Pain and Pleasure

Blehafshh.

I feel horrible.

I missed my train to Paris.

The last train to Paris.

I'm supposed to work at 7:30 am tomorrow.

The first train leaves at 6:4o am tomorrow, and it's about an hour and 40 minutes away.

That station is about 20 minutes from my work.

Meaning: I will probably be about an hour late to work tomorrow.

If I still worked at Calvin Klein, it'd be ok. They're cool about stuff like missed trains.

My Parisian boss didn't sound so cool on the phone.

I don't blame her.

Me being late for work, means her being later for work.

And her work is much more high powered than retail or child-care.

So I've fucked up both our tomorrows.

Sigh.

Again: sigh.

I didn't do it on purpose. I had to take a train from Antwerp to Brussels, and catch the train from Brussels to Paris. I scheduled well, I thought. I chose a train that would arrive in Brussels 20 minutes before my train to Paris' departure. And I was even in the Antwerp station 20 minutes early! All systems go, right? Well they were, until 21:03 when my train to Brussels was scheduled to arrive. The board just went blank. The train evaporated? What happened?

I don't know, but I had to take another train 14 minutes later.

And that train was slow as shit.

I got to Brussels just in time to see my Paris-bound train disappearing from the board.

My mouth went dry, and my face got hot, and I think I said "no!".

In the end it turned out better than it could have.

The ticket office called Antwerp station who confirmed the evaporating train. Then they said they'd book me a hotel, call me a driver, and put me on the first train out in the morning.

Free of cost. So that's pretty nice. If I had nothing to do tomorrow, I'd find it kind of fun.

What makes it terrible though, is that my boss specifically asked me not to take the last train home. I'd said ok, and at the time thought "no problem", but then the last train was 20 euros cheaper, and it meant an extra hour in Antwerp, so I just thought "no worries, I won't miss it".

Never say you won't miss it.

Never ever.

Especially in Belgium.

But aside from the last hour and 20 minutes, the weekend was just great.

Blast Your Ghetto, massive multilingual feast, Hema, two trips to Cafenation for chai tea and friends, "Away We Go", pizza, "Up", "Persopolis" and my Belgian :)