Just when I think I must be getting too old for this crap, fate comes along and saves my sorry ass
I usually book the 6:25 PM train when I'm in Paris and need to be in Brussels the next morning. It takes about 80 minutes (those trains zip along at close to 200 mph). But today, I knew I had to be in Paris later, so I booked the 7:25 PM train. I left my office at 6:40, giving myself ¾ of an hour to get to the Gare du Nord, from which the trains to Brussels leave. The trip usually takes 20-25 minutes by métro (subway). I only have to change once, which was good, as I had my laptop bag, another shoulder bag with papers and bottled water, and a suitcase/trolley full of heavy books.
I got the first métro right away, rode the 2 stops, and lugged my stuff up the stairs (escalators? what are they?) and down the hall to the next line. Uh-oh. Loudspeaker announcements are saying that due to an abandoned suitcase in one of the stations on that line, traffic would cease for 45 minutes. I miss my train, and maybe don't get to Brussels at all if the other trains are fully booked. So, I dragged my stuff up a few more flights of steps back up to the street. It is rush hour, and ALL taxis are full. Not a free one in sight. I now have maybe 25 minutes to make my train. I go up and down the big avenue, but no way in the world to get to the station on time. Maybe if I were 20 years old, in running duds, and had no baggage at all, I MIGHT make it. But I'm 70, have a heart condition, and was laden down with luggage. I'm thinking, why do I DO this to myself? Who needs it?
Just when I'm about to resign myself to a long, expensive, and inconvenient evening/night, a taxi with its red light on swerves toward me, and the window across from the driver opens. "Are you looking to get to the Gare du Nord?" asks the driver. "I sure am!!" I answer. He says, "My passenger is, too. You look like you could use some help. He is OK with it, so if you want to hop in....?" OH yeah, I wanted to! It was still dicey, as I had maybe 17 minutes left until the train leaves, and we're still in the middle of stop-and-go rush hour traffic. But he does his best. The fare from where we were would have been about 7 Euros. I took out a 20 Euro bill and said, "here, take this, whether I make my train or not, just for your kind effort." He was blown away, thanked me profusely as if I had done HIM a favor (!!). Soon enough, I saw a train station at the end of a street he turned onto. But hold on, it didn't look right. No wonder, it was the Gare de l'Est. Wrong one. But he knew where he was going, and took a street here and there, and very shortly, we were across the street from the Gare du Nord. I jumped out, and got my luggage out of the back. I bumbled as best I could to my track with all my debris, and made my train with about 90 seconds to spare. I didn't have time to find my assigned coach and seat, but the conductor accepted my reason for being late, and said there seemed to be a free seat or two, and since Brussels was the next stop, I was welcome to sit in any unclaimed seat I could find. I did find one. Maybe not everyone had my luck with a taxi.
So, thanks to my Good Samaritan (actually, more like Good Camerounian or Good Ivoirian--his accent was definitely from one of the former French West African colonies), what could have turned into a nightmare disruption of my whole week, turned into a mildly stressful, but brief, €20 hiccup. I have a 9:00 appointment in Brussels tomorrow, and a 3 PM appointment at my office in the Netherlands in the afternoon, so spending the night in Paris would REALLY have messed me up.
So, here I am in Brussels, about to shut down for a few hours until breakfast, with my pulse completely back down to normal. I shouldn't be up at all, but I did want to follow the Georgia Senate race for a little while, even though anything OTHER than a Warnock victory would be a shock at this point. It's his margin I'm interested in at this point.
I must have done a good deed or two without noticing it recently, because karma was definitely with me tonight!
= new reply since forum marked as read
...to get to Brussels and then on to the Netherlands?
You're living my dream life!
I'm just in Tucker Georgia (Dekalb County), waiting for my vote to be counted.
I hope our night goes as well as yours did.
I'll keep this one in mind if my travels ever go terribly wrong 
If you EVER retire, you could write stories! You're a natural writer (witness your excellent book!) and you might even make some money.
