Transportation Woes

In the last couple of weeks, I've not fared particularly well in the transportation department. First, my bike was stolen. It was securely (ha!) locked by wheel and frame to a bike rack near my friends' apartment. I was gone for less than 3 hours on a sunny afternoon in a busy neighbourhood and not a bit of it remained. Not even my 25 euro (~$40) chain. And the most ironic part? It was right in front of the "Justice in the Neighbourhood" office.

After that, I bought a 20 euro transit strippenkaart ticket, used 2 of 45 strips getting home, put it in my pocket and then promptly washed the pocket. 20 euros quite literally down the drain. Dumb. Very dumb.

This week, I went to Amsterdam on Wednesday as per usual to do my cleaning. After the first place, which is within walking distance of the train station, I discovered that the city transit workers were all on strike and I wouldn't be able to get to the second place to clean there. Annoying, though sort of nice to go home early.

So I came back the next day, bought my ticket to A'dam and then discovered that there was work going on on the tracks between Utrecht and A'dam and trains were being routed through Hilversum. Not a huge problem, but it meant that the trains went only every half hour and took another 20 minutes. Vaguely inconvenient but okay. On the way home, however, the train stopped unexpectedly in Hilversum and we were told that the train was too long and due to renos at the Utrecht, all the platforms there were too short. Eh? Wtf? Who planned that? So they stopped in Hilversum to figure out what to do about it. Five minutes later, they added a second problem: due to a recent heat wave, all the canal waters had been heated up and couldn't be used as cooling for the electrical generators at the train station in Utrecht (apologies if my details are messed up - I got the translated version from a fellow passenger). Essentially, the power was out and no trains were going in or out of the station. Gah! After much fussing about, they finally decided to let us off in Hilversum and send the train back to A'dam. Of course, no one was sure when the power was going to come back on at Utrecht, so 200 of us decided to take a bus. Fortunately, this actually worked. The buses (we had to transfer) were jammed, but we did all get back into town eventually. It took me over 3 hours to travel 50 kms! Craziness!

Anyways, after all of this, I was rather wishing I had my own car here. But then I reminded myself that if I'd had a car stolen I'd be much more upset about it all, and that if I had mechanical problems with my personal vehicle, I'd have to deal with them - I wouldn't be able to jump ship and take a bus home. So there are certain advantages to this too.