Taking the train

I took the train to Amsterdam and and am taking it back to Brugge tomorrow, transferring both ways in Antwerp.


It started snowing on the way to Amsterdam, making me glad that I didn't drive Citronnade there.

The train system is amazingly efficient. There is often as little time between transfers from train to another as there is between subway transfers in Toronto.

People who saw my Canadian flag patch on my backpack would smile and say "A Canadian!" I take it that we're pretty well-liked as tourists in Europe.

It was snowing heavily the day I left Amsterdam, the picture to the right was taken during my walk from the My Home hostel on Haarlemmerstraat to the train station.

The Amsterdam train station is big, with a sort of glassed in top over the tracks, as seen in the photo below.

Most of the drive to Brugge was in the dark, so I was glad for the opportunity to see what the Belgian countryside was like. Saw a number of fields that were growing what looked like hops. Also saw many farms with rows and rows of greenhouses, but couldn't tell what was growing inside.

Struck up a conversation on the way from Brugge to Antwerp on the way to Amsterdam on Tuesday with a young journalism student. Didn't catch his name, because he had to quickly hop off in Roosendaal, a city in the southern Netherlands. But before he left he told me he was already freelancing for newspapers and that newspapers in the Netherlands don't pay freelancers very much. That's true in Canada, too. Most freelancers get paid a few hundred dollars for their stories. But getting bylines in newspapers makes it easier to get work for magazines. Some of the better established magazines pay as much as $1 a word.

One thing that stands out on train rides in Europe is the artistry of the graffiti, which you'll see on any building or fence next to the train tracks -- even along the metro tracks in Paris. Many of the letters have sophisicated color gradients -- much as you'll see produced in Photoshop. Taggers must have a lot of time to finish their work. Maybe it's not considered vandalism the same way as it is North America.