I take the train everyday, for practical reasons; it's basically pointless trying to drive across the country and into Amsterdam in the mornings; you can take 3 or 4 hours over 100 kms.
Usually travelling by train is OK, if you can tolerate the inexplicable delays, but just occasionally it can be an unpleasant experience, not due to the train company, but due to the loons and wierdos you come across. Of course, in my car I am the only loon and seeing as I'm not a self-hurting kind of loon, that's nothing to be scared about.
But this morning in the train, I came across a very wierd individual. I sat down in a quiet part of the first class carriage for a 10 minute journey from my weekday lodgings to the office. One tall man, about 30 to 35, wearing a long messy coat and a fedora hat was pacing up and down the carriage for some minutes as the train was running, and then sat down opposite me. He said 'good morning' in an unusually assertive manner, to which I replied 'good morning'. He then glared at me; his eyes were those of a psycho and there was a large scar running from his mouth to one eye, looking rather like a knife wound; he had a completely fixed gaze and his face was stiffened up. Then he rummaged around in his coat, still glaring at me, then put his hand on my knee and said 'feel this', pushing his shin against my shin; I really didn't know what to make of this, except that it seemed his shin was perhaps actually a false leg. He continued his psychotic glaring as I sat there working out my options as to what to do and watching him out of the corner of my eye; happily the train arrived at my station a couple of minutes later and I got up to leave; he stuck his hand out as if to shake my hand. I somewhat hesitantly shook his hand and left, him still glaring at me.
One thing struck me; other passengers hid themselves behind their newspapers, but perhaps that isn't a surprise. But I found the whole experience quite scary, perhaps simply because of the wierdness of it all; I'm not a small person and quite capable of defending myself, so not easily scared; in fact, an aggressive individual directly threatening me hardly worries me at all, but this was WIERD.
I found myself wondering; is this some druggy type of behaviour (this is Amsterdam after all)? Is this perhaps some 'care in the community gone wrong' case? Very strange, and as I said, quite creepy.
Any other tales of wierdos in the train?
Usually travelling by train is OK, if you can tolerate the inexplicable delays, but just occasionally it can be an unpleasant experience, not due to the train company, but due to the loons and wierdos you come across. Of course, in my car I am the only loon and seeing as I'm not a self-hurting kind of loon, that's nothing to be scared about.
But this morning in the train, I came across a very wierd individual. I sat down in a quiet part of the first class carriage for a 10 minute journey from my weekday lodgings to the office. One tall man, about 30 to 35, wearing a long messy coat and a fedora hat was pacing up and down the carriage for some minutes as the train was running, and then sat down opposite me. He said 'good morning' in an unusually assertive manner, to which I replied 'good morning'. He then glared at me; his eyes were those of a psycho and there was a large scar running from his mouth to one eye, looking rather like a knife wound; he had a completely fixed gaze and his face was stiffened up. Then he rummaged around in his coat, still glaring at me, then put his hand on my knee and said 'feel this', pushing his shin against my shin; I really didn't know what to make of this, except that it seemed his shin was perhaps actually a false leg. He continued his psychotic glaring as I sat there working out my options as to what to do and watching him out of the corner of my eye; happily the train arrived at my station a couple of minutes later and I got up to leave; he stuck his hand out as if to shake my hand. I somewhat hesitantly shook his hand and left, him still glaring at me.
One thing struck me; other passengers hid themselves behind their newspapers, but perhaps that isn't a surprise. But I found the whole experience quite scary, perhaps simply because of the wierdness of it all; I'm not a small person and quite capable of defending myself, so not easily scared; in fact, an aggressive individual directly threatening me hardly worries me at all, but this was WIERD.
I found myself wondering; is this some druggy type of behaviour (this is Amsterdam after all)? Is this perhaps some 'care in the community gone wrong' case? Very strange, and as I said, quite creepy.
Any other tales of wierdos in the train?
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