We made it to Belgium in time (barely) for Kimmy’s birthday!

Hi there! My European tour through Germany to Belgium with Kimmy has switched to the part where I am becoming more stationary! We spent a couple of days in Frankfurt and Cologne and today we switched countries to Belgium where I will be staying for the next 4 months! It seems fitting that this change happened on Kimmy's 56th birthday!

Date: Saturday, September 2nd, 2023

So today we took the train, well rather, multiple trains, from Cologne to Ghent. Remember about 4 or 5 days ago when I talked about how advanced and cool and awesome and perfect the European train system was? Well, I hereby rescind that statement. I’m sure that there are days when the trains are awesome but today was not one of those days.

Before the train drama that I’m sure you’re dying to hear, let’s start at the beginning of the day with a wonderful breakfast. We had Kimmy’s birthday breakfast at a cute cafe in a small square and got to watch groups of tourists follow tour guides holding green flags and discussing the Cologne sites. Breakfast was delicious and the tourists were entertaining. We couldn’t have asked for a better breakfast.

Our first train was scheduled from a smaller station just outside of Cologne which would go straight to Brussels where we would have 20 minutes to switch to the train that takes us to Ghent. Seems easy enough. We later find out that it’s too good to be true, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Anyways, we took a 20-minute taxi ride with the world’s fastest taxi driver who had amazing customer service right to the first train station. We arrived early and carried our heavy bags up the 3 flights of stairs, our taxi driver kindly carried one of the bags all the way up, hence my comment about his customer service. But we were waiting by the tracks and at this point all was good:). Then there was an announcement, all in German, followed by a large group of disappointed 70-year-old American tourists, carrying their bags back down the same 3 flights of stairs. We looked up at the monitor and it turned out our train had gotten cancelled, or at least that’s what we gathered when there was suddenly an “x” beside our train. So we started to come up with a backup plan.

Kimmy identified the leader of the large group of American tourists and asked what their plan was. They told us that they were going to head back to the main Cologne train station and figure it out from there. Little did they know all of the trains out of that station were either full, cancelled or not until hours from now. But we only knew that from looking at the app, a technology that I have a feeling they haven't figured out... so maybe they’re still stuck in Cologne… Good luck to them!!

Our backup plan was to get on the train to Aachen, the furthest west German station on our path to Belgium. We got on that train with high hopes, and those high hopes were suddenly halted as the train was. An announcement, again all in German, came across the PA system and all of the people around us looked disappointed. It was at this point that I realized I probably should’ve learned some basic German to be able to figure out what was happening, but I guess it’s a little late for that. As our train wasn't moving, we gathered that we were delayed. Still don’t know why but I guess that doesn’t really matter. German announcement after announcement came and we were stopped for about 50 minutes. But eventually, the train started moving again so things seemed to be getting back on track (get it? It’s a train pun, haha).

So we’re moving again but then another German announcement came on the PA system along with horizontal lines crossing out the remaining destinations on the monitor. It seems that this train has decided that it will not be going to the 4 final destinations on this route, including ours. I really don’t understand how trains are able to simply decide that they don’t feel like going any further, but apparently they can!

So now we get off the train in Düren and wait for a couple of minutes before getting on a new train that’s bound for Aachen. We eventually get to Aachen and now have to figure out a plan of how to get out of Germany and into Belgium. The simplest and shortest route is through Brussels and then Ghent (just like our original plan) but unfortunately that train was also full…. Seems fitting.

But the backup backup route was to go to Welkenraedt, have a 5-minute transfer and get on a train that goes through Brussels but conveniently right to Ghent!! So we chose that option and prayed that the train platforms for our 5-minute change were beside each other. Things were finally looking up for us as this transfer went perfectly!! We got on to our final (yay!) train and hung out for the 2 hours it took to get to Ghent.

We arrived in Ghent and grabbed a taxi to my new apartment that actually existed and wasn’t a scam (also yay!), and finally sat still for what seemed like the first time today! I got organized and unpacked in the new apartment then we figured it was time to do something more typical of a birthday celebration for Kimmy!!

We walked into the city centre of Ghent which was absolutely gorgeous and had a very nice dinner on the edge of the canal with Champagne.

Happy birthday Kimmy & thanks for putting up with all of the train drama and my train-caused grumpy mood!! All in all, today was an adventure and we got to where we were going, learned a lot about random small-town German geography, and celebrated the birthday girl and that’s what’s important!

# of trains we were planning on today: 2

# of train routes we tried to go on today: 6

Hours of train travel we expected: 1.8

Actual hours of train travel: 5.5

Birthdays celebrated: 1🥳