050/012.1
Netherlands - Belgium
Return Ticket Roosendaal border - Irún
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Border Crossing No.
050/012.1 |
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| Date and time: | Tuesday 17 April 1973, c12.50 |
| Crossing point: | Roosendaal - Essen |
| Passport check at: | No check |
| Travelling: | from Amsterdam to Barcelona |
| Vehicle: | Train (Amsterdam - Paris 10.58-17.02) |
| Ticket: |
Single Ticket Roosendaal - Roosendaal border
Return Ticket Roosendaal border - Irún |
| In the company of: | Alone |
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I had a girlfriend. I wanted to break with her, but every time I tried she started to cry heartrendingly and talked about jumping under a train. I gave in to save her life, as I thought, but after she started to put pressure on me to become engaged I feared my own life was in danger. The only way to break with her seemed to do it from as far as possible, so I found refuge in the cowardly way of sending her my opinion in a letter and leave the country. Monday 16 April I mailed the letter and went to the Students Travel Agency to buy a ticket to Barcelona, from where I wanted to take a boat to Ibiza. The travel agent told me however that the special deal for students to Barcelona was valid only once a week. I could not pay the normal fare. I absolutely wanted to leave, so in the end I bought a ticket that I could use the next morning: a student's return from the border with Belgium to Irun, the first town in Spain, 686 kilometers by train, west from Barcelona on the Atlantic coast. From there I could take any train, which should not be too expensive. Next morning at about 9.30 I left the students dormitories south of Amsterdam, bought a ticket to the frontier station of Roosendaal and boarded at the station the train to Paris, where my night train to Irun would start. I do not remember to have talked with anybody, except with the Belgian conductor, who at the moment that we were crossing the border told me my ticket was not covering the 6 last Dutch kilometers and demanded additional payment. I looked at my watch and asked myself if my former girlfriend was already reading my letter. |
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Border Crossing No.
051/012.2 |
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| Date and time: | Tuesday 17 April 1973, c15.00 |
| Crossing point: | Mons - Aulnoye |
| Passport check at: | In train between Brussels and Paris |
| Travelling: | from Amsterdam to Barcelona |
| Vehicle: | Train (Amsterdam - Paris 10.58-17.02) |
| Ticket: | Return Ticket Roosendaal border - Irún |
| In the company of: | Alone |
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story to be written |
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Border Crossing No.
052/012.3 |
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| Date and time: | Wednesday 18 April 1973, c7.45 |
| Crossing point: | Hendaye - Irún |
| Passport check at: | Irún railway station |
| Travelling: | from Amsterdam to Barcelona |
| Vehicle: | Train (Paris - Irún 22.50-7.51) |
| Ticket: | Return Ticket Roosendaal border - Irún |
| In the company of: | Alone |
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After arrival in Irun in the morning passengers had to wait for the customs control. A man from my compartment made a polaroid of me waiting and gave it to me. Only at 19.40 there would be a connection to Barcelona, so I walked all over quiet Irun, looked at elderly men playing "jeu de boules" and climbing the first mountain of the Pyrenees. The thoughts about my former girlfriend were not bothering me too much. Waiting at the station in the evening a nun spoke to me and invited me to stay at her place in France. She said she arrived in Spain for the first time in her life on her way to a meeting of her order. |
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Border Crossing No.
053/012.4 |
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| Date and time: | Sunday 22 April 1973, c20.20 |
| Crossing point: | Irún - Hendaye |
| Passport check at: | Hendaye railway station |
| Travelling: | from Barcelona to Amsterdam |
| Vehicle: | Train (Zaragoza - Hendaye 15.05-20.30) |
| Ticket: | Return Ticket Roosendaal border - Irún |
| In the company of: | Alone |
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After arrival in Barcelona on thursday I bought a ticket to Ibiza, but I could only leave next evening if a paid for an expensive cabin. I spent the night in the same tourist resort where I had stayed two years before and the day after I walked all over Barcelona. A young woman from Paris asked me the way to the shipping company. I explained her how to go there and added that I was also on my way to Ibiza. I met her again in the harbour, where she had managed to get a much cheaper ticket than me. On the ship I found her on her chair and we talked a lot. She was 25 years, had an exciting wide nose like a cat and was married to a psychiatrist. She said psychoanalysis was very much in fashion. I slept in my cabin, she on her chair. Next morning we went to look for a hotel room, but I wanted to be sure that I would be able to leave the island within a week. However no ship or even airplane had a place, because of the eastern holidays. Only if I left with the same boat I came I would be in time back in Holland, where I had to move from one room to another. "You are crazy!" she repeated, stunned by my decision to leave. I spent a sad day on an empty boat, a whole night waiting outside in Barcelona and another day in full trains back to Irun. On the last part of my way over the French border a woman pointed outside at the imposing mountains and said to her children "Nuestras Monta¤as (our mountains)!" I felt very jealous. My mark of recognition for reaching The Hague had been since early childhood the huge lighted billboard of the Nutricia factory, which exports baby milk all over the world. |
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Border Crossing No.
