Losing This Train Of Thought

(I am moving to the UK for seven months. My mum is helping me move. I will move by train as it’s the most cost-efficient and practical way. I am also carrying a bike. My mum will go back home afterwards, also by train. This means that we have a pretty complicated ticket to book. We have to go to Brussels to catch the train to London, and from there we take a train to my final destination, in Wales. The tickets up until London we can book at the Dutch international rail office, but one employee tells us it is much, much cheaper to book the British ticket at their website. I attempt to do so but run into a problem. The tickets cannot be sent to another address than a UK address and the other option is to pick it up at a station with the credit or debit card you bought it with. My dad is the only person in the family with a credit card and our debit cards are Dutch and don’t utilise the same system so we can’t use them at the British website. Buying the tickets when we get to London is also a possibility but not with the bike as it needs a reservation and it would be a lot more expensive in any case. As we need to call for a bike ticket in any case I grab the phone. My dad calls first as it is his credit card we’re going to be using. The person on the other side of the line has a thick accent what we suspect is of Indian origin. My dad on the other hand has a pronounced Dutch accent. I can’t hear what is being said on the other side of the line.)

Dad: “I would like to buy some tickets for my daughter and my wife for their trip to the UK. I would like to know if it is possible for the tickets to be sent to our Dutch address or be sent by email.”

Dad: “Pardon, I didn’t understand what you said there.”

Dad: “They can just pick it up at the train station?”

Dad: “No… that is not possible. I will be paying for them so they can’t do that.”

Dad: “No… I am NOT giving them my credit card.”

Dad: “Pardon, what did you say? No, no. I cannot give them my credit card.”

Dad: “Yes, we WILL be paying.”

Dad: *to me* “You take it… I don’t understand him very well and I think it’s mutual.”

(I take the phone with a worried frown.)

Me: “Hello?”

Salesperson: “Hello, I understand you want to book tickets from us and there is a problem with that?”

Me: “Yes, my dad is paying with his credit card, but only my mother and I will be going.”

Salesperson: “That is no problem; you just go to the machine in London and get the ticket from there with the credit card used for the payment.”

Me: “I don’t think my dad is going to allow us to take his credit card… so that’s not possible. Is there any other option?”

Salesperson: “We can also send it to you. We send to all UK addresses.”

Me: “We don’t live in the UK, though. We’re going there… I want to get to my UK address with this ticket.”

Salesperson: “Well, you can also get the ticket from the ticket machine or the information desk.”

Me: “Without the credit card?”

Salesperson: “No, you need the credit card used for the payment.”

(I sighed internally but finally after a few more rounds like that managed to get in his head that that was not an option. He decided to make an exception for us and sent us the tickets to our Dutch address. Next came the fun with the Dutch names. I have the in the Netherlands very common surname ‘van der Wal’, which is relatively easy, but the name of my street and my city were not as straightforward. After a lot of back and forth we think we were on the same wavelength. Anxiously we awaited our tickets, and sure enough about a week later they arrived, sent to the correctly spelled address at the correctly spelled name. It was finally time to catch the train. After a gruelling trip of already over 8 hours to London we made it to London Paddington. We dragged our stuff on the train and squeezed into our reserved seats. I took a look at the ticket above our head and started to laugh. It proudly said: name: THUNDERWALL.)