel.

The Prague of postcards

The next day, we went to the city center to do another trour with New Europe (see the Germany post to know what’s it about). This time we had a Scottish guide who kindly told us not to worry because he would do his best to be understood. Later in the trip he also mentioned that Prague was really safe and the crimes in there were basically petty crimes. On the other hand, he said it had also the highest number of deaths in crosswalks and I can imagine it, because people there drive like crazy; and I come from Portugal, I know what I am talking about.

It was a nice walk in the city center where he explained some of the most interesting things about the city. Kafka’s statues, the Old New Synagogue or the Astronomical Clock (one of the world’s most overrated tourist sights) were just some of the things the guide explained. We ended the tour near King Charles bridge. Now this is the Prague I had imagined. The most impressive part of the tour for me was when the guide talked about the Museum of Children’s Drawings which has drawings from Jewish children held in Nazi concentration camps in WW2. We couldn’t enter the museum because we didn’t feel like waiting in the long line but according to the tour guide, the drawings show pretty much the same things as today’s children’s drawings: trees, houses, families; they didn’t show destruction or chaos as it would be expected. I hope that some day I’ll be able to go back there and visit it.

(King Charles bridge)

After the trip, me and Helena crossed King Charles bridge to the other side, bought some souvenirs, visited a few things more and passed by the train station to ask for information on the trains to Munich. After about 30 minutes waiting in the line, we asked the assistant for the schedule and she said “How many tickets?”, “No, I have an InterRail pass, I just need to know the schedule.”, she made an angry face and pointed to her left and said “Information!”, “… but can’t you just tell me at what time the trains…”, “Information!”, “… but I…”, “Information!”. After confirming, with the right Information! assistant, that we would have a train to Munich, we headed to the hotel.

The dinner was in a restaurant close to the hotel. It was funny that the decoration of the restaurant and everything seemed pretty much like the average restaurants in Portugal 10 years ago.
This was the second time we experimented a waiter’s “school teacher’s kindness” when I waved to him when he was passing by (like, please come by when you can) and he pointed with his head to his hands, full of plates, and made an expression that said something like “stupid idiot tourists don’t you see I’m working here”. If after that the food had spit on it or not, I don’t know, but it was again really good.

Our conclusions to Prague is that it is a really nice place that surely deserves a second visit but we didn’t get as impressed as we think we would. Maybe our expectations were too high or we weren’t looking exactly for partying like everybody else seemed to. It was indeed a great place for drinking. When we were at the train station to leave Prague we heard a group of Spanish guys talking about how cheap it has been for them to drink and party all night.

On August 12th, at around 9 AM, we were getting on a train to our second German city of the trip.

to be continued…

This article is part of the InterRail series and follows Interrail – France (the beginning).

We finally arrived at Gare du Midi/Zuidstation, we should have continued in the train to the Central Station but I didn’t really knew where it was, so, we instead took the subway to get close to the Grand Place and our Hotel.

We stayed at Hotel Mozart, this and the hostel in Paris were the only places we booked before starting the trip. For Brussels I had still been looking in HotelWorld.com for cheap places, yet, all the double rooms were more than 30 € per person and night and away from the center. Finally, with Booking.com‘s last room thing, we paid 49 € per room and the hotel was pretty cool. It is about 1 minute walking from the Grand Place and decorated in an Arabic style that made it look like a museum (what does Arabic has to do with Mozart remains a mystery to me).

An Arabic fountain in the Hotel

I had passed in the hotel’s street every time I was in Brussels before but never in the Summer. All the times I went there it was in February (yes, for FOSDEM), and it turns out that street can be quite noisy for those who want to sleep but we didn’t really care.
That same night I decided to practice my French with the receptionist and I asked him why there were so many photos of Obama in the hotel’s walls and he told me: “That’s because the boss is American, from California!”. We chit-chatted a bit about whether Obama can change more things. Really cool guys the two receptionists I had the chance to talk to in the hotel.