054/012.5 |
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| Date and time: | Monday 23 April 1973, c12.20 |
| Crossing point: | Aulnoye - Mons |
| Passport check at: | in train between Paris and Brussels |
| Travelling: | from Barcelona to Amsterdam |
| Vehicle: | Train (Paris - Brussel 10.23-13.14) |
| Ticket: | Return Ticket Roosendaal border - Irún |
| In the company of: | Alone |
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In Paris I went to the train to Amsterdam for the last part of my crazy and sad trip to Ibiza and back. Two years earlier I had found many empty cars, but this time I had to wait in a huge pushing mass before people were allowed to board the train. After I had managed to fight myself in, it appeared that all seats, from the first to the last car, were reserved. It was even difficult to find a place in the corridor, but, with a few dozen other placeless passengers, I sat down in the corridor of a first class car which went only to Brussels. The train guard told us to move to a second class corridor, but it was impossible to press more people together there. I left in Brussel and took empty local trains home. |
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Border Crossing No.
055/012.6 |
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| Date and time: | Monday 23 April 1973, c16.15 |
| Crossing point: | Essen - Roosendaal |
| Passport check at: | No check |
| Travelling: | from Barcelona to Amsterdam |
| Vehicle: | Train (Antwerpen - Amsterdam 15.52-18.06) |
| Ticket: |
Return Ticket Roosendaal border - Irún
Single Ticket Roosendaal border - Amsterdam |
| In the company of: | Alone |
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story to be written |
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Border Crossing No.
056/013.01 |
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| Date and time: | Wednesday 15 August 1973, c14.00 |
| Crossing point: | Maastricht - Visé |
| Passport check at: | No check |
| Travelling: | from Amsterdam to Bitola |
| Vehicle: | Train (Amsterdam - Milano 11.09-5.45) |
| Ticket: | Return Ticket Amsterdam - Trieste |
| In the company of: | Alone |
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Between october 1971 and march 1972 I had travelled between the Hague and Amsterdam. Once a week I used to take a comfortable Italian train at c11.10 from Amsterdam Central Station to Genova. It was always empty. After an international train ride of 10 minutes I left the train at Amsterdam Amstel station, where I took a bus to the university. Two times I had taken that train to Liège, just over the border. Now I was really going to take that train all the way to Italy, crossing five borders. I felt very excited. My car, however, appeared to be a very outdated one without the possibility to change the seats into beds and in my compartment the seven other seats were already filled with American female tourists. In the other car, a new one with changeable seats in compartments for only six persons, I found plenty of place. The chance of sleep seemed more important to me than the seven American girls, so I left them alone. After the border, in Liège, the train filled up totally and many cars were added. I looked at the purple flowers along the railroad, the concrete fences at the stations and the castles and the plantations of christmas-trees on the hills of the Ardennes. |
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Border Crossing No.
057/013.02 |
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| Date and time: | Wednesday 15 August 1973, c16.30 |
| Crossing point: | Gouvy - Troisvierges |
| Passport check at: | No check |
| Travelling: | from Amsterdam to Bitola |
| Vehicle: | Train (Amsterdam - Milano 11.06-5.45) |
| Ticket: | Return Ticket Amsterdam - Trieste |
| In the company of: | Alone |
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story to be written |
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Border Crossing No.
058/013.03 |
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| Date and time: | Wednesday 15 August 1973, c18.30 |
| Crossing point: | Luxembourg - Thionville |
| Passport check at: | in train between Luxembourg and Thionville |
| Travelling: | from Amsterdam to Bitola |
| Vehicle: | Train (Amsterdam - Milano 11.06-5.45) |
| Ticket: | Return Ticket Amsterdam - Trieste |
| In the company of: | Alone |
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In Luxembourg many people had left the train, including the seven American girls I had found in my compartment in Amsterdam. At the French border station of Thionville I heard the loud ding-dong bells, followed by announcements about the trains, as I would hear them at all the other French stations. The station of Metz had an impressing 19th century vaulted roofing of cast iron and glass. I stepped out of the train for a few minutes to look up and to feel French soil under my feet. |
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Border Crossing No.
