Introduction

Okay, so during this summer I started noticing my iPad crashing more and more during apps which were running into the, quite frankly, pathetic 256MB RAM limit, so I decided it was replacement time. Since I am not a patient person, I figured I'd not wait for the MS surface and buy a Nexus 7 in one of the European countries it was already being sold (Belgium was not one of them).
A quick look at train schedules showed me France was the easiest (going to Holland would mean taking the unreliable Benelux and Germany meant ICE or Thalys which was too expensive on short notice). The reason I went with Lille is because I know it quite well and is also relatively close to where I live (about 60km away), which meant it could easily be done in a day trip.

Going to Lille

As usual, I was leaving from the construction site (Gent-Sint-Pieters) however this time I left at a sensible hour instead of dark o'hundred like I usually do.


above: construction

Since I was at the station a bit early, I popped down to the station Starbucks and had breakfast (2 croissants and a frappuchino). After breakfast I went to the platform again to wait for my train, where there was a *ahum* pleasant surprise:


above: delayed train

At this point, I started to worry since I had a fairly tight connection in Kortrijk and missing my connection meant 1h of waiting in what is not an interesting town at all. After what was more like 15mins, the train finally pulled into the station. Unlike last time however, it was a fairly modern and comfortable train.


above: inside the train


above: the outskirts of Gent

Clearly the train driver knew he was running late as he really put the hammer down, however it wasn't enough to prevent me (and quite a lot of other people) to miss my connection to Lille. Now, I should explain at this point that up to about a year ago, the hourly IC Antwerp-Gent-Kortrijk continued onwards to Lille, however for one reason or another (likely political or financial) the train now terminates at Kortrijk and requires a transfer to the train to Lille which I had just missed. Lots of swearing and arm-waving occured on the platform, as people started to try figuring what to do during that hour.
Kortrijk has an 8-platform station (ie: quite big), however all it has is a couple of vending machines, no shops or anything. So I sat down in the morning sun and fired up the NMBS app to look for alternatives. Which there weren't. So I just basically waited an hour on the platform while browsing the web a bit and tweeting about how the NMBS messed up again.
When the train from Lille arrived, it just sort of sat there doing nothing for the better part of 30mins, then people were allowed to get on board.
Departure time came, nothing happened. It turned out we were waiting for the next IC from Gent to arrive so passengers could make their connection. This really pissed me off as the previous one had left me stranded for an hour. But anyway, I was finally on my way to Lille and arrived at Lille-Flandres about half an hour later.

More soon