First Rain, The Comes The Sun

Finally home! Civilization! ... Okay, this is going to be one of those days you look back upon and laugh. Even this moment, it's a little funny.

Today, I was visiting a very good friend of mine in his summerhouse, to celebrate his 20th birthday, along with his best friend, his mom and her boyfriend. The house was out in the middle of nowhere, and I've never been there before. I was going by train, and I'm no good with making sense of the local railroads' charts. They. Make. No. Sense.

I do my homework, though, trying to plan out the shift between the city-train to the local one, cause the local one only goes once every hour. First train takes 40 minutes, which is decent, considering it brings me a little more then halfway there. Awesome, so far so good. Then comes the figuring out which platform the correct local train leaves from. I ask a nice stewardess, and she points out the correct one.

Once there, I look up at the "next train will leave at" board. (I had planned it so I would be there 15 minutes before the train would leave.) It says 45 minutes.
... Somehow, my planning went wrong at some point or another, cause instead of leaving at half past 2, it leaves at 3. And I'm supposed to be at the other end of the damn line at 3. Great.

45 minutes of waiting (and reading, thank god I never leave the house without a book!) the train finally arrives. And then comes my first shock. You have to press stop if you're getting off the train at the next 6 or so stations! ... Say what? That's what you do on busses, not trains?! But okay, these country people have their little oddities, I can live with that. We start driving, and the only thing I see for the first I don't know how many miles, is forest. Forest is soon replaced by fields.

Now, I'm a city girl. Fields as far as I can see makes me feel very unsafe. The air was clean, and no building was more then 2 stories high. By the second stop, which, btw, translates to Cakeville, I was slowly panicking. It was about 100 feet of pavement, a barn and a stack of chopped wood. Oh. My. God. Where the fuck am I?!

I calm myself down, remind myself this trainride is supposed to take 30 minutes, I'll hit some kind of civilization then. It's okay.

Then we stop again. And there's a steam engine lokomotive outside my window. Behind that, I see a tractor, another barn, and a lot of forest. Next stop, more chopped wood and a building that looks like an old, run down church. Only 10 minutes left, calm down, you're not lost.

A lot more forest, and another couple of fields. A cow or two. The brakes on the very modern-looking train sounds like an elephant. My cellphone is for almost 10 full minutes beyond signal. A few haystacks later, I finally start seeing roads. Actual houses in stead of distant farms. I even see a gasstation. A CITY!

I was scared shitless I was going to be dropped off at an unknown endstation, no signal on my phone, forest in every direction. I would have just sat down and cried. Seriously.

I make it to the busstop after I get off the train, and only just have time to see it'll be almost 2 HOURS till the next bus. ......... I'm very privileged, living in the heart of the capital city. If you can look out on the street more then 10 minutes and not see a bus driving by, something is wrong. My friend, however calls me, and says his mom's bf will pick me up, cause they know the bus just left. YAY!

15 minutes later, I FINALLY get there. I left my house at 1, I was there about 3:30. I don't know if I'll EVER make the trip again, without a trustworthy timeplan for trains. Now, at least, I'm not scared of going through Cakeville.

The day passed pretty quickly. After eating cake and having cocoa, playing frisbee (Which I absolutely suck at, I threw it into a tree 4 times, and even managed to land it on the roof one time), and going through the whole gift ritual, we hung out in my friend's own house there. Which was pretty nice, actually, I get why he likes being there. Smells a bit too much of wood, and I don't think I'd get much sleep without the sound of cars on the street, but very nice none the less.

We had dinner, barbequeing and everything, and I actually really enjoyed talking to his mom. Amazingly entertaining woman. It seemed like she enjoyed finally really meeting me in more than passing, too :)

After dinner, we agreed on a going home time, since neither me or his friend (let's just call him B) was staying overnight. The trip home was both quicker and more pleasant, both because I wasn't alone all the way, and because B is really funny and easy to talk to. Those two guys really are alike XD

I nearly kissed the city train when we reached it. Something familiar and wellknown! And I know where it goes and what landscape it goes through! Safety!
I enjoyed the company, I gotta say that. I haven't met B that many times before, but I've always had a positive impression of him, and that was only confirmed tonight.

All in all, horrible trip there, great day once away from trains, and only good things to say from then to now.

Okay, I might make the trip again some other time :) Now I know how to get there ^.^