059/013.04 |
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| Date and time: | Wednesday 15 August 1973, c22.00 |
| Crossing point: | Mulhouse - Basel |
| Passport check at: | in train around Basel |
| Travelling: | from Amsterdam to Bitola |
| Vehicle: | Train (Amsterdam - Milano 11.06-5.45) |
| Ticket: | Return Ticket Amsterdam - Trieste |
| In the company of: | Alone |
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After the Swiss border it was dark. Three or four other passengers were left in my compartment, all men. Nobody knew each other, nobody talked, all spent the night sitting because we were too many for changing the six seats into three beds. I could not sleep. I heard no loudspeakers in Switzerland, but the frequent ringing high pitch bells of the level crossings, coming closer, then lowering pitch and disappearing again, made a decisive impression on me. If it would not have been dark, the perception of their music might have been oppressed by the impressive Swiss mountain landscape. |
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Border Crossing No.
060/013.05 |
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| Date and time: | Thursday 16 August 1973, c5.00 |
| Crossing point: | Chiasso - Como |
| Passport check at: | in train around Chiasso |
| Travelling: | from Amsterdam to Bitola |
| Vehicle: | Train (Amsterdam - Milano 11.06-5.45) |
| Ticket: | Return Ticket Amsterdam - Trieste |
| In the company of: | Alone |
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At about five in the morning the train entered Italy. I have no memory of this crossing, nor from the arrival in Milano, less than an hour later. Vaguely I remember looking for the train to Venice, which left Milano at six a.m. As one of the first passengers I entered that train, chose a compartment, closed all curtains and laid down in order to catch some sleep. Clearly I remember looking at the projections of the outside world, cast through the narrow openings between the curtains into the compartment. When I went to the toilet I noticed that the train had filled up and people were standing in the corridor, but nobody entered my dark compartment and I spent the rest of the ride to Venice laying down, now and then sleeping, now and then looking at the projections or at their original, the world behind the curtains. |
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Border Crossing No.
061/013.06 |
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| Date and time: | Thursday 16 August 1973, c14.00 |
| Crossing point: | Trieste - Sezana |
| Passport check at: | ... |
| Travelling: | from Amsterdam to Bitola |
| Vehicle: | Hitch-hiking (Trieste - Ljubljana) |
| Ticket: | - |
| In the company of: | Alone |
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Shortly after noon, 25 hours after departure, I arrived in the border town of Trieste, Austrian until World War I and thereafter Italian, except for a short period after World War II, in which it was governed by the United Nations in order to settle a conflict between Italy and Yugoslavia. My ticket ended there. Buying a ticket for further traveling into Yugoslavia would cost me at least three times more in Italy than just over the border, so I looked for a place to hitch-hike. I walked through town and followed signs to Yugoslavia, carrying all my luggage up the road until a car stopped and took me over the border to the Yugoslav border town of Sezana. A second car took me to Postojna and a truck brought me into the Slovenian capital Ljubljana. At the station I bought a ticket to Bitola, 1275 kilometers to the very south of Yugoslavia. I had learned its name from a song on one of my father's records, "Bitola moj roden kraj" (Bitola, my native place). The station had no platforms. I heard fascinating monotonous female voices through the loudspeakers in a language totally strange to me. Soldiers on their way home surrounded me and asked me where I came from and where I was going. "Bitola" I answered. "Bitola, moj roden kraj", they sang. Shortly after midnight I entered the overcrowded Orient Express to Skopje. I spent some time laying in the corridor, next to elderly women in colorful native dresses. After Zagreb an old man invited me into his compartment. With a Greek woman and her grown up daughter, an old Yugoslav woman and a young Yugoslav man we were six in one wide bed. My nose touched a pair of feet in nylon socks, apparently the only pair of the owner. |
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Border Crossing No.
