Amsterdam, Rotterdam area very cloudy, totally overcast. No real discernible behavioral differences. People are not talkative. Very quiet on the train.

Train system slightly more confusing but not much. Announcements in Dutch, rough English, French.

Many people here have pale white fingers made red and glassy by the weather.

Man next to me browsing X, crypto, he talks louder with his girlfriend than others do with their travel partners. Pulls up a podcast titled The American Dream. Observability and platform engineering ads. Likely developer.

The train is waiting a long time at the station. They apologized for the delay, some kind of problem.

Rotterdam station is nearly empty.

Starbucks, bodyweight park. Lots of graffiti, some decorative, some criminal.

Many ho hum repetitive blocky apartments.

Lots of leafless trees, perfectly equidistant, line every path through the plains.

The man is scrolling through Python code.

A student speaking German is showing her friend a video of a dog in a cart being pushed down a local road. It seems she filmed it. She’s saying the dog jumped out. They’re giggling about it.

A middle aged lady is reading a book. She wears an apple watch.

Another couple, the woman reads a paparazzi magazine, the man on his phone.

The man next to me, his girlfriend reads on a rakuten.

The men here so far are more beautiful than the women.

We cross over a choppy wide river.

The man’s Python code has conditions for trading butterfly option spreads.

“Media = virus” graffiti

Man in a three button sleeved blazer checks out tickets, asks in Dutch and English.

Are the man and his girlfriend speaking German or is it that similar? I hear viele, gar nichts.

A man a few rows down has no ticket and is negotiating in English to pay cash. It seems resolved now.

“Vingt quatre cinq” the ticket man asks a lady. 85, sounds right about what we paid. But her book is Dutch. Maybe I misheard? Or bilingual, I suppose.

We are now in Belgium. No customs yet. Extremely drab, dead empty station.

Small towns are cuter but certainly have a suburban feel. Very samey houses in rows.

Belgium visually indistinguishable from Netherlands thus far. Identical houses.

Cant tell if poorly maintained city streets are dangerous here too. With American eyes, I see unsafe streets.

People’s front yards in this more rural area are full of trash, broken plastic chairs, even a toilet. Everything there is falling apart. The houses themselves seem fine.

Many homeless sleeping in Brussels stations. Handicap elevator smells strongly of piss. Very bad signage throughout.

Beggar.

Man helps lift another mans cart up stairs.

“GENOCIDE: Arizona Complicit”

Shit on the streets

Girl on the tgv watching vampire diaries in french

---