I must admit I got excited as the train pulled into the station, bringing me closer to my true sandwich love. (Lies. I have no true sandwich love. I've been slutting around with a whole lot of them of late.) I grabbed one and sat outside in the sun to eat it, watching all of the tourists walk out into the sunlight and take their first glimpses of Amsterdam. (My favorites are the groups of backpacked young people huddling up and planning their attack on this city, which embarrassingly thwarts them in the end as they over-consume and end up stumbling around or incapacitated. But here they are all bright eyed and excitable... tomorrow, bleary and feeling badly.)
So, I had the interview at the company I now just call "Sandwich," and it went really well. Great work environment and nice people. It was a good experience and I got back to the train station in enough time to catch the first half of the England/Slovenia match at a bar there. I had to watch the England match because no one gives half a crap about the US game that was on at the same time. There was a group of 20-something British guys in there watching and if there's one thing that connects all viewing circles of British men watching their team, it's the shared tone with which they cry out, "Rooney!" when he gets the ball within scoring range. It's done with the same breath and excitement and hope as a child would exclaim "Santa Claus!" Magic. Anyway, I quietly gave away my citizenship in the way I dramatically measured my breath or rolled my eyes. Though no one noticed, it was satisfying to me, being that I was outnumbered.
So I board the train, getting updates from loyal friends on the game, and was feeling pretty good by the time we got to Brussels. We were at the Gare du Nord in Brussels as I was thinking about what I was going to pick up from the market that night, waiting for the 5 minutes until we reached the South station. (There are three main train stations in Brussels--the north station or Gare du Nord, the central station or Brussels Central, and the south station or Gare du Midi or Zuid. If you think the fact that one station has two names and that the "Midi" station is not the "Central" station is a tad confusing, then surely you will be understanding of what happened next.) I was lost in my thoughts and playing it cool so as not to get up until we reached the South station when the train started moving again and I noticed that it was the South--NOT North--station sign that was growing smaller........ SHIT! I missed my stop! Did I miss my stop? I missed my stop! Hey, do you speak English? Was that the South station? So... we're going to Paris??? What do I do? Go to Paris?
Well, that's what I did. Surprise! Went to Paris. I had never been so disappointed to go to Paris in my life. The train manager was helpful and understanding (he could see in my eyes that I felt bad about my mistake, an honest mistake), whisked me off the train at Gare du Nord in Paris and turned me over to his colleague on the 9:20 pm train back to Brussels (the next train out), who sat me on the train back with less compassion and less conversation than Claude (my angel!) from the Brussels train. But whatever, I didn't have to pay for my mistaken leg to Paris, nor for the return to Brussels. The only thing I wasted was time, but without a job these days, I'm getting quite good at that.
