Leavin' Leuven

The plan for Wednesday was for Beth to go to work for a few hours while Ben and I did some more stuff around town. We would meet up and take our train, which left at 14:00 and arrived at our transfer point where we would have about 5 min to get on our train to Paris. Immediately after arriving in Leuven by train, we changed that plan.

Beth went to work, and Ben and I took our time getting ready and packed and then headed back to the botanical gardens for another hour. He was once again Lightning McQueen and I was Mater. He ran, full speed for him, for almost the whole hour. We found an entirely new section that was enclosed in brick with some really cool plants and trees and fountains. We spent about 15 min there sitting on the benches and playing hide and seek.

By then we were near frozen, so we headed back to the hotel to warm up and have a snack. We checked out at 11 and played trains in the lobby for an hour while we waited for Beth.

At the train station, we confirmed that we could take any train to Brussels and found out which one was headed to Brussels-Midi.

We learned several things on this trip.

The first being, don’t trust that everyone knows what they’re talking about. On the train, we asked the lady next to us when we should look for our stop. She told us that Brussels-Midi was the same as Brussels-Central. Wrong.

We jumped off at central only to see a list of trains headed for Brussels-Midi. Which is odd, I thought. Asking around we found that, sure enough, they are different, it was actually the next stop. So we jumped on the next train and went one more stop.

Lesson number two, in Brussels (maybe other places too), the name of the station is listed in several different languages. Dumb. Luckily we got off, but I looked up to see a sign saying Brussels-alksdjfa (don’t remember) and one on the other side of the tracks saying Brussels-Midi. Where were we!? I felt like tipping over a train.

Uncertainly, we went down the steps only to be greeted by an empty corridor. This did not look familiar. Finally another human showed up and we asked if we were in the right spot. Yes, it turns out. We just had to walk down a few halls and turn left and we arrived in the central part with all the shops and people and warmth.

We were gonna grab lunch, but then decided to try to catch an early train back to Paris if they would let us on. They wouldn’t.

So we had some more subway (sandwiches).

About this time Beth had to use the restroom, but she couldn’t find one. It wasn’t an emergency, so she just ate lunch. And drank an entire Coke Light (which didn’t seem to faze her). I had to go pretty bad after lunch though, so I went to look for a bathroom. I had to walk across the entire station, but I finally found one.

Get this, you had to pay to use it. Not only that, you could only, only have a 50 cent piece. There was a security guard and doors that opened once you put your 50 cent piece in. There were no change machines and a very large sign with every other type of Euro coin pictured, all crossed out except the 50 cent piece.

I briefly entertained the thought of peeing on the sign.

Instead, I held it till I could get on the train and use the free bathroom, though at one point I considered jumping on a random train, using the bathroom, and jumping off before it left…but decided I didn’t have to go bad enough to risk it.

Our train arrived on time; we got our seats, and made it safely home.

If you ever head to Europe, I highly recommend Leuven, Belgium!