062/013.07 |
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| Date and time: | Thursday 23 August 1973, c16.40 |
| Crossing point: | Kremenica - Messonission |
| Passport check at: | ... |
| Travelling: | from Ohrid to Thessaloniki |
| Vehicle: | Train (Kremenica - Messonission 16.22-17.00) |
| Ticket: | Single Ticket Kremenica - Messonission |
| In the company of: | Alone |
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In Bitola I found out that I could cross the Greek border by train. I bought a ticket to the border and waited. A slow train with two small cars brought me to the Yugoslav border station. After half an hour waiting an outdated Greek train took me over the border. It consisted of a steam locomotive, a few freight cars and one passenger car, which before the war might have served in an Orient Express. The interior was made of wood. The border police of both Yugoslavia and Greece were friendly. In Messonission, the Greek border station, I bought a ticket to Thessaloniki. While waiting the railway employees and the border policemen tried to pronounce the names of famous Dutch football players. The passengers of the train to Thessaloniki seemed much more western to me than those I had seen in Yugoslavia. An old man told me in the little French he knew that I looked like a woman, but he could not say that it was because of my hair. I talked with two American girls. One of them accompanied everything she said with strong movements of the muscles of her face, lifting her eyebrows, pressing her lips together or rolling with her eyes. Her grandparents were Greek. The other had a much more silent face expression. She emigrated as a little girl from Greece to the United States. I wondered how they experienced Greece, where dictator Papadopoulos was still in power. |
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Border Crossing No.
063/013.08 |
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| Date and time: | Friday 24 August 1973, c5.30 |
| Crossing point: | Idomeni - Gevgelija |
| Passport check at: | ... |
| Travelling: | from Thessaloniki to Usce |
| Vehicle: | Train (Thessaloniki - Skopje 3.20-7.42) |
| Ticket: | Single Ticket Thessaloniki - Skopje |
| In the company of: | Alone |
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Late at night I arrived in Thessaloniki. I wanted to go to Istanbul and next morning there would be a train. I tried to sleep at the station, like some hundred other people, but the heat and humidity were unbearable. To make matters worse I suffered from a terrible diarrhea. Instead of waiting for the East I took the first train away from Thessaloniki, back to Yugoslavia. It was packed and I could only find a place on the floor of the corridor, next to the toilet. Two hours later we arrived at the Yugoslav border station of Gevgelija, where the train was standing one hour for border control. I took a walk along the platform and noticed that I was not the only one with stomach problems: under every toilet there was a big heap of dung and paper. |
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Border Crossing No.
064/013.09 |
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| Date and time: | Tuesday 11 September 1973, c10.20 |
| Crossing point: | Gevgelija - Idomeni |
| Passport check at: | ... |
| Travelling: | from Mostar to Istanbul |
| Vehicle: | Train (Gevgelija - Thessaloniki 10.00-13.42) |
| Ticket: | Without ticket |
| In the company of: | Alone |
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In the waiting room of Gevgelija, the Yugoslav border station, I met three French travellers. The Greeks had told them that they had to be vaccinated against cholera, because they had been in Italy, where there was an epidemy. They had waited five days and now they were allowed entry. I had also travelled through Italy, but the Greek border police in the train at the Greek border station, where the train waited for almost two hours, did not send me back. One of the French was also on his way to Istanbul and we decided to travel together. |
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Border Crossing No.
065/013.10 |
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| Date and time: | Wednesday 12 September 1973, afternoon |
| Crossing point: | Kastanéai - Edirne |
| Passport check at: | ... |
| Travelling: | from Mostar to Istanbul |
| Vehicle: | Foot (Kastanéai - Edirne borderpoint) |
| Ticket: | - |
| In the company of: | Alone |
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We waited for a night train to the Turkish border. We sat at a terrace outside the station. At once Pierre said "Hallo!" to a boy passing by. He was a Turk whom he had met in Skopje shortly before. His bag was stolen and therefore had to return to Turkey. He joined us in the train. They sat opposite me. Next to me sat a small senile grandmother with her daughter and granddaughter. During the ride the grandmother was dozing and every time she fell asleep she fell with her head on my shoulder. The granddaughter, about 20 years, looked, waited for it, and giggled every time. We left the train next morning at the desolated border station. A railway worker told us that there would be no train to Turkey. We had to go 35 km to the north to cross the border. We walked, took busses and walked again. The Greek customs were looking football, stamped our passports, but did not answer our questions. We walked further, saw a sign "Turkey" and followed it into a dirt road. The sign apparently had been turned. We walked back to the main road, crossed a bridge and landed into a mass of waiting people under the signs "welcome" at the Turkish checkpoint. They said that they were already waiting for days. We, however, got a stamp and could enter. Our Turkish friend found a cab to the bus station in Edirne. After arrival doors on both sides were opened by bus drivers who wanted us to take their bus to Istanbul. |
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Border Crossing No.
