When Supreme Crow and I went on Holiday to Belgium last year. A Pearoast from /ot.
It was a fucking BEAST of a Journey. Crow felt at the time the words epic and surreal were appropriate for the circumstances.
Initially it was "Hey, lets catch the eurostar".
*Poppet gets a text from Noel about the 5 hour waiting time for eurostar*
"Fuck that, lets get a coach"
*Poppet and Crow try for at least half an hour to organise a coach only to be told all are full.*
"Bugger. Erm, we could try the ferry?"
"haha, Ferry funny, but okay."
*crow makes some important phone calls and we have a way to, wait for it, CALAIS!*

So we catch the Javelin train from Kings Cross to Dover. Carlos, who is apparently an old hand from Dover, and the old massive man snoring in front of us, give us very specific directions and helpful hints about where to stay if we're stranded, then we race to the port in a taxi only to find massive fuck off queues and that we're not getting on the one we're booked for. But we'll get on the next one definitely.

We waited for about an hour, which is really quite good all things considering, and the police take care of a very angry romanian man who was shouty and cranky and unintelligible, in a way that's actually very nice of them, considering they would be well within their rights to arrest him for basically attacking them which was a bit frightening.
We get on the boat.


We sit on the boat for an hour.

THEN the boat leaves. HOORAY!

We get to Calais. It's dark. And cold.
Fuck. What now?

WAHEY! it's a BUS! To Bruxelles. But it's shut. And dark. But the engines running?
And then a veery nice Israeli man tells us that the man on the bus is supposed to be taking illegal aliens from France back to Belgium if they arrive, but if they *don't* then we can hitch a ride. Crow remarks that we may as well be illegal aliens and would we please be able to tag along with them?
So we wait another hour in the freezing cold weather, being entertained by a very anti-fluoride conspiracy theorist.

The bus driver, at midnight local time, decides that he can take us to Bruxelles Aeroport for 15 Euros each. BARGAIN. So on we hop.
And we drive. Half fall asleep, get to the airport, find no trains are running to Midi for 2 hours, so we kill time by stuffing our faces, looking confused, and trying to get tickets.
We catch the first train, flag a taxi and arrive at our destination after our very french driver works out the Flemmish names for streets.
AND WE FINALLY GET THERE!

at 6 in the morning. And the hostel is not open.
So we make a snowman to pass the time,with dead leaves for hair and sticks for arms, and are finally let in only to be told to dump our bags and come back at 2PM even though we REALLY NEED TO SLEEP.
But we smile and go on our merry way anyway because what else can we do?
So we went to the Atomium, and the comic museum, and went shopping. Sort of. And then we made our slow, limping way back to the hostel, whereupon we discovereed they did not have a communal kitchen. So we had a nap and before going out to get some food before we ate the small children visiting the hostel.

Finally sleeping in those beds was like lying down on the most comfortable, luxurious beds anyone has ever built in the history of the world. At least, it was for me. I think Supreme Crow had to put up with my snoring.

Quite honestly an ace journey. One of the more surreal ones from my time in Europe.
(Poppet some assembly required., Sun 17 Jul 2011, 6:27, 3 replies)

Let me get this straight...
You had some food, and were still hungry, so you ate some small children as well?
(Not him., Sun 17 Jul 2011, 18:22, closed)

oh god, what a typo to make.
No. We were absolutely famished after around 12+ hours of travelling and little sleep, and we thought we'd cook some stuff up at the hostel only to find no kitchen to cook it with. We were tempted to eat the screechy children instead. But we didn't.
(Poppet some assembly required., Sun 17 Jul 2011, 23:23, closed)

There's an important word missing from the start.
SNOW.
( Noeli overtheshoulderboulderholderthingstraplatchboobs, Tue 19 Jul 2011, 5:42, closed)