I don’t know how to explain it but there’s something about Brussels I like a lot. Some of my friends say it’s a small, uninteresting city but I love it there. I love the beer, the sightings, the comic paintings on the side of some buildings, the Grand Place, the fries, Amadeus and of course, FOSDEM!
Now what’s the Amadeus thing above? Well, it is the place you wanna be when you’re starving like we were during our train trips! It’s Amadeus, the Place for Ribs (TM?)!
Amadeus is a warm, dim lighted, vintage-environment restaurant where they serve you spare ribs! So imagine this, you enter this huge place, walls covered floor-to-ceiling by bookshelves (full of real books of course) and you can get to eat huge ribs (I think they are cow ribs, but they could easily be dinosaur’s, I had never tasted dinosaur so I couldn’t tell) along with a nice salad and a roasted potato covered with a tasty sauce. The price? I’ve always paid less than 20 € so it is indeed “a great deal of a meal”!
The music from the 30s set a really nice atmosphere too, together with the dim lights it is like entering another dimension. A dimension that raises you cholesterol and makes you feel bad for not having more space in your stomach for more, it’s just so tasty!
Oh, by the way, in Brussels it isn’t called Amadeus but Amadeo. This year I had to ask it and a waiter told me that it was because there was already a place called Amadeus in Brussels.

An already half eaten rib at Amadeus!

If you have been to FOSDEM and attended its Friday Beer Event these last couple of years, you’re familiar with Delirium Café, a place with over 2000 brands of beer. I was curious to check it out again but this time with less than 1 geek per square meter and I had been telling Helena “I gotta take you there, you’re gonna love the Kasteel beer!”, and she did. What a better way to finish the night after a colossal dinner than drinking a tasty beer such as Kasteel Kriek? For those who don’t know, this is a cherry-flavored beer but with a difference with the other cherry-flavored brands I tasted: it has 8 degrees of alcohol! So it goes in like juice, but the effects are different…
Helena loved it!

We were supposed to stay in the hotel just for one night but we liked it so much that I put my negotiator hat on and talked to the receptionist about staying one more night (I didn’t want this extra night to cost us the original 150 € /night of the room without the last-room discount). So I asked him how much would it be for us to stay one more night and he asked me “How much are you paying now?”, “49 €” I said and he made it easy: “Okay, just gimme 50 €!” and we got our extra night.

The next day we went to the Atomium, I had never been there, and it’s impressive! We stood like 5 minutes on the line to enter and then realized it had an exposition inside and we felt we would spend a lot of time in it (we’re still traumatized by the time we spent in London’s museums), so, after taking a few pictures, we left, as we had wanted to go visit Gent and Bruges.

The Atomium!

Gent is a beautiful city and the capital of East Flanders. I had been to Gent the first time I went to FOSDEM but I went there at night and so, this was like the first time I was there. It’s like our travel guide book said, it’s a nice alternative to Bruges, still beautiful but with less tourists.

An artistic photo Helena took in Gent

Look at how many beers this little shop has (in Gent)

We were eager to visit Bruges, I had watched the movie “In Bruges” which got me interested in the city; the movie is great BTW. So, Bruges, from the very start (outside the train station) to the center square, was simply marvelous. Everything was so clean and so well cared for; of course, the market square was filled with tourists, much more than Gent but it was pleasant. We entered the tower in the square, the same that plays a big part in the movie I mentioned but we couldn’t see how to get up there… Maybe it is because it was past 5 PM.

The tower in Bruges.

Later, while entering the train, I had the feeling that it was first class (our InterRail tickets were for second class) but since there were only us a another couple, we didn’t care to check it out. Then, when the ticket collector came by, he confirmed us it was the first class car but: “You know, don’t worry, this is Belgium, you only need to switch to the second class, there’s no problem.”, he told us with a smile. We did so and we were only 10 minutes from Brussels, so, I guess I can say we traveled first class at least once in this trip.
And how well organized the train system seemed to me in Belgium! We asked for the trips to Amsterdam and we were given a free little book with all the schedules to and from all locations; the information and ticket sales people we talked to all spoke good English; I love the fact that there are no barriers/doors to enter the subway or the tram (and yes, we always paid the tickets), a different philosophy I guess.

Back in Brussels, I had a secret I had been keeping from Helena all day. I had been carrying all day two rings and a pair of earrings in my pocket just waiting for the right moment to propose to her. My idea was to do it in Bruges but I couldn’t find the right moment so, when we were crossing the Grand Place heading again to the Delirium Café, I did it and it was a beautiful moment!

Just before having another Kriek beer in Bruges!

The next morning, we had a very tight agenda. I wanted to take Helena to the chocolaterie I had bought her gifts last February. I cannot remember the name (I remember the location perfectly, it’s all that matters). The chocolates were really expensive BUT, compared to Leonidas and other cheaper brands they totally worth it. Helena says they are the best chocolates she ever tasted!
Unfortunately, the place was still closed and so, we headed for the second place that I wanted to take: Le Pain Quotidien. I discovered this pastry with Victor when we were starving and started looking for a place to have breakfast near FOSDEM. Later, in London, I found also one of these pastries and realized it is a chain, but it’s a nice one. The idea is: you enter this warm place that smells like baking bread and you have long wood tables where you seat near the other costumer; you choose what pastry or bread you want, all organic, of course, and the best is that in the center of the table there are a lot of jelly pots, butter, etc. (In London it was different… you had to choose only one kind of jelly beforehand… not the same thing!)
Oh, and when we were leaving the place we noticed they were highlighting a new product: Pastel de Nata; we forgive them for not mentioning it’s a (very) Portuguese product.

