So here we are, the morning after Groezrock Festival ends. I wake up in Geel, Belgium at 5:00 am to the sound of church bells outside my window. I am ready to go and get started on my trip.
Today is by far the worst travel day of my trip, but it needs to happen to get me situated where I want to be. I am going from Geel to Brussels Midi. From Brussels to Frankfurt. From Frankfurt to Nurnberg. From Nurnberg to Prague. It’s fifteen hours of traveling. In addition to that, it includes a bus ride. For some reason, the bus ride intimidates me. I don’t know why. I’m like that even back home in New York.
I wake up and walk to the Geel train station to start my long day. At Brussels Midi, I grab some breakfast and figure out where I am going. It is at this point while standing on the train platform, that I realize my ticket actually has information on it that I didn’t know it had. You know, because the ticket is in German and I do not speak German. It turns out that on the ticket is the car number and seat number. I knew I had made a seat reservation but I did not know how to read the ticket. I asked a conductor for help and he pointed this out to me on my ticket. He also showed me how to tell where each car is going to be when the train pulls in. From this day forward, I now know that I can use Google translator to figure out my pre-purchased train tickets and find this information. Easy, peasy!