This is part of a series from our recent travel to Europe in June/July 2026.
Every trip needs at least one day like this. We just didn’t expect to get all our hiccups in one sitting.
We were up early in Hameln, bags packed, saying our goodbyes to a town that had been unexpectedly good to us. The plan was simple, on paper: three trains, a few hours, Brussels by early afternoon, dinner with Simon that evening. German trains have a reputation, and after our cancelled ICE out of Berlin a few days earlier, I wasn’t taking anything for granted, but the itinerary looked clean, the connections looked reasonable, and we had coffee. What could go wrong.
The first train, Hameln to Löhne, left around 9:40, a couple of minutes late, and nobody so much as blinked. This is the version of German rail that gets talked about: quiet, punctual, boring in the best way. We made it, but we should have known better than to get comfortable.
Second train, Löhne to Düsseldorf, also started a little late, but nothing dramatic. We had a connection to make in Düsseldorf and the math still worked, barely. We watched the minutes the way you watch a pot you’re pretty sure isn’t going to boil in time.
It didn’t boil in time. Two stops short of Düsseldorf, our train stopped at Dortmund, and through the window, right there on the opposite platform, our connecting train pulled away without us. Not “we heard it left.” We watched it go. There’s a very specific kind of helplessness in seeing the thing you needed disappear at a safe, unhurried fifteen miles an hour, close enough to wave at.
That was the moment the day quietly changed shape. What had been “three trains, done by early afternoon” became a live negotiation with the German and Dutch rail networks, conducted almost entirely through vending-machine screens and other people’s confused expressions.
We pieced together a new route, one train at a time, and it delivered us, reasonably proud of ourselves honestly, to Utrecht Centraal, in the Netherlands, which is not a country either of us had planned on visiting today. It was here that we discovered our onward “train” was in fact a Eurostar, the kind that wants a reservation and a specific ticket, neither of which we had. Our regular rail pass was not going to talk its way onto that platform. Back to the screens.
From Utrecht we caught a train to Rotterdam, which felt like progress, mostly because Rotterdam is closer to Belgium than the Netherlands’ interior generally is. That optimism lasted about as long as it took to read the departures board: no trains running south toward Brussels. Somewhere down the line, a fire. Not a delay, not a signal fault. An actual fire, closing the route entirely. At this point neither of us laughed so much as made the specific exhale you make when the universe is clearly enjoying itself at your expense.
We did what I imagine most reasonable, slightly desperate people would do: we called an Uber. Not to Brussels, that would have been a small fortune and a large risk, but to Breda, a Dutch town close enough to the border that we hoped, hoped, it still had a working train line south.
It did. We got to Breda station around 7:18 in the evening, bought tickets, and by 7:43 we were on a train that was, at long last, actually heading toward Belgium. There was one last small indignity at the gate: our tickets wouldn’t open it, for reasons neither of us could explain and the attendant didn’t seem inclined to investigate. He just waved us through. I have a suspicion he’d filed us mentally under “confused Americans, harmless” and decided it wasn’t worth the paperwork. Whatever the reason, I’ll take it. Sometimes the kindness of strangers looks exactly like someone deciding you’re not worth the hassle.
We rolled into Brussels-Zuid at 9:22 that night. Twelve and a half hours after leaving Hameln, for a trip that should have taken maybe five. I actually said “finally” out loud, to no one, on an empty platform, which is not something I do.
From there it was a walk to the apartment, an Airbnb up three flights of stairs that had strong opinions about structural confidence, in a building with, once again, no air conditioning. We’re noticing a pattern with European summer rentals that I won’t pretend to have solved. Simon was waiting for us, which made the stairs worth it. We dropped our bags, caught our breath, and headed out for dinner at Pizzeria Posto Al Sole, Simon’s choice, and a good one, the kind of simple, unfussy meal that tastes better than it has any right to when you’ve spent the day being rerouted through three countries.
We wandered back to the apartment afterward, said goodnight to Simon, and that was that. No profound lesson at the end of this one, no neat bow, just relief, a decent pizza, and the small satisfaction of having made it somewhere you weren’t sure, around hour six, you were going to make it to at all. Most days on this trip have gone smoothly. This was not most days. But we got a story out of it, and honestly, those are usually the ones worth telling.
