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Last weekend I was chatting to phaxx and I arranged to meet up with him one of the nights he would be in Amsterdam (on his inter-railing trip). We decided that Wednesday would suit best.

So, I went up after work and (after getting lost with a GPS) had a very nice meal in an Indonesian restaurant. I met two of phaxxs friends from Boston, Julia and Dan, who are friends with Randall Munroe. I was (and still am) very jealous.

Meal went well, I bade my farewells and I got the last train back to Roermond. I fell asleep on the train. I missed my stop. I arrived into Sittard station at 1am. The next train wasn’t until 5:42am.

I went looking for a taxi, even though I was 30km+ from home, but I found no taxis. I even went into a bar to ask if there was a taxi rank but was told that no taxis would go as far as I wanted on a week-night. The only thing left to do was go back to the station and wait a few hours for the next train.

Sittard has to be one of the emptiest cities I’ve ever seen in the early hours of the morning. Apart from the people in the pubs / Main Square I didn’t see a single person. Until I got back to the train station.

Back in the train station there was a homeless guy trying to swipe some cash from an Touch-Screen Ticket machine. As soon as he saw me he brandished a Stanley knife and (covering his face with a hammer) started shouting at me in Dutch.

I told him that I didn’t speak Dutch and so he started talking in broken English, saying something first about being a street-child and needing money for food. I had to try really hard not to laugh when he said “You call police and I put a knife in your arse”.

Finally he left me alone and went back to his thievery. I waited until he was gone and took a photo of the broken machine.

After the shock of what had just happened settled in the first thing that came to mind was “That was a waste of a perfectly good Flat-Panel Touch-Screen monitor. I could do with one of those”.