Anecdote unaccompanied by photos

[petronia]

I visited Amsterdam on the Thursday of the second week. It was a day trip, two hours by train from Antwerp either way. I'd wanted to wake up early but didn't, and was delayed further by half an hour because taking the regular InterCity instead of the Thalys would save me 35 Euros. I also took an anti-nausea pill because I didn't want to be sick on the train. In retrospect that was a mistake, because it knocked me out completely (known side-effect, plus I hadn't gotten enough sleep and trains are soporific in the first place). I couldn't stay awake. Vaguely saw that we had passed by Dordrecht; next time my eyes opened the train was stopped and everyone was getting off, so I groggily got off with them and went to the WC, noting that I was indeed in Holland as peeing now cost 0.50 Euro and you had to drop your coins into something resembling a subway turnstile with sliding plastic doors, instead of handing them to an attendant. All this time I had my mp3 player on. There's something that happens when you're listening to music while falling asleep or fighting to stay awake, where fragments of lyrics to which you may never have consciously paid attention beforehand jump out at you. As I was trudging to the door I heard Neil Tennant say very clearly in my ear,

I wanna get away
Somewhere the train will take me
Cross a foreign plain
To another city
Wish I could be with you
On a European train
A to B and back again
So sheltered from the rain

It was raining when I got outside, from a blue sky, like fountain spray on a sunny day. I stared at the signs and realised I was in Rotterdam, not Amsterdam: I'd gotten off at the halfway point. I went back inside and got on a local train that delayed me another half hour and wended through Gouda-whence-comes-the-cheese, the environs of which are entirely pasture filled with cows and sheep. Justin says this has nothing to do with the land being flat or under/close to sea level, and he's probably right, but the irrigation system is weird. Where I'm used to seeing a dry ditch or fence surrounding each square field there is a moat instead, so you have to cross a little land bridge just to get into the pasture - and the water is almost the same level as the soil, making it look like a path of wet, shiny earth.

Listened to Franz Ferdinand but still couldn't stay awake. Oh, why the hell should I stay awake?

When I got off the IC I also lost my box of these, which cheesed me off considerably because I hadn't taken a photo of them yet. Luckily there is the Internet to prove that I wasn't hallucinating, and that Danone Group x Glico Foods is, in fact, the new cookie OTP. (Ced claims they're available in Canada but I've never seen them.)

Comments

[kuroraka.livejournal.com]

When I got off the IC I also lost my box of these

Ah, Mikado, yummy and pretty addictive!^^

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Yes, they are quite good - it's LU chocolate. ;_;

[astrael-nyx.livejournal.com]

Is Mikado available in Montreal? Or elsewhere in Canada, e.g., Toronto?

(I think I've seen them before in T&T supermarket but I'm not 100% sure...there's just so many "Japanese" snack foods that are sticks of cookie/pretzel/etc. dipped into variations of "chocolate" and [possibly hazardous to your health] Chinese or Taiwanese copycats).

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I'm told it is but I've never seen it before. ^^;