Not exactly the Hogwarts Express

              Let’s just say my luck ended when I left the airport. When I got to the train station I tried calling my parents and Cara. But the payphones they had did not accept calling cards. So I figured I would go get my tickets then try and find some other phones. To redeem your train ticket all you need is the confirmation number and the card you paid with.  What I didn’t realize is that I purchased them on a card that I had just recently cancelled and left at home. So I had a little spilt second “oh crap I’m screwed” moment then went and found one of the station assistants. They pointed me to the ticketing office who told me to call the online help number and they would straighten it out. Well I’ve already covered my luck with the pay phones so what I ended up having to do was swipe my credit card and make the call (and therefore  have no idea what the charges were). I was able to get it straightened out fairly quickly and then was able to call my parents to let them know I made it. 

   **UPDATE: Apparently these calls costed me 25.50 in all**

                After settling the card issue, picking up the tickets was pretty straight forward. I was also was able to get my 16-25 rail card which gets me 1/3 off any train fare. This went really smoothly… until I tried to pay for it. My credit card declined but luckily I had my debit card with me as well and paid with it. At the time of writing this I don’t have internet and therefore can’t go online to check my card. I didn’t think I was really close to my limit so now I’m just afraid of two possible scenarios: 1. My card got shut down because they lost my notification of going abroad (It’s nice to know they care but if this is the case it will be a pain in the butt to get back online) 2. The pay phone ran up some ludicrous amount of charges making me hit my limit (this would of course be bad since it’s my money and I don’t want them to have it, duh). Let’s just hope neither of these are the case.
                Just after this I grabbed a bagel and used some of the change to make a phone call. I got connected all the way to Cara, she picked up, and I said this is Adam. At this point the phone promptly clicked off with no warning to insert more change.  After this I decided to just give up and wait on my train. So far my rail experience has been much different than my airline one. Wrestling with pay phones, turning around constantly, and becoming utterly confused by the departures board all came together to give me this feeling of being very small. I’ll admit it was definitely intimidating being alone and having things go wrong somewhere I had never been before. But I think it was a good experience for me.
                Now,  running on 25hrs without sleep, I am sitting here listening to the chick facing me eat really disgustingly and trying to make sure I don’t fall asleep and miss my train stop. It has definitely not been a dull beginning to this trip.