Dear readers. Today I've had an encounter with one of the most ridiculous dutch phenomena: railway vandalism. I was traveling from Zwolle to Amersfoort by train. That's a 45 minute journey so I had taken out my new favourite book (a Game of Thrones, by George Martin) and read for the major part of the journey. Suddenly it felt as if something large and heavy was shoved underneath my compartment. I heard a loud bang and almost instantly the engineer performed an emergency stop. I heard the brakes on my compartment rattle, which isn't the sound they are supposed to make, and when the train came to a stop it felt as if the compartment was lifted from the track. After a few seconds a railway employee came in and told us to leave our seats and follow him into the next compartment. After a few minutes the engineer informed us that we had supposedly hit a concrete block and that the train was too badly damaged to continue with the journey (the train was bound for Rotterdam) . The good thing was that we were only a few hundred metres away from the station and the engineer was able to take us there on a slow pace. After I got off the train I was able to take a look at the damage. Five out of eight compartments were severely damaged: the air pressure tanks were leaking, some windows were broken and we lost part of a wheel. I took a bus to Hilversum and decided that only very disturbed people would ever even think of putting a large object on the track. I came up with some alternatives for those who feel the need to do such a thing:
1) get a job
2) get a life
3) start a toy- train collection
4)blow up things in your backyard (no living objects!)
5)if you still feel the need to put concrete blocks somewhere: become a contracter and do something useful for a change
Friday, March 31, 2006
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