I have a flight from Eindhoven Airport to Milan (Italy) at 2:15pm. Therefore, my original itinerary was to catch a 9:48am or 10:18am train directly to Eindhoven (another city in Holland) from Rotterdam. We should arrive at Eindhoven at about 11:00am or 11:30am, and should have ample time to tour Eindhoven before getting to the airport and flying to Milan. Perfect plan, and flexible enough to cope with any unforseen circumstances... but plans are meant to be wrecked...
It was raining, and we took our own sweet time and managed to catch the 10:48am train. Still lots of time to spare. We sat in a carriage (6 seats, with 3 seats facing each other) with a cute, young, sweet-looking Dutch girl. I was surprised to find out that she's 13 years old, I thought that she was 15 or 16! Halfway through our journey, the train stopped, and there was an announcement in a funny foreign language (Dutch of course), spoken at top speed. And they did not care to translate it. Fortunately, the Dutch girl is also heading for Eindhoven, and told us that we are forced to change trains because of some technical difficulties. Woah... how are we supposed to understand that? So we switched trains, and went on our merry way...
Later during the journey, after another announcement (there are many others...), the Dutch girl said that we are supposed to change trains again. WTF? How can you survive without understanding Dutch here? (>.<) So we followed her out of the train, up some stairs, over to another platform, and waited for another train. And that train finally took us to our destination (>.<).
It was already about 12:40pm by the time we arrived. So no time for any quick tour (T.T). Hopped on a bus to the airport. I loved how they have a TV screen showing updated information about the next stops and the estimated arrival time at those stops. When will RapidKL have cool stuff like these? Well, we arrived at the airport at about 1pm. Yeah... just enough time to check-in. Then I saw an announcement. Guess what? My flight was delayed until 4:30pm (T.T). So after checking-in, we were stuck at the airport for hours, enjoying some overpriced airport food...
And sleeping on the floor...
And we finally managed to board the aircraft at about 4:40pm. The excuse for the delay? A baggage car has knocked into one of the wings of the aircraft a little too hard, and technical maintenance had to be carried out resulting in the delay. I'm speechless.
Anyhow... we finally arrived in Milan Bergamo airport after 6pm. Since Milan Bergamo airport is quite far away from Milan, we need to take a 1 hour bus ride to Milan. So we took the bus. My first impression of Italy whilst looking out from the bus window is... it looks similar to Malaysia. The grass is of a darker shade, the trees are more of a "tropical" colour, the sun is bright. Of course, it started to look more different when we approached the city, where buildings are of slightly different architecture.
After arriving in Milan, you would think that everything will go right? Oh yes, really right. Buses are arriving later than usual according to my friend's friend in Milan, and there are no signs of underground trains anywhere. Apparently, the Italian workers were on a strike that day (>.<)
Well... what a day... a whole day gone just like that... what a waste (T.T)