Trains, delay on wheels

A jumper. That is what we call a person who decides to end his or her life by jumping in front of a speeding train. It is one of the two most annoying reasons why a train can be delayed for over an hour. The other reason is a possible bomb.
Both are totally annoying. Especially if your already in a hurry. But if you have to ‘choose’, then you better have a jumper.


I was waiting over half an hour for the train to come when the announcer finally told us: ‘The train from Amsterdam Central Station to Utrecht Central Station is delayed for an unknown time span because a crash with a person. We apologize for the inconvenience.’
Great, I was already late!! But yeah, they can’t keep the train driving with some kind of massive bloodstain on it. Even that idea makes me a little nauseous. And then there is the train driver... Train driver is officially one of the most traumatising jobs there is. It was put on that list one or two years ago. And that isn’t weird, in the Netherlands looking at the statistics, each day at least one person throws itself in front of a train.


But a crash with a person?? I mean, you can hit another car and crash it, or you hit someone in the face or something like that. But you DON’T just ‘hit’ a person with a train! Everyone knows that the person probably threw him/herself in front of it. But somehow they decided to say the ‘political proper thing’ as we say it here. If you don’t want to say that there was a jumper, then just say that there was ‘a crash’ or something like that.

The other thing I said was a bomb. Today was such a day. At the train station of Den Bosch, there was a bomb warning. The result: no train can get to Den Bosch, or leave Den Bosch. And of course everyone says something else. ‘We did found explosives.’ ‘We’re not sure yet if it is a bomb.’ ‘They found a bomb inside a train.’ ‘We didn’t find anything yet.’ Make up your mind!!


Ooh…there is my train. Catch you all later!!