Planes, Trains, and... Charleroi

So today felt unbelievably eventful... Although now that I think about it I really didn't DO much of anything.  I started the day in Amsterdam, and left a little later than planned... (surprise surprise...) So I missed the train I was planning on taking, and had to grab one an hour later.  Other than that it all went smoothly.  The train conductor kind of took pity on me I think, and actually wrote out directions for getting to the bus station from Brussels to Charleroi airport (yet another itty bitty Ryanair airport to find..)

I wandered around Brussels for a few hours, although I found there wasn't too much to see, although I'd love to explore more of Belgium someday.

My biggest problem, right off the bat, was the language. I took like 5 years of french in high school, so you'd think I would be able to communicate, right? Wrong. German has entirely taken over my brain. And because German was much more helpful to me than English in the Dutch speaking countries, I just felt all sorts of language confused!! It took about 15 minutes of hard thinking for me to stop thinking"Sprechen Sie Englisch?"and switch to "Parlais-vous Anglais?" I almost jumped for joy when I remembered that simple phrase.. Uh oh. 

Eventually I stopped and had some delicious hot chocolate ice cream thing... And a waffle of course, before I headed out to the bus station.  The first bus was jam packed full, so i kinda held back to see if another one would come. As I waited, more people started to show up for the bus. A bunch of taxi drivers started coming up to folks saying "sorry, no bus today, it is broken. Only taxi" and I thought... Well that's strange, I just saw the bus not ten minutes ago! Me being blonde, it took a minute for me to get what was going on and to start warning folks that it was a scam.  Sure enough, when the bus came those guys were no where to be seen!

Eventually I made it out to the airport. Now... This is the part where those of you who are a little nervous about my traveling style might want to stop reading.  See my flight wasn't until early the next morning, so I decided to sleep in the airport rather than book a hostel or hotel in Brussels and get up SUPER early the next morning.  So I got myself comfortable and scoped out the best place for sleeping... Then got reeeeaaal bored. I think I sat in one spot for like 5 hours... Oy. I read, and talked to folks, and people watched. But it was dull.  I did however meet one girl about my age from Lithuania who was also sleeping in the airport. So we found a nice corner together and set up camp for the night... But seriously, no worries!! This is a totally legitimate thing to do... There's a website and everything! 

Beds are overrated.  There's nothing like good ol' concrete and artificial lighting to give you some beauty sleep... I'm sure it'll be an interesting night!