After I finally made it to Amsterdam (without my laptop or iPad), I shared a cab to my hotel with some nice strangers from the Bay Area. Funny how I would never get in a car with complete strangers in my own neighborhood, but I’m perfectly willing to hitch a ride with potential serial killers as long as it’s in a foreign country. Strangeness breeds familiarity, right.

Anyway, the nice strangers did not chop me up into edible pieces, and I made it to my hotel safely. While I was registering, the receptionist informed me that I had been selected “Guest of the Day,” which entitled me to anything and everything I wanted from my room’s mini bar. Like someone out of The Gift of the Magi, I could only laugh at my “good fortune” as the last thing I wanted (or needed) four days before the World Championships was a miniature refrigerator full of alcohol (although in hindsight, maybe it would have helped!). When I shared the story of my lucky win with my teammates a few days later, the general question was why I hadn’t just loaded up my suitcase with the loot for after the race. Because I’m not that smart, obviously! Sheesh.

After settling in to my room, and staring forlornly at my “winnings”, I headed out to check out the city. Canals everywhere, I just started walking, looking into little pubs, cafes, and “coffee” shops that smelled strongly of something that wasn’t coffee. Coming from California, though, the smell of pot coming out of innocuous looking places was not a new thing.

But what was a new thing was the Red Light District. Before I knew it, after ambling along with no destination in mind, I found myself in a part of town that seemed a little more…colorful. If it hadn’t been dark, and I hadn’t been alone, I might have taken a little more time to see what the area was all about. But my nerves got the best of me, and in one of the rare moments in my life I used good judgment and hightailed it back to my hotel (really, you know any sleuthing I would have done over there would have ended up with me arrested, drowning in a canal, or sold into some Middle-Aged Housewife Sex Ring, right?).

The next morning, after a couple more hours of sightseeing, I boarded the train for Bergen Op Zoom where the Team was staying. As everyone knows, traveling by rail in Europe is one of the easiest, most efficient ways to get around.

Unless you’re me. And then it would never be that easy, of course.

About an hour into our journey, our train suddenly came to a halt. An announcer came over the loudspeaker and said, “Ob shop din wapple furgen ozcam biten dom. Lep ack din vattum woop di do.” 

Or at least that’s what it sounded like to me, so I did what I always did in these occasions – ignored it. But then everyone started getting off the train. I looked out the window and saw that we were in the a small station in the middle of lots and lots of fields. With lots and lots of cows. And tulips. And ponies.

I guess the man sitting next to me took pity on me because he came back and told me I had to get off the train because, “Someone went in front of it and was hit.”

What?!

“We all have to get off and ….” Here he completely lost me. I was envisioning the mangled body in front of (under?) our train, but everyone else seemed to be taking it in stride.

My new friend saw the look of shock on my face because he said, “Don’t worry. It happens all the time. People are stupid.”

Okay.

Without missing a beat, he went on to give me instructions that basically amounted to “Go back to the last station. Take a shuttle to the bus. Take the bus to the Somethingoranother Line. Get on the train there and transfer over to Rotterdam.”  The only part of those instructions I understood was Rotterdam.

When the nice man saw the panic in my eyes, or more likely surmised that I could not be trusted to get myself to Rotterdam, he suggested that it would be in my best interest to just take a cab straight to Rotterdam. “It will be expensive, but I really think it is your only option, as I believe you will not make it the other way,” he said kindly. Thank goodness for the accurate assessment of strangers.

After helping me find a cab, speaking to the cab driver in Dutch, and coming to a price for the 45 minute cab ride, the nice man bade me farewell. I didn’t know how to thank him adequately for his kindness (and his patience), so I just said, “Thank you, thank you, thank you” so many times he was more than relieved to shove me into the cab and send me on my way.

When I finally arrived at Bergen Op Zoom two hours late, I was so happy to see my teammates/crew/managers, I could have kissed them all. I figured out pretty quickly though that most of them read my blog because no one was the least bit surprised that I was on the train that ran someone over and ended up stranded in the Dutch countryside with 100 pounds of luggage.

In fact, most of them seemed surprised I had made it at all.

Happy Running!

Tagged as: 24 Hour World Championships, Amsterdam, Bergen Op Zoom, US National Team