Hmmm, Le Pain Quotidien, hmmm…

After this, we waved good bye to the lovely city of Brussels and went to the train station. Having a little time before the train arrived I remembered one thing, one scary thing… we had forgot to book the tickets from Paris to Irún for our return trip, and chances were the trains would still be full by then. Actually, we had remembered it but we hadn’t decided when we were getting back, so we just postponed that decision. Feeling a bit of panic, I asked the ticket salesman if we could book the tickets from Brussels, he said we could not but he could check the availability for the day we wanted to return; okay, the 15th? No? 14th? Also full? 13th? Not even the 13th!?
What the hell, we are young and adventurous so we put the panic feeling in a dark corner of our brains and headed to Amsterdam.

to be continued…

The first half of August I went on an InterRail trip with my girlfriend and I’ve been willing to write about it since we finished it.

First a disclaimer: the names of places and particularly the times I talk about in the text might not be accurate since I didn’t keep notes of them.

We had a 15-day pass, from August 2nd to 16th, to travel by train across Europe.
The original itinerary would be Paris, Brussels, Gent, Bruges, Amsterdam, Berlin and Prague. From Prague we hadn’t decided what to do from the beginning since we didn’t really know how much time we would need to return to Spain.

The departure

So, Sunday, August 1st, it was almost 02:00 AM when we finished organizing our back packs. Sandwiches: check; clothes: check; ID and respective copies: check; etc.
We left home at 07:00 AM to go to Coruña‘s train station and wait for the first of the many trains we’d catch.

We started heading south to Ourense and then north until the last stop, Hendaye, already in France. This is one of the reasons it takes so much to get there (around 11 hours of train), the train goes all the way down to the south of Galicia and only then starts heading to the border with France.

En France!

With 11 hours of train, 2 movies dubbed in Spanish (only in the trip back I discovered I could switch the sound channel to English), a drained PSP’s battery and some hours of studying French (what I learned in high-school was rusty), we still needed to buy the tickets from Hendaye to Paris. I went and asked the saleslady in French for two tickets to Paris and I must have done it so well that she answered me with so much information and in such a fast speech that I didn’t get much but it couldn’t be a simple answer of “Okay Sir, it’ll be N euros, please”. Plan B: “Anglais, S’il vous plaît?” and I got my requested translation:
“The train to Paris is full, the next train is at 7:50 in the morning…”
Oh, it sounded a lot better in French…
“Okay”, I said, “… but ain’t there other trains leaving to Paris?”
“No but there might be beds left. You’ll have to wait for the train’s assistant and ask him if there are still beds left.”

Things weren’t looking good. It was already night, the landscape wasn’t presenting Hendaye as anything interesting to spend the night and besides, leaving to Paris at 08 AM would kinda screw the plans we had: visit Paris in 1 day and leave the day after in the morning.

The hour until the “train man” arrived was a long wait. And as soon as I got the chance I approached him and asked about the beds, along with a lost puppy face to get the best of him. Is answer: “In 10 minutes…”
20 minutes passed and I asked him again, his answer: “In 10 minutes, please.”
After a while they put a little table on the side of the train and started reviewing the tickets — “First the people that have tickets!” — and we realized that there were a bunch of travelers in the same situation as us.
Finally it was our turn and, guess what, they had beds! Hooray! We paid the beds reservation and rushed to the train as if they could change their mind about the existence of free beds.

Bed Squatters

Helena had the tickets and was guiding us through the various cars until she found our beds. We pushed the backpacks under our beds (we got the bottom bunk beds), turned off the light, locked the door and prepared to sleep. We were really happy, we had been lucky and we were on our way to Paris, plus, no “room mates” so far! An then someone knocked on the door; they were two girls and two boys and the guys were telling us we were on their spots. “Poor mistaken guy, couldn’t read his ticket…” I thought and Helena showed them that those bed numbers were ours, he agreed but the car we were at wasn’t ours… We were 6 cars ahead of ours. Helena had misread the ticket . We apologized and headed to the right car and the right room. It was locked. We knocked, nothing. We knocked again and again, still nothing. It was locked from the outside and we spent almost 30 minutes until we found a train assistant and asked him to open it for us.
Finally we were on the right beds, set the alarm to 06:30 AM and went to sleep in a room without other people whole night.

