Oostende, the train and Bordeaux

Things I will never take for granted again:
Non-smoking restaurants/bars/clubs
Gum-my kingdom for a piece of gum
English being spoken freely and without stigma
Elevators
Free toilets
Deodorant!!!!
Breakfast
Moderately sized sea gulls

Things I think we should adopt from the Europeans:
PDA
Husbands and wives that hold hands
Sunsets at 10pm
escalators that are still until you step on them
Chocolate that melts in your fingers and tastes like sin
Sincerity
Flowers for the sake of beauty
Affordable flowers
Mojitos made with real mint leaves and limes
Meals that are enjoyed and last over an hour
Leave it to me to find the LA Jolla of Europe! Oostende is very resort-ish with it's sandy beaches, boardwalk and ginormous sea gulls. I've gotta tell you, I was really looking forward to this place... It's a good thing too because I'm here an extra day due to the train being full. I've had a love-hate relationship with the train system since I got here. With the global pass I have you are supposed to be able to travel unlimited to 21 different countries in Eastern and Western Europe for 3 months without a problem. For this "convienice" you pay a hefty sum for the pass, but they failed to mention that there are additional reservation fees, couchette/overnight fees and fees for fast trains. In the pecking order of priorities, apparently, a place to sleep falls second to transportation to the location. I was supposed to be in Bordeaux this afternoon, but because of lack of train service and electrical problems I'm now booked at two different hostels for tonight...I'm on vacation, traveling and as much as I may complain about the inconvience, I'm not really put out except for a few euro as a deposit, but I wonder what the locals who depend on these trains as their primary mode of transportation do when the train just doesn't show up. What do they tell their bosses, their family/friends? It's quite a shift from the metro system of London or Paris that even I can navigate. That's another thing-no out of country booking! So because I'm going from Oostede (Belgium) to Bordeaux (France) I can book here, except the train is full and they said I should have booked ahead. So I decided to book ahead for the NEXT leg of my trip, from Bordeaux to Madrid, but because it's not a TGV train they can't do it...geez. When I explained the circular argument to the woman booking the trains she laughed because it's hard to deny the ridiculousness of it. She then asked if she could give me a piece of advise: she said to relax, that I'll get there and I'll have fun doing it because I look like the "adventurous type". (Lack of showers will make anyone look adventurous...Ha!) She is right though. Part of this trip is to distinguish what I have control over and what I don't. I'm here in Oostende, on the beach, drinking mojjitos for another day...what better place to be than here?? :)
Arrived in Bordeaux last night at midnight and got some rest. I met two girls in my room, one from France and one from Russia. Elsa, the one from France, is on her way to Barcelona right now after we had coffee and talked politics. (I've missed conversation!!) I'm going to meet her in Barcelona on the 7th of July when I'll be going to Spain. Natasha, the Russian girl and I are meeting in about 20 minutes at the Place de la Bourse for lunch. She and I talked in the dark last night about educaion and business while laying in our bunk beds. I'm finding traveling is one part summer camp and one part fear factor...
On the train ride here I listened to the audio book "Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe" by Bill Bryson and my fellow drivers must have thought I was a lunatic because I was laughing out loud at some of the stories he was sharing about. He wrote (or dictated from his book in this case) something that seemed to capture in words the experience of traveling this way.

"I love the idea that you can never be sure of anything in Europe...but that's the glory of foreign travel as far as I'm concerned. I can't think of anything that excites a greater sense of child-like wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly, you are five years old again. You can't read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can't even reliably cross the street without endangering your life. You whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses."