Off to the USA

I had planned an early train from Antwerp to the Brussels airport. I set my alarm for 05:55 so I could catch the 06:45 train to the airport. I arrived at the Antwerp central station in time to catch the 06:17 train to the Brussels North station. Oh great, I will get to the airport early and I can check on exchanging Euros for US dollars.

When I arrived at the Brussels North station, I looked for information on the train to the airport. On the old dim monitor there was a line with the correct time and destination for the train. In the track column there was three "***". I wondered what that meant. I went to the long yellow paper time table, on that it said that the train should depart from track 11. I went to track 11, on the sign there it said the next train would go to Antwerp. Hummm, Antwerp is the opposite direction from the airport. Time for the train to depart to the airport passed. I decided to look for the next train to the airport. At information they told me that the last train was canceled and where the next one would depart from.

I went to the departure track. Time for the train to arrive and depart passed. Everyone just stayed in place waiting. There was an announcement in French. I only caught the last word which was Airport. I sure hope the train is just late and not canceled. The train finally arrived about 15 minutes late. But it did arrive.

At the airport I tried to exchange Euros for traveler's checks. The answer is we do that but we sold all of the traveler's checks and don't have any more. I am sure I will have better luck in Zurich.


As I walked off the plane in Zurich I saw the headline on the Financial Times that said the Euro had dropped against the dollar.

In Zurich I did not pass through the normal departure area, but just went directly to the international departure terminal. This terminal only has six small shops and no money exchange.

Zurich to Chicago is a long flight. Today we all were lucky, it was only nine hours. I had the Economist magazine on the IPod which took up the entire trip that I was not dosing off.

In Chicago I asked and they don't sell traveler's checks any more. I exchanged Euros for dollars and was extremely disappointed at the rate of exchange.

In Chicago, they have some beautiful neon art in the underground passage between terminals.