066/013.11 |
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| Date and time: | Sunday 16 September 1973, late afternoon |
| Crossing point: | Ipsala |
| Passport check at: | ... |
| Travelling: | from Istanbul to Amsterdam |
| Vehicle: | Foot (Ipsala border - Férrai border) |
| Ticket: | - |
| In the company of: | Alone |
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In the bus from Istanbul to the Greek border I talked with a young tourist from Poland. We had no common language, but we managed to find some common words in German, Serbocroatic, Polish and Russian. In fact it was a very pleasant talk. He said he was a worker, if I remember well in Gdansk, and he had travelled on his own via the Soviet Union, Romania, and Bulgaria to Turkey. I wondered how he had managed to pass the iron curtain. In my phantasy he is an important Polish diplomat now. The Syrian spoke seven languages, but he did not say more than that he was a professor in Yugoslavia, where he was now heading. He bribed the bus driver to bring us all the way to the Turkish checkpoint. We passed the Turkish border without problems, but at the Greeks we were stopped, like some hundred of other people. Looking at our passports the servant of dictator Papadopoulos barked "Holland wait! Syria come back! Poland come back!" Only after repeated barking we understood that he did not mean "come" but "go". The Pole should go to a consulate and get a visa. The Syrian had visa, but he was denied entry because he came from the Middle East, where there was a cholera-epidemic. No one from the East was allowed into Greece. The next morning a convoy of some 30 cars set of for the 450 km long ride to the Yugoslavian border, escorted by Greek police cars in the front and the back. I had found a place in a minibus with two Austrians. |
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Border Crossing No.
067/013.12 |
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| Date and time: | Monday 17 September 1973, late evening |
| Crossing point: | Idomeni - Gevgelija |
| Passport check at: | ... |
| Travelling: | from Istanbul to Amsterdam |
| Vehicle: | Car (Ipsala border - Gevgelija) |
| Ticket: | - |
| In the company of: | Alone |
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story to be written |
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Border Crossing No.
068/013.13 |
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| Date and time: | Wednesday 19 September 1973, c19.00 |
| Crossing point: | Sezana - Trieste |
| Passport check at: | ... |
| Travelling: | from Istanbul to Amsterdam |
| Vehicle: | Train (Beograd - Milano 7.00-0.12) |
| Ticket: | Single Ticket Sezana - Trieste |
| In the company of: | Alone |
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story to be written |
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Border Crossing No.
069/013.14 |
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| Date and time: | Friday 21 September 1973, c2.20 |
| Crossing point: | Milano - Chiasso |
| Passport check at: | ... |
| Travelling: | from Istanbul to Amsterdam |
| Vehicle: | Train (Milano - Amsterdam 1.40-18.54) |
| Ticket: | Return Ticket Amsterdam - Trieste |
| In the company of: | Alone |
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story to be written |
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Border Crossing No.
070/013.15 |
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| Date and time: | Friday 21 September 1973, c8.00 |
| Crossing point: | Basel - Mulhouse |
| Passport check at: | ... |
| Travelling: | from Istanbul to Amsterdam |
| Vehicle: | Train (Milano - Amsterdam 1.40-18.54) |
| Ticket: | Return Ticket Amsterdam - Trieste |
| In the company of: | Alone |
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story to be written |
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Border Crossing No.
071/013.16 |
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| Date and time: | Friday 21 September 1973, c11.30 |
| Crossing point: | Thionville - Luxembourg |
| Passport check at: | ... |
| Travelling: | from Istanbul to Amsterdam |
| Vehicle: | Train (Milano - Amsterdam 1.40-18.54) |
| Ticket: | Return Ticket Amsterdam - Trieste |
| In the company of: | Alone |
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story to be written |
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Border Crossing No.
072/013.17 |
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| Date and time: | Friday 21 September 1973, c13.30 |
| Crossing point: | Troisvierges - Gouvy |
| Passport check at: | No check |
| Travelling: | from Istanbul to Amsterdam |
| Vehicle: | Train (Milano - Amsterdam 1.40-18.54) |
| Ticket: | Return Ticket Amsterdam - Trieste |
| In the company of: | Alone |
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story to be written |
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Border Crossing No.
073/013.18 |
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| Date and time: | Friday 21 September 1973, c16.00 |
| Crossing point: | Visé - Maastricht |
| Passport check at: | No check |
| Travelling: | from Istanbul to Amsterdam |
| Vehicle: | Train (Milano - Amsterdam 1.40-18.54) |
| Ticket: | Return Ticket Amsterdam - Trieste |
| In the company of: | Alone |
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story to be written |
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