Andrew Dubber

This man and this woman are remarkably kind & generous human beings

My flight back from Holland to Birmingham today left at 10.15am. I was not on it.

I stayed the night at Lykle’s place in Groningen last night, and we were up at 5am getting ready so I could make it to the 6am train in plenty of time. A ‘direct to the airport’ express – two and a half hours journey. Plenty of time to get there.

There’d been some amazing storms overnight, but it was already promising to be a beautiful day.

Lykle saw me onto the train, we said our goodbyes and he went back home to bed.

At five past six, there was an announcement in Dutch. A woman in my carriage kindly translated for me. The train track had been hit by lightning overnight, and there was going to be a bit of a delay until they’d fixed the problem.

So we waited…

Sneltrein fail rail
45 minutes later, another bunch of people got on our train. It was now going somewhere completely different (The Hague, I think). It would stop at every station along the way, but we’d be able to change trains at Amersfoort and get to Schiphol from there.

We made it as far as Hoogeveen. That is, not very far at all. The train would go no further.

After ten minutes or so of dithering, the train company had managed to get a bus or two to turn up to take us to Meppel. From there, we could take another train to The Hague (where I wasn’t trying to be) – and from there, I could take another train to Schiphol.

It was already 8am, and it would be almost noon before I got there – best case scenario. My flight was at 10.15am.

The kindness of strangers
Fortunately, the woman who had translated for me on the train found a man who had driven to his local station and was on his way to the Hague. She arranged a place in his car for me – and he only had one spare place. She could have taken it herself, as they were headed to the same place, but she knew my predicament, and voluntarily resigned herself to the vagaries of public transport.

So it was back on the train, back the way we had come, as far as Assen, where he was parked. I explained the urgency of the situation and he very kindly offered to take me direct to the airport – a journey that must have been nearly 100km out of his way, all up.

He planned the journey on his iPhone, stepped on the gas and reckoned he could get me to the front door by 10am. He was spot on. It was worth a shot.

Amazing coincidences
On the journey, we talked, and it turned out that he was a product manager for an internet & software company that sponsor the Eurosonic Noorderslag festival – a big music industry conference and series of concerts in January.

Naturally, we knew several of the same people, at one level of remove.

I’ve also given him contact details for Lykle, as they’re working on very similar – possibly overlapping – development ideas. I reckon there could be some business to be done there.

So close…
On arrival at the airport, I ran through checkout. It was bang on 10am. They assigned me a seat and told me that if I run, I might just make it.

I ran. But I didn’t make it.

Apparently – I missed by 30 seconds. They were very sorry, but there was nothing they could do. And since this was a non-transferable ticket, I’d have to buy another one. Go to Transfer desk 4 please.

Exhausted, I trudged to T4, where I explained my situation to the woman behind the counter. She told me she liked my story – particularly the ‘tracks hit by lightning’ bit – and so she wasn’t even going to look at my ticket to see what kind it was. She was just going to assume it was a transferable one, and give me free replacement.

This always happens and people are always cool
Between the woman from KLM who was just delightful; Koen from the internet company who went so far out of his way to drive me here; the woman who both translated the announcements for me and gave up her free ride; and Lykle & Annet who were such exceptional hosts and made me feel incredibly welcome, I have to say that despite missing my flight, I’ve really had quite an incredible day already – full of amazingly cool people.

As Clutch and I always say – ordeals beget treats.

In this case, the ordeal was full of treats. And of course, it wouldn’t be a Dubber journey without an adventure somewhere along the line…