I'm so glad you're OK.
Congratulations on getting where you need to be. You and your taxi driver need gold medals for maneuvering all this. Your Kharma is doing great
I’m so glad karma was in your corner. Get home already!
... with the possible exception of Senator Raphael Warnock, that is.
He's had an interesting day too, and it finally ended successfully for him.
it came up in the kitchen i work at the other day. What do people in Brussels call Brussels sprouts? Are they just sprouts? And obviously it is in, wait, do they speak Belgian? Is that a language? Forgive these tedious questions from an obviously ignorant American. But the people in my co-op kitchen actually want to know...
Brussels Sprouts are called "Choux de Bruxelles," or Brussels cabbages. I don't know what the Flemish speakers call them. The Germans call them "Rosenkohl," or "rose cabbages," and, informally, "Babyköpfe," or baby heads, in slang. I don't even DARE ask from when THAT one comes!
Belgium is about one third French (sorta)-speaking and about two thirds Dutch (sorta)-speaking. There is tiny minority of German speakers in the east of the country. There are also several hundred thousand Moroccans living in Belgium. Some have integrated well, many have not. They are a very stubborn problem, the roots of which stretch back many decades. Unemployment among the youth is high, and it has led to mutual dislike that I will not get into here. Suffice it to say than many Belgians say that violent crimes are often committed by "the Swedes," because it was forbidden to report in the media that the perp was Moroccan. Again, a long story.
In Brussels itself, the French spoken is almost France quality (better, if you listen to people from Marseille or Toulouse). Out in the hinterlands--and Belgium is small, so that can mean 50 or less miles from Brussels--Wallon is spoken. It is a dialect, with many versions, that is not always easy to follow, even if your French is fluent.
Most of Belgium is Flemish ("Vlaams" )-speaking. Flemish is an antiquated version of Dutch. In Brussels, again, it's the accent that needs getting used to. Out in the country (sometimes even 30 km is far enough), there are parts where the dialects of Flemish are so different from town to town that sometimes people from villages 10 km apart speak their school English to each other because their versions of FLemish are just too different to make conversation easy. I can speak standard Dutch, and have gotten used to what passes for "standard" Dutch in Brussels. But when people from out in the country start speaking their dialects to each other, it might as well be Navajo. This happens a lot, and not only in Belgium. I was once sitting next to a pilot from Quebec on a plane from Havana to Montréal. When I heard him speaking French with his fellow travelers. I started speaking French to them. The pilot immediately warned me: "I'll tell you right now that with your Parisian French, we'll understand everything you say, and you will understand NOTHING of what we say." He was close to correct. Out in the boonies of Quebec, they speak a version of French so antiquated that no one on France can follow them any more.
That having been said, an actual Belgian language does not exist. The antiquated Dutch is called Flemish due to it's being spoken in Vlaanderen (Flanders). Anyone from Holland can hear in a second if you come from Belgium. If your French has a heavy Walloon accent, French people will hear that, too.
One thing that IS Belgian, (don't tell Republican members of the House of Representatives, they STILL don't know this yet is what we call "French" Fries. The people of France have been after Americans to stop calling them "French" fries for decades. When France refused to join the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the House Republicans, in an attempt to insult France, stopped calling the Belgian fried potatoes "French Fries," and instead called them "Freedom Fries" on the House canteen menu. To be clear, the Republicans, in a attempt to insult the French, finally agreed to remove one of the biggest insults to France in order to insult the people of France.
though admittedly involved mostly in minutae. That's my forte! I guess i have one other question... because you brought up the "french fry" issue. While i was in Britain, of course it was "chips" and mostly people used mayo or "brown sauce" (never been sure what that is). Here in Massachusetts... it's ketchup mostly, but can otherwise be chipotle ranch, honey mustard, bbq, etc. So the question... what do people in your area dip their fried potatoes in? Do they call them chips too? I promise, this is the last diversion to this thread. But people want to know...
