Time travel

I leave my house to go shopping, and when I return everything has changed. The apartment building where I live has disappeared, and the farms that used to be here before the city was extended have returned. The nearby district of single family homes is gone too, it's all fields and cows. There's hardly any traffic, just one noisy tractor in the distance.

I suddenly feel very lonely, and I decide I want to go downtown to be surrounded by people. Because the bus stop has disappeared as well, I have to walk. When I arrive in the city centre I see many people, but by far not as many as I remember. The city itself looks different too: some streets are canals like they used to be, and the factories that I know as abandoned are operational again. Then I realize what happened: I'm in the past!

This past is a mixture of the 1970s, when I moved to Leiden as a student, and earlier periods that I only know from photo books. The situation is getting to my nerves, and I want to leave Leiden as soon as possible. I walk to the Levendaal, where I want to get on the bus to Leiderdorp, a town just outside Leiden that keeps appearing in my dreams. On my way there I see LK on the other side of the street, but though she looks straight at me she doesn't recognize me.

The bus stop that I remember from my own time is still there, and when I arrive the bus arrives too. My electronic bus ticket appears to be useless, I need to buy a ticket and pay with cash. But when I try to do that I realize my euros are useless too: I need guilders! When the bus driver notices the euros he says: "Oh, you're one of THEM! No need to pay, just take a seat. There's another one of your kind in the bus, so you might want to connect."

Further down the aisle I meet JS, who actually does recognize me and explains that he has been living in this weird past for some time already. He tells me that if I need food and a place to sleep I can go to his parents, who run some kind of safehouse for people who got temporally displaced. They live in Katwijk, a fishing town that for the purpose of this dream is conveniently situated on the bus route to Leiderdorp.

Nevertheless it takes hours to get there, and when the bus arrives in Katwijk it is already getting dark. I manage to find the address J has given me fairly quickly. His parents seem to know of my arrival; they have already prepared a meal and a bed. J's father is a retired fisherman, and the meal J's mother serves me is a typical fisherman's dinner: lots of fish, a few potatoes and very few vegetables. While I eat, J's parents discuss fishing business and church affairs with a young man who was already in the room when I arrived.

After dinner I tell them I am very grateful for their hospitality, but I need to go on to Leiderdorp as soon as possible, so I won't stay the night. When I walk back to the bus stop it's pitch dark, but luckily I don't have to wait long for the bus to arrive. Another long trip takes me to the Leiderdorp Bus Station, a bustling public transport hub that doesn't exist in real life but keeps returning in my dreams. Here you can take a bus to a nearby town, but also to faraway places like Russia, China or Mongolia. Undersea destinations are an option as well, and you can even travel to the other planets of our solar system.

The Bus Station is busy and noisy and chaotic, and I love it! Will I take a bus back to my own time, or will I take any of the other buses and start a new life?

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