Paris

We arrived at Gare d’Austerlitz at 07:15 AM, bought tickets to the subway and headed to the Auberge Internationale des Jeunes, 10 minutes to the Place de la Bastille. We left the backpacks in the baggage room (the room was available only after 04:00 PM) and entered the café in front of the hostel to have breakfast before start visiting Paris.

Arc de Triumph

Musée du Louvre

With only one day to be in Paris, we walked like hell but could cover a good part of the city. We could pass by Place de la Bastille, Catedral de Notre Dame, Place de la Concorde, the Louvre, Champ-Élysées, Arc de Triumph and finally to the Eiffel Tower.
This city surely has a magnificent set of monuments to show us.

Eiffel Tower

Break-dancers under Eiffel Tower

During this walking trip, we found a place just by the side of the river where people were playing table soccer but the tables there varied from 2 to 12 people. Being Portuguese, the possibility of playing table soccer in Paris was really appealing and we went there, it could only be really expensive, right? it was Paris after all: it was for free, some initiative by the city hall or something. Really nice.

Table soccer in Paris

After skipping our plan to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower due to the enormous queue and our already tired bodies, as we were leaving the place a few break dancers started putting up a show that we really enjoyed. It was a different visit to the Eiffel Tower as you see.

After this, we headed back to the hostel and finally entered the room with the plans of having a shower and rest a bit before dinner; that’s when we found out there were no bathroom in the room. I swear I had read the room had a bathroom and started reading the booking terms we had printed; it said something like:
“Rooms for 2, 3 or 4 people with bathroom.
Rooms for 4 people have bathroom en suite; the others have the facilities in the same floor.”
And for some reason, when I booked it I assumed our 2-people room for which we had paid 35 € per person would have bathroom; anyway, it was one night so we had a shower, had dinner and went to sleep.
Another detail, it had bunk beds. A double room with bunk beds!

At around 5 AM, a big, scaring noise woke me up and I heard Helena complaining to someone; you see, our room was just next to the showers and the pipes were as noisy as a Panzer tank (I suppose, of course) and even though every room had a sign in the door saying “Avoid showers after 10 PM”, people seemed to take that “avoid” as a mere suggestion.
So Helena and some Spanish girl who was also awaken went and told the 5-AM-showering-people to stop it.

Yup, at the age of 25, I already find it not funny to pay 35 €/night for an internetless, shared bathroom, noisy, bunk-bed room.
By the way, all the hotels (note, hotels, not hostels) we stayed after this one were cheaper and way better than this youth hostel. Why do people stay in these places?
We realized that if you go to Booking.com there seems to be always a last hour offer or something where you can get nice hotels cheaper than what you pay for a double room in a youth hostel. Also, sometimes the difference is 5-10 € and I prefer to have a bathroom and a silent, normal bed room for that extra fee.

Au revoir!

The next morning we decided to go and see the Sacré-Coeur. Since we had already checked-out, we had to go through the three large set of stairs while carrying our backpacks. Morning exercise, folks!
The view of Paris from the Sacré-Coeur compensated it in the end and that was it for Paris; next destination: Brussels, but not without another little adventure first.

Sacré-Coeur

To get to Brussels with the cheapest reservation fee (it was 3 € VS 60 € for the direct train) we needed to go from Paris to Lille to Tournai where we’d then go straight to Bruxelles Midi. It wasn’t complicated at all except that we didn’t know if we needed to pay the reservation from Lille to Tournai, so Helena went to the ticket sales queue while I went to the informations queue. It took the info assistant a while to understand what the problem was and we ended up missing the train to Tournai. No problem, we’ll get the next one; and we kept a eye on the departures board (in France and, as we laster found out, in Czech Republic, the train platforms only show up about 10 minutes before the departure) and when the time came, the board said: Destination: Tournai, Train: Autocar.
Funny name for a train I thought, given that the word for bus in Portuguese is “Autocarro”. So I bugged the assistant one more time and she told me that indeed, it was a bus, there had been an accident in the train line and the train company had reserved a bus for the passengers to go to Tournai. It was an interesting 40-minute bus ride through the country side in the border between France and Brussels.

And that was it, my first time to France and the beautiful and expensive city of Paris.
Finally in Tournai we took the train to Brussels